Otherland: Ichlosigkeit

“What we give is all we have.

How we love is what will last.

And this hope we know will carry us through

We can’t own it

We just get to hold it for a while.

This Life.

We can’t keep it

Or save it for another time.

This Life.”

(This Life, The Afters 2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0B9P2tW9hg

Death has a strange effect on people. It can turn the most powerful and confident soul into a puddle of weep at the bottom of a bucket. It can change people, either in the short term or in the long term. Often, it does nothing of the sort. For brief amounts of time, mourners become someone they are not but this state is not real. People who had not bothered with the deceased become contrite, acting and speaking in ways so foreign just a day before. I’m not sure if it’s all just artificial or somehow that something within, those parts of you still human, cry out when there is really no need for you to do so. I have always believed you can tell those actually grieving by their silence. Most who cry out and scream out and lash out don’t really strike me as sincere. Grief brought on by death is usually met with sorrow but it is the truly saddened who withdraw into themselves. This kind of pain is often too hard to handle, too fierce to face. The screaming banshees who make great claims towards the dead are merely playing it up on a stage designed specially for fools. Death doesn’t really bring us closer to the ones we love. Death brings out the truth. It draws you in but it is guilt and remorse and regret that change things up, if only for a day or two. Those feelings, in most cases, are not maintained. Loss is something that affects each of us differently, we all feel the same things but we react in a unique manner, exclusive to us and us alone. Our emotions inflame, our reactions filtered through our feelings rather than our logical state. We rant and rave, trying desperately to validate what we have said and done in the past. Sometimes it is all about what we have not done.

My maternal grandmother was a fucking bitch. She not only condoned, she assisted my grandfather in his abusive ways. My entire life, all she did was cover for him. She even enabled him, demanding respect and obedience. My mother never really recovered from their opprobrious parenting. My grandfather died a horrible death. At the time I felt, in a karma sense, he got what he deserved. There was the gnashing of teeth at his funeral. My grandmother died just a few years later. When they told me that her heart stopped working, I was surprised to learn she actually had one. The funeral was pensive. The mean age in the room was 75, at least I think it was. The entire room smelled like Absorbine Junior. My grandmother was a heavy Christian. To be honest, I am not sure what Jesus she believed in. Growing up, she always seemed to have a flaming sword popping out of her big fat mouth. You could hear her religious friends walking about the funeral quoting Bible verse after Bible verse. It was strange, the entire time, from service to burial, the only person I saw cry was my mother. No one else seemed affected whatsoever. No one spoke but the minister. I could almost imagine that no one at all was even there. It was a dead space, so to speak. Not one person commemorated her. I doubt anyone even knew she was gone, not really. My mother’s tears were alone in the room. Her two brothers, null and void. Half the audience failed to show up at the finale. A few stray here and some more stray there, did little to fill in the giant nothingness. It was almost like everyone was just waiting for it to be over, waiting to just go home. It was like a countdown to the kickoff, while her body already rested in the end zone. This was not to hide from any pain, or to start the stages of grieving, rather because Murder She Wrote was on at 7.

“The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is

that they wanted to make sure he was dead.”

(Samuel Goldwyn, Polish American film producer)

People are odd creatures. When it comes to death and grief, they are an enigma drowning in a pile of bullshit. People act differently when under the microscope called a funeral. They put on airs to impress both the dead and the living. The day before is always a different story. We wanted nothing to do with the deceased, we could not have cared less if they dropped dead. We even make sure that everyone knows it, that is until the news hits. We cry and we mourn and we suffer, not because we loved but because we failed to. People don’t care, not really. Demonstrating otherwise is the way of the world, it seems. We are falsehood, pretending to be what we think everyone else wants us to be. One day we want nothing to do with what is broken, then we cry and mourn and suffer because we missed the chances to fix things. Of course, we don’t really want to fix anything except for our overwhelming ego. When a person is dead, your relationship with them is final, over, fait accompli. The way things were with them will linger, especially in the mind of a guilty person. We don’t just create emotional states because we want to make an impression, we want to appease our own guilty conscience. No matter, sometimes people are just assholes. Who would want to have anything to do with that type of person? We are justified in our absence but we feel guilty when someone dies because, honestly, we were the assholes just as much. We judge and we pronounce. We exchange our pride for lack of service. We avoid and reject and disappear on others, then we reappear once again in order that the dead may know how much we will miss them. We miss opportunities, we discard chances then whine and complain how we wish things could be different. Just who we are complaining to is irrelevant. Corpses never partake in the conversation when you talk to them. They never, ever answer back. They don’t feel a thing and they hear nothing at all.

