Separating the shock of grief & the shock of death
Picture the first dead body that you were ever close to. For me, I was eighteen years old and the body was my grandmother’s, not an ordinary grandma but one who was so special and beloved that we called her, “Magic Maw-Maw”. Magic Maw-Maw died suddenly, asleep in her favorite maroon recliner, when she was 70. I’ll never forget the way my father wailed and fell to his knees when he received the call to notify us of her death. The pale tremble that fell over all of us as we moved through the first few days without her as if we were ghosts. This is what I mean by the shock of grief.
Our family was is as New Orleans as po-boys and gumbo. We had a traditional wake at the funeral home on Canal Street, the red streetcar chugging back and forth out front. Her casket was open and the parlor was crowded with old Cajuns and new ones, all devastated by the suddenness of our loss. When I approached her now silent body, to touch it for the last time, my stomach rolled at the waxy pallor of her skin. I stared down at her rouged cheeks and painted lips, things that she’d never done a day in my life before. Her hands were clasped on a top the other over her silent chest. Over and over, I ran my hand through her hair, the only thing that still felt like her. This is what I mean by the shock of death.
Recently I went for a walk with another death doula who comes from a large, connected family and who seemed to know nearly every person we passed on our loop around the lake. As she explained to a pair who had stopped to hug her and ask about her family, “We both support families while their loved ones die and we’re chatting about our work.” Their kind eyes darted from her to me, assessing us, before they offered softly and separately, “That is incredible work. You are both special humans.” I’m not arguing with them but I also wonder if they really understand what it is that we do when we serve as death midwives to our clients. I suspect that what they are imagining in their minds is what they felt when their spouse died, or their child, their parent, sibling, best friend. They are speaking of that all encompassing shock, the pain and agony of both your grief and your shock at witnessing the mystery of death.
As death midwives, we are often called to separate the two. I come to care deeply about those that I serve but they are not my family. It is not my mother’s hand that I am holding or my grandmother’s body that we wash. I am distinctly separate from the shock and pain of grief, though I often to carry some with me, it is a pebble in my pocket not a boulder on my head. What I am feeling in those moments is the shock of death alone. The excruciating silence when breath finally stops, the glaze in the eyes as they cloud, the heaviness of the hand I am holding and the finality of the silence in that sacred and tender moment. But it is this alone.
I wonder if we all practiced separating the twin shocks, grief and death, if we would have less fear of death as a society. If we all were encouraged to serve the dying or tend the dead who do not belong to us, would we dread those moments as mightily? What do you think? Are the shock of death and the shock of grief two separate things?
