Sudden Endings
Today has been a difficult day for many people in my life. A former Dalhousie Biology grad student died in a plane crash, someone well known and much liked in the department. I knew him as he was writing up his thesis, so of course I did not have much of an opportunity to know him, but I had the strong impression that I would have liked to have known him better. I am shocked and saddened and confused by the event, but nowhere near as many others in the department; he was very close with one of my closer friends; whatever I think or feel about the situation is a faint echo of what others are going through. In a way this thought pushes me farther from the event: were I to try to feel more strongly about it, I would be encroaching upon others' more legitimate feelings, and in so doing somehow cheapen his meaning to them. But that is an overanalysis -- the truth of the matter is that I just did not know him well enough to feel the deep wound that his loss leaves in many of my friends. Seeing how much he meant to them makes me feel all the worse as well, since I was not able to share such feelings, to develop his friendship.
It is surprising how much this event makes me feel like an adult. It is just not the sort of event that I can imagine happening in a child's life, somehow. (I do know better, of course, but I only know that -- I do not feel it.) Today being Friday, the afternoon and evening were dominated by BioBeer, and BioBeer was dominated by groups of people sitting together trying to figure out what to make of the situation. Of course, there is little that can be made of the situation beyond the basic facts: someone that we all knew (some better than others) died. But we are all shocked and saddened and confused, and we are all struggling to deal with it.
BioBeer was, possibly but not necessarily as a consequence of this, incredibly successful today. When it was over, the core group of Biology grad students that goes out together (myself included) planned to go to a pub for dinner, but of course each of us had to get our things and close up our respective labs. Part of this, for me and for many of us, is making one last check of the e-mail inbox, in case someone needs something done in the lab before the last person leaves. I had an e-mail, from angharad, which made me happy until I read the subject line: our last remaining rat died.
This happened quite suddenly. angharad had her out on the couch, and she seemed quite normal; she had crawled into the blanket that we had out for her as angharad was getting ready to leave for a walk, and then she made very un-rat-like noises, almost like a duck but with a bit of cat-having-a-hairball (according to angharad), gasped, and died. I cannot imagine it happening; I am home now, and there is no rat, but I cannot force myself to believe that it is because there really is no rat. I keep expecting her to be asleep somewhere, hiding away as rats are wont to do. To some degree, I am still struggling with the loss of the other two. This one seemed so healthy! She was sniffing around and exploring right up to the end, I am told. It just does not seem real.
Of course, this is hard to compare honestly with the loss of a friend and colleague. I felt guilty for having any reaction at all to the loss of a pet, in the light of the loss felt by my friends. I feel less guilty now that I am at home, facing the reality of my own loss (inasmuch as I am able to, still dealing with denial), and trying to help angharad deal with it as well. She has been hit harder than me: she was here when it happened, and she had no direct connection to the Dal person.
We are all adults, all of us having to figure out how to deal with the harsh realities of this world, the infinitely sad fact of mortality, the way that life around us changes. Our upbringing is mostly practical, mostly small-scale, short-term. We are concerned with eating and sleeping, safety and comfort. We seek relief from boredom, and satisfaction for our curiosity. We desire friendship and intimacy and acceptance. Our upbringing concerns how to acquire these things, how to interact with others trying to obtain these things. This, we think (or not: it is, I imagine, not something that we think much at all about), is living. This is what occupies us for the majority of our lives. We are not prepared for sudden irrevocable changes, and death is the most irrevocable change of all. We must each feel our own way through tragedy, even when surrounded by friends and family. We can support and guide one another, but each person's journey through grief is ultimately their own. I do not think that anyone can knowingly make that journey without growing up, or without having already grown up.
