SECTION ONE: The Afterlife

How to begin life after death.

SOMEONE HAS DIED.

So… isn’t this a little awkward? I won’t placate you; that’ll be section two: “Placations and Platitudes for the Post-Mortem Party.” I’m really trying to make this as easy as possible! I will placate you later, though… Sorry for your loss.

When we lose somebody, it feels like the world stops. For example, Thursday and I just got back on speaking terms since my mom died—which of course was on a Th*rsday. That was regrettable to say the least, horribly unchic to say the worst. I remember that Thursday afternoon, lying down next to her body, looking out her bedroom window, and seeing the neighborhood kids ride by on their bikes. My mom had been dead for all of an hour, I felt like I had been dead since at least 2010. Part of me wanted to puke. Part of me wanted to ruin their Thursday afternoon. The dichotomy between what my current reality and their current reality was, was a brash introduction to my afterlife.

By the way—I don’t mean afterlife in the Ghost way, either (artisanal pottery studio, Patrick Swayze, Unchained Melody, and me). I’m using it to mean keeping alive after losing somebody I loved. The literal “after” life. And, in reflecting on the very beginnings of mine, here are five lessons I bequeath to you:

1. There is no emergency.

   Something I became uniquely accustomed to (as the sole caretaker of a dying woman) was constantly being on alert. In the 612 days since my mom has been dead, that feeling of urgency has just recently begun to fade. Death often comes with a rush of energy and information. Whether your experience was slow and arduous or sudden and shocking, the flurry of stimuli that comes through in the immediate aftermath will irradiate you. That is inevitable. In order to survive what I have often referred to as “the nuclear fallout” of death, you must resign to the weirdly simple fact that it’s over. It’s all done. When somebody dies, it is not an emergency! Death signifies that painful experience has come to a final, irreversible end.

2. Feelings are feelings… so feel them.

   Because I was used to needing to be so present both emotionally and physically for my mom, after she died, my body started to turn on itself. I noticed that regardless of how I felt, I was constantly shaking, vibrating even, as if I were freezing. An essential tremor, gifted to me from the great beyond. Next? Hives that quickly turned into episodes of anaphylaxis several times a week. This directly resulted from me not paying attention to what I was experiencing. I was overwhelmed, stressed, relieved, and exhausted. I was also still focusing on how my mom felt… but she was dead. A never-ending negative-feedback loop of searching for something that didn’t exist anymore. Do you know how bad you’ve got to be doing for your newly dead mom to be doing better than you? Once I recognized what was happening, taking moments to feel the feelings as they arrived calmed everything down immediately.

3. Grief is not a punishment, but it can be punishing.

   One of the easiest things to do in the very beginning of your afterlife is to subvert the gift of the grief with the weight of the why. Death is a foundational experience that you can trust to stand on, gain from, and grow beyond. You are re-learning to walk with the life you have left, to breathe a thinner supply of oxygen, to balance alone against the spin of the Earth. Accept the experience you had was the experience you needed—because it was the one you had. Why was that the one you had? It’s the one that happened. What an embarrassing waste of time to preoccupy oneself with groveling; you cannot change a single thing about what happened. Let that free you! Grief has been observed across species throughout time. It has proven itself a fierce killer, and you don’t need to be dying of a broken heart. Seriously—it’s only cute if you’re like 600 and your husband Edward just croaked from consumption. Then and ONLY then may you pack up the tiny cottage you once shared, put on your best black dress, and walk backwards into the ocean. Until then, dearly bereaved, you must focus solely on the fact that what you are experiencing, in its entirety, is natural and normal. Be patient.

4. Don’t look for sense.

   After my mom died, I spent several months growing spring onion in a glass jar on my kitchen table. I don’t really eat that much spring onion. I also didn’t give any of it away? I didn't acknowledge it when guests would stop by or move it from where it sat, day one of Spring Onion Summer 2023. Quite frankly, I didn’t bother to wonder what had come over me; a sort of primordial urge set in. For about a month, whatever sounded like it’d give me any dopamine at all was what I did. Hoard spring onion? Sure. I crocheted thirty 4”x4” granny squares… and did nothing with them. I would finish one, put it in a tote bag, and start on the next. There’s no reason to pass judgment on yourself for trying to find a way to soothe the pain. We hold space for birds when they do that horrifying circle thing around their dead. We feel as if we can grieve alongside mourning elephants while Barack Obama moonlights as David Attenborough on Netflix. Never once do we see think pieces surrounding the motives behind an elephant’s grieving practices or the reasons birds are so fucking scary. As humans, we hold space for them and express curiosity and desires to understand why they grieve the way they grieve. We never set out to change their ways, but perhaps to apply their practice to our own. I was 26 when my mom died. For me, I understood immediately that I wanted my mom, but I didn’t need my mom anymore—not in the afterlife. That made sense to me. Just grieve. If there were a right way to do it, you couldn’t afford it anyway. So trust me when I say your spring onions will come out in the wash or whatever.

5. Peace is a practice, not a destination.

   Part of that “resting in peace” or “power” thing applies to you too. You do know that, right? As the author of the “Handbook For The Recently Bereaved,” I feel this may be the most important thing I share: Peace is a practice, not a destination. If you spend all your time post-loss trying to “find a more peaceful spot” or “regain some semblance of peace” in your life, you’ll get nowhere. Peace is abundant and always around you. Sometimes just thinking about taking a deep breath is enough. You will spin it from air like cotton candy as you move forward into the afterlife. That’s the thing—the only possible direction to move in is forward. “On” isn’t a direction, and I hate when people expect someone to “move on.” We, as the recently bereaved, move forward and through. Forward and through. Those who anticipate the ability to move on and find peace will always struggle with not having come to terms with the here and now. Death cannot dilute peace. For me, the unimaginable happened. Sometimes it does. There are kids on their bikes outside, too.

We survived death. Now we have to learn to live with it.