Grief Police and doing sad 'right'
Reflections on performative mourning and how we're told how to grieve...
This is not about the Queen, though I guess it’s not about the Queen. Many of us might agree that this weird compulsory grieving for the Queen is weird. More so the performative aspect of it (someone, please write me a piece on State Funerals as Performance Art). But it also made me think about how there’s a weird set way to demonstrably grieve that’s equally more than a bit weird. But also actually something I’ve quietly thought of for many years; the question of ‘do I do grief right?’
As this is the ‘queer notebook’ and queerness in the wider sense of ‘disrupting the way it’s done’ here, this felt like the place to talk about it. Obviously, if either an unease with the strange times we’re currently in or grief talk is not for you, do click off. But otherwise, let’s talk about the weirdness of collective and demonstrable grieving. But also the rights and wrongs and maybe just weird brain responses to it.
There are two things at play here, the weird cultural grief we do or don’t feel for public figures and the way we’re expected to ‘perform’ grief in line with some arbitrary measure of what’s right or wrong.
In some ways, this is a wider symptom of our world; we’re all expected to ‘demonstrate’ grief for public figures of all kinds, from Bowie to Bill Turnbull (the first two who popped into my head). To the point, I’ve made it an unofficial ‘rule’ to only publicly Tweet/post/talk about ‘celebrity’ deaths if I have something to say. Which seems sensible, no? But given the general state of social media, there’s always pressure to be ‘seen’ commenting on a death. It can result in you being racist/homophobic/sexist if you are seen to comment on the death of x but not y. This is ridiculous as you might not even know who y is or have been busy that day. It seems churlish and silly to comment a week later when you realise…or maybe no, you didn’t actually like y celebrity, which is perfectly valid. But in death and social media, we’re expected to comment. Show how upset we are. Balanced with the (justifiable and important) outrage at all of the unjust deaths in the world, which of course, get far less coverage. Again this isn’t a conversation about that because it deserves its own space, but more about thinking how increasingly I feel I don’t ‘do’ grief right by some arbitrary set of standards.
This essay is also not me policing the feelings of sadness that come with celebrity deaths. There are many ‘famous’ people who I think of one-day hearing they are no longer here and being sad. I firmly believe that people, artists in particular of all kinds, become part of our lives through their work, and we should mourn that loss in our ways. There are so many whose contributions to the world I will one day profoundly feel the loss of. That actually, in a way I’ll come back to, possibly helps us process the ‘real’ deaths in our lives too.
But at least I don’t feel like I’m ‘grieving’ these famous people, more just the loss of what they contributed to the world. Are these the same things? Yes and no. Take, for instance, two musical theatre greats I love; Sondheim and Larson. In the case of Sondheim, I think I was saddened by his death (I refuse to say ‘passing’ too, it’s trite to call death death). He was an old man who contributed much and lived a good life. I am sad he’s gone, but I don’t feel we have ‘lost’ in the way someone took too soon like Larson was ‘lost’ to us. It’s a different emotion. I ‘grieve’ the loss of Larson’s potential, what more he might give us to see, to paraphrase Sondheim. So his loss feels more acute, as a young man with his greatest career moments and much of his life ahead more a ‘loss’ than an old man who had completed his life’s work and had a good life. I feel those two elements aren’t too controversial?
And, Colonialism and all-around terrible behaviour of the broader Monarchy aside, is how I feel about the Queen, an old lady who lived a long and good life and has now reached his end. I also had no emotional connection to her, so should I be compelled to sadness? I don’t think so. If others are, then that’s their business. Still, equally, I wouldn’t police someone with no emotional connection to musical theatre to care about Sondheim either.
Of course, having drafted this post several days, I think we can all agree the performative ‘grieving’ (in quotations because I feel most of it isn’t even grieving, just performative) has gotten increasingly…well, batshit is the only word for it. We’ve got queues, David Beckham, and people taking other dead people’s ashes…batshit. But I also guess what would we expect from the Monarchy? Again though, this isn’t really about the Queen herself; I’ve no direct beef with her, and may those who actually loved and knew her to find their own ways to grieve away from the circus. But we see with the Queen and at times other ‘celebrity’ (I don’t know what else you’d call her, so run with it) deaths that we’re supposed to be ‘greiving.
But more with her, and in ‘real life’ that I as a human do not somehow do it ‘right’ because I don’t wail, clutch pearls, or…post pictures on social media.