I have managed so far to live with recent loss through transference and distraction. When our cat died, I was up to my ears in work and stressed beyond distraction; I did not really feel his loss until months after the event, when I had already been dealing with the practical physical fact of his absence. We turned our attention more strongly to our rats, and thereby grew closer to them -- and them to us. The other two rats were more immediate losses, but there was still the one left, and we gave her all the more attention to help compensate her for her own loss. Now we are living in an apartment with no pets at all, and have no furry substitute ready to receive our affection. This will likely change in the near future, but in the interim, it is starkly quiet. I am not quite sure what to make of it.
We will of course survive. Life goes on for us, even when it ends for others. We accept, we recover, we adapt. Life is change, and so is death. But so is life.
It is surprising how much this event makes me feel like an adult. It is just not the sort of event that I can imagine happening in a child's life, somehow. (I do know better, of course, but I only know that -- I do not feel it.) Today being Friday, the afternoon and evening were dominated by BioBeer, and BioBeer was dominated by groups of people sitting together trying to figure out what to make of the situation. Of course, there is little that can be made of the situation beyond the basic facts: someone that we all knew (some better than others) died. But we are all shocked and saddened and confused, and we are all struggling to deal with it.
BioBeer was, possibly but not necessarily as a consequence of this, incredibly successful today. When it was over, the core group of Biology grad students that goes out together (myself included) planned to go to a pub for dinner, but of course each of us had to get our things and close up our respective labs. Part of this, for me and for many of us, is making one last check of the e-mail inbox, in case someone needs something done in the lab before the last person leaves. I had an e-mail, from angharad, which made me happy until I read the subject line: our last remaining rat died.
This happened quite suddenly. angharad had her out on the couch, and she seemed quite normal; she had crawled into the blanket that we had out for her as angharad was getting ready to leave for a walk, and then she made very un-rat-like noises, almost like a duck but with a bit of cat-having-a-hairball (according to angharad), gasped, and died. I cannot imagine it happening; I am home now, and there is no rat, but I cannot force myself to believe that it is because there really is no rat. I keep expecting her to be asleep somewhere, hiding away as rats are wont to do. To some degree, I am still struggling with the loss of the other two. This one seemed so healthy! She was sniffing around and exploring right up to the end, I am told. It just does not seem real.
Of course, this is hard to compare honestly with the loss of a friend and colleague. I felt guilty for having any reaction at all to the loss of a pet, in the light of the loss felt by my friends. I feel less guilty now that I am at home, facing the reality of my own loss (inasmuch as I am able to, still dealing with denial), and trying to help angharad deal with it as well. She has been hit harder than me: she was here when it happened, and she had no direct connection to the Dal person.
We are all adults, all of us having to figure out how to deal with the harsh realities of this world, the infinitely sad fact of mortality, the way that life around us changes. Our upbringing is mostly practical, mostly small-scale, short-term. We are concerned with eating and sleeping, safety and comfort. We seek relief from boredom, and satisfaction for our curiosity. We desire friendship and intimacy and acceptance. Our upbringing concerns how to acquire these things, how to interact with others trying to obtain these things. This, we think (or not: it is, I imagine, not something that we think much at all about), is living. This is what occupies us for the majority of our lives. We are not prepared for sudden irrevocable changes, and death is the most irrevocable change of all. We must each feel our own way through tragedy, even when surrounded by friends and family. We can support and guide one another, but each person's journey through grief is ultimately their own. I do not think that anyone can knowingly make that journey without growing up, or without having already grown up.
I have managed so far to live with recent loss through transference and distraction. When our cat died, I was up to my ears in work and stressed beyond distraction; I did not really feel his loss until months after the event, when I had already been dealing with the practical physical fact of his absence. We turned our attention more strongly to our rats, and thereby grew closer to them -- and them to us. The other two rats were more immediate losses, but there was still the one left, and we gave her all the more attention to help compensate her for her own loss. Now we are living in an apartment with no pets at all, and have no furry substitute ready to receive our affection. This will likely change in the near future, but in the interim, it is starkly quiet. I am not quite sure what to make of it.
We will of course survive. Life goes on for us, even when it ends for others. We accept, we recover, we adapt. Life is change, and so is death. But so is life.