SECTION TEN: Feeling Grateful
How to feel good about losing someone you love.
Dear Recently Bereaved,
The author of The Handbook,
, is currently homeless. As The Handbook is free and will always remain free, please consider a donation to help continue the publication as well as help secure Cody and his dogs permanent housing. Even $5/mo from each subscriber could cover housing costs, indefinitely, moving forward.Venmo/Cashapp: @/imcodyjacob
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HONESTLY? IT’S TO DIE FOR.
When somebody dies, it is not an emergency, and it’s not about you. When you’re able to zoom out far enough behind yourself to see death for what it is, you should see it pretty plainly. A very simple but very significant change was made, and the decision wasn’t yours to make. You are allowed to enjoy that. The afterlife is designed to be filled with reminders that you’ve become the Big Scary Monster, so it’s imperative to your survival here that you focus on developing your recognition of the abundance of peace as much as possible. When you’re able to relax into the aspects of death that do serve you, you will find your grief to be much less cumbersome on your journey forward. Your gratitude for your present does not mean you didn’t love them, you don’t miss them, or that you’re better off without them. Sometimes, that may be the case, but that’s never going to be signified by your gratitude in the present moment.
In the hours and days following my mother’s death, I remember feeling surprised at how different it felt compared to what I was expecting. I had anticipated it feeling like a bomb exploded mid-flight on the way to the rest of my life, me in free-fall, and nothing but clear blue water below. Upon impact, I found it to be… quiet. Really, really quiet. I was mostly alone all day; it was the end of July, and it was the weekend. There wasn’t much else to do other than to sit amongst the reality that my mom died, and it was nice outside. The first thing I did was read a book recommended to me by a grief counselor the hospice company provided. It was a little woo-woo for me; something about signs and accepting them as they come from your loved ones who have passed. It was, of course, written by a psychic-medium who had just discovered their gift and felt compelled to share their perspectives with the world (mind you, I have completely anthropomorphized The Handbook and refer to it as an omniscient guide on our journey through the afterlife). My grief counselor was a lovely woman who was weeks away from her second carpal tunnel surgery. Throughout our conversations, she would hold her wrist like a premie and softly rock it back and forth, all the while lulling me with “mhmms” and “yes, honey, that’s very insightful.” It was hilarious to me seeing someone whose help I desperately needed be so visibly checked out in front of me; it was the main motivator to continue my grief counseling for the whole month. It was nice in a way knowing that she wasn’t really listening to what I was saying, so I felt free to be quite honest in my initial grief. This did, however, mean I was left mostly to my own devices regarding how I first unpacked into my afterlife.
The ways in which my behaviors changed immediately after she died were primordial responses—encoded deep within my DNA as my body’s failsafe to keep me upright and moving for this exact event. There were tears, but no panic. There was sleep, but no rest. There was food, but no hunger. Everything I did was without thought, and my only conscious decision was to implicitly trust myself. Everything I needed, which was mostly my mom, was suddenly all around me. She’s in the cherry blossom tree out front of the old house. She’s at the beach, lying in the tides as the sun hits Paine’s Creek. She’s in every horse I see running through their pastures on Route 6A and in every shock of purple I see out in the world. Something I had always wanted, something I begged for since I was a little boy, was to have my mom by my side. To have my mom by my side and not have that feel scary or feel responsible if she couldn’t make it through the day. I was miraculously unburdened by all of the crushing weight it was being the youngest child of a dying woman, knowing I got the least amount of time with her, and being the one responsible for ensuring she died with dignity and in the way she deserved. Unknowingly, the universe prepared me for years to embrace the release of death and see immediately into the abundant peace all around me. It was as if I was seeing in ultraviolet—it was crystal clear I had the foundations to survive this. I can stand on what just happened to me, trust it will never change (we can only revisit, never revise), and root into something for the first time. I can safely grow from this, forever.
In her health, my mother was a hair stylist. She ran a local salon on Cape Cod inside of a nursing home (“the old folks’ home,” as she called it) for years and years before I was born. Per her trade, my mom took a lot of pride in how she looked and presented herself, both to her children and to the public. I always felt so angry whenever I had to take her to an appointment and she’d spend hours getting ready, just to sit in the office for a minute and come home to wash it off. It felt personal to me that she put more energy into going to the doctors and “making herself look good” rather than spending that energy on me. I know now that she needed to present herself as “healthy looking” to receive the care she deserved—she was an addict. Even with nearly 20 years sober by the time she died, many physicians saw her as “drug-seeking.” To circumvent those assumptions (that could cost her her life), my mother had to spend a lot of time erasing some of the sickness from her complexion and painting on perceptual sufficiency. This was only something I could learn after she died, as there was too much life in the way of me being able to see through it. Her dying made space for that anger to transform into understanding, which in turn has become gratitude and allowed access to more peace.
Sickness tore through her body with sharp claws, hollowing out her cheeks and the spaces between her ribs. Her eyes, as they sunk deeper and deeper into her skull, became darker and darker as her life faded away. The woman I recognized as my mother had been gone for years before she died; my mom knew that too. My thankfulness for losing her covered everything like glitter. Post-mortem, I found myself combating some of the placations and platitudes with “It’s a gift” and “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to her.” People’s faces would turn for a moment as they took in what I just said to them; I could see my mom’s life flash before their eyes as they slowly agreed with me. They knew I was right; this was a gift. Usually they followed it with a soft smile and a “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
I’m able to feel grateful that my mom is dead because I know she lived a life worth dying from.
It’s important to know that “Recently Bereaved” is defined in The Handbook as “having experienced a death in this life or the last.” If you know someone who may be recently bereaved; a new section in The Handbook will appear every Monday, read by Cody Jacob.
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