Yes, this is one that sticks in my mind. I often think that people might be shocked to learn my dad is dead because I have never once posted a picture on father’s day or his birthday talking about the fact he’s dead. And every time I’m overcome with this paranoid guilt, people will judge me for it. Along with a dozen other ‘Dead Dad’ things I don’t do right.
You know what on one level 100% fuck that noise. He died before Facebook even was a thing (the year it was invented, social media fact fans, though I was one of the second waves of Unis allowed on it…this fun fact has aged badly, I digress) Either way, in whatever alternate realm he may be, give one solitary fuck that there are no annual posts to that end. (Do I see Phoebe in Friends screaming at her Dead Grandma when I typed that? Little bit).
Also, another shocking revelation, I do not have any digital photos of my dad. This is mainly because I am a lazy lazy human and digitising pictures is a faff. We don’t have any pictures of him up in our house either. We are a largely unsentimental family that way. I think that’s…fine (this might be the time to mention we do have a picture of the Dead Dog but not the Dead Dad, but at this point, that’s also just funny…she was a very cute dog, after all). Look, what you hang on the walls of your home doesn’t have to be a shrine. Neither does your social media or how you mark anniversaries of death. At least I think so.
Others disagree. And for what I think is 17 years now (I am genuinely too lazy and too dyslexic to do the maths work it out yourself from how old Facebook is), I have felt judged for not grieving my dad ‘right’. But what even is ‘right’? I actually couldn’t do the maths properly either because I don’t know the date he died. And I bet some of you are judging me right now, aren’t you…So it is here I will confess all my Dead Dad's sins: I wasn’t there when he died when he died, I didn’t immediately get on a plane to be there the next day, and I wasn’t there when his ashes were scattered. I did not think for at least a decade to enquire where his headstone was (he doesn’t have one). Add to that, I think sixteen father’s days and fifteen birthdays I did not post on Facebook/Instagram in his memory, and I am a very bad 21st-century half-orphan.
I don’t think any of that makes me a bad person. I don’t think that makes me any less a person who has spent half a lifetime figuring out what impact a Dead-Dad has. I just think it means we all navigate this nonsense in different ways. We all access our emotions in different ways and express them differently, too. I, for one, am better on paper for a start. I don’t like attention; I’m incredibly shy, so a funeral, being an only child of a dead parent, is frankly not a place I’d be drawing further attention to myself by sobbing loudly if I could help it. If I was sobbing loudly type of person. But obviously, that doesn’t pass the grief Bechdel test, does it?
But that, too, is why I am finding the Queen Performance Art weird. Because I wonder…do people find comfort in this shit? Anyone who knows my writing knows I have an obsession with Death Rituals of the world (There are YoutTube channels and Instagram accounts dedicated to this stuff). And I find the broader world’s rituals brilliant and comforting and…practical. But all the hushed gilded tones of churches when folks weren’t religious or compulsory sustained sadness is…odd. Do you know what I remember from my dad’s funeral? Utterly pissing myself laughing on the way to the wake…I can’t remember why or at what…and laughter is obviously an emotional outlet. But laughing at a wake is also…ok. Especially when (I’m guessing) someone makes a dirty joke.
Do you know what else is ok? Skipping out on a funeral. I’m a kid of older parents who were the youngest in their families. There are a lot of random dead relatives out there…I have skipped a lot of funerals. I once told my Mum to have coffee with a friend rather than attend a funeral. She didn’t want to because the alive person would have missed her, but the dead one wouldn’t. I know that logic will chime with some and be utterly abhorrent to others. But surely we should have the choice in how we mark, engage with, and ultimately grieve a loss?
I am frequently aware that I’m considered ‘strange’ in how I choose to talk about, think about, and in the eyes of the world, not ‘properly’ grieve the loss of a parent. And I think that’s why too, amid everything else, all the ‘but they/we are grieving’ has me riled up (granted, it doesn’t take much)... Because not everyone grieves the same, and maybe, at last, I’m also sick of having to pretend we do.
Am I wired differently? Maybe. Is this some manifestation of strange brain chemistry? Almost certainly. But that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong or broken…or that I don’t have emotions connected to the broader picture. But my emotions are connected to that moment of death or that ritual around it all. I think I’d rather feel those emotions in the broader picture too. Because for me fixated on that almost arbitrary set of moments feels empty. To quote myself in something, I wrote ‘well, they aren’t any less dead, are they?’ and that’s how I feel.
This isn’t a dismissal of any of the rituals around death; as I say above, I think they are both hugely fascinating and hugely important to people. Be they of faith-based origin or culture. But also they aren’t necessary for everyone. Or at least they shouldn’t be enshrined in stone in how we interpret them either (unless your adherence to religion says you should, but again that’s another discussion). The pick and Mix approach seems valid; for some, visiting graves will be important, just as social media posts will be. For others, a sharing of stories suffices. For others, none of the above.
Could it be, too, that some of us just aren’t…affected by or process death and grief in the same way. Because saying I didn’t grieve for my dad isn’t saying I’m not affected by the loss of him in the bigger picture. It’s just saying I didn’t need to, that we don’t all need to demonstrate those losses similarly. And I think I wanted to write this, with everything going on, to say you aren’t broken if you don’t feel things around death in the way the rituals, the norms. Yes, the social media posts tell you that you should. I’m someone who had a Dead Dad by 20. Do I need to post an app that wasn’t even invented when he died to prove it on Instagram?
And again, if that helps, you do you.
But I think, some seventeen years on, I’m also allowed to be…ok about it…over it even? A therapist said to me ‘it could just be a thing that happened’ and for the longest time the wider Grief Police had me thinking I had to be continually traumatised and sad when in fact…it’s just a thing that happened. Does it majorly suck that I’m an only child with only one parent half my life? Sure sometimes. But honestly, I’m more just resentful of all the middle-class kids with two parents who can throw a house deposit at them. At the same time, my Mum bumbles along on one small state pension, to be honest? I’m angrier at the Tory-shit-show that makes all that difficult than sad that my dad shuffled off this earth when I was 20. Would it be nice to have two alive and functional parents? I suppose so, but in the way, I’ve never known what it’s like to have siblings. I’ve never known adult life with two parents, so I think I’ll continue to cope.
Let’s get this straight (or queer). I cry a lot, like a lot, a lot. But I don’t always cry at the things I “should”. Did I cry the day my dad died? I don’t think I did. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t ‘sad’ or whatever, but I’m not sure I cried. Did I cry the other week thinking about Elisabeth Sladen? Sure. Do I regularly cry at my own writing? Absolutely. Because for some of us, that’s how emotions come out…it’s not about maybe the musical I’m watching, or the book I’m reading on a train that makes me sob…those emotions are valid, they’re the culmination of all the ‘real world’ ones too. So not crying ‘on cue’ at the key moments isn’t ‘bad’ I’d argue it’s logical, maybe self-preservation. I could break down and cry when I heard my dad had died, sure, but at that moment, it wasn’t practical, there were things to do, and frankly, that day, stuff I had to do. But also, in an emotional sense, that wasn’t the moment. Months later, in a ‘safe space’ of a sad film or reading a book alone, reacting to the emotional stimulus of something else, those emotions can come out another way. Some of us may just function better that way.
Because grief isn’t a one-and-done moment, but it continues through life. And just because someone doesn’t seem to be ‘grieving’ in the way we expect doesn't mean they aren’t. Or maybe they aren’t actively in that moment; maybe we let them do it in their own way and time and stop enforcing strict timetables and behaviours for sadness.
This isn’t a guide to life and death. But I think witnessing, let’s face it, the UK losing its mind a bit and the grief police tell us how we should feel about the Queen made me reflect on years of being told how I should feel or react to grief in my own life. When the truth is there’s no right way. For some, it is social media posts; for me, mostly, it’s writing nonsense like this. Neither of us is wrong, and I’m not broken just because I can’t remember a date or I’m too lazy to digitise some photos.
I think I’m saying that telling people repeatedly that they don’t show their sadness the ‘right’ way or act on a loss in the ‘correct’ manner is just as bad as telling people to ‘calm down' or moderate their expressions of grief. Just because not everyone ticks the boxes of what we expect doesn’t mean they aren’t affected. But even if they’re not, that’s also their personal response to the most personal things. Because a loss, any loss, from a pet to a parent, is a deeply personal thing. So maybe we stop calling them right or wrong and just let them…be.
p.s here’s some more Dead Dog photos cos she’s cute.
The little paws though….