“If any of you cry at my funeral, I’ll never speak to you again!”

(Stan Laurel, American actor)

You would have thought the world had just ended. The world did change but only by association. There was murmured crying, and laughing, and a mix of sadness and glee. They called it a celebration so I waited for someone to break out into a chorus of Hallelujah. I had never been to a gay funeral before. The closed coffin was more a testament to the ravages of AIDS than a token to save people from more anguish. It was a colourful event. Even the minister dawned a rainbow-flavoured sash. It didn’t make any real sense but at least the guy looked really good. I have to admit it was a little peculiar to sit beside Marilyn Monroe, even if by proxy. The mixture of uniqueness was actually quite impressive. It isn’t strange from our modern perspective but 30 years ago, it was almost unheard of. It was a controlled demolition. There was a kind of hush when he walked into the service. I had never met his father before. He often told me how jealous he was that I had a good relationship with my parents. He almost coveted this kinship, particularly the one I maintained with my Dad. We had all heard tell of the man who had just walked into the room. We knew what he had said and we knew what he had done. Slowly, methodically, the old man sauntered to the front of the room and almost sat down upon Judy Garland. Up went Judy and down went the intruder. The room turned from silly to quite sad. This man had some nerve showing up. It seemed like mockery rather than regret or contrition. He just sat there listening to each eulogy, listening to the music, listening to the words. Judy got up from her new place in the room, walked to the pulpit and started singing a moving version of Amazing Grace. Jesus must have been offended. I think God actually came down and condemned the funeral, at least in the mind of that nasty old curmudgeon. From what I understood, he had always thrown religion into the mess as an excuse for this behaviour. He was justified because the Bible told him to be. I did not see his face but I can only imagine. Before the end of the first stanza, he rose methodically, he stood at full attention before he started to walk out of the place. Not one person thanked him for coming. Not one person expressed their condolences as he shuffled across the floor and found his way to scriptural freedom. I understand he died within a year. He rotted alone in a hospice, unloved, unwanted yet justified. Karma is a bitch and you always get what you’ve paid for. I suspect, in the saddest of ways, that Jesus took him in regardless. I guess we should have some consolation that even the worst of us is welcome with the rest of us, just like Amazing Grace and all that stuff.

“Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease,

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.”

(Amazing Grace, John Newton 1779)

Sometimes it feels like I know more dead people than I do not dead people, at least in a figurative sense. Sometimes it seems I have better relationships with the deceased than I do with those still alive. In most cases, I prefer the dead to the living. They never argue, they never betray us and they never put themselves first. The dead are the perfect companion, silent and very much at a distance, always there whenever you call. I have been to many funerals and wakes, I know the dead of which I speak. I have also watched, I have observed the artificial and often callous nature of mourner after mourner after mourner. Although there are always exceptions to every rule, I have rarely noticed any love in the air. It’s always this dry and claustrophobic sense. It can be suffocating. All those people sitting and pacing and crying, it is not the way it really is. Grieving a death is almost always ego driven. It is our pain we experience. It’s our experience that causes the pain. We cannot know the dead’s state of mind but we are certainly aware of our own. When someone dies, the experience we have should be what the Germans would call Ichlosigkeit, a form of egolessness. It really should be all about the dead but really it’s all about us. It’s our pain, our misery that motivates us to be like that. The dead are all just dead, after all.

The eulogy went very well. My brother even told me he could see him up there with me, right beside me the entire time. I was frozen solid when I delivered it. The only way I made it through was to feel nothing, deal with nothing. I never understood why people have a luncheon after a funeral. The idea of consuming egg salad always makes me want to puke on the server. Those poor little old ladies in the back kitchen might not have felt the same way about it that I did. This was the funeral of funerals. Half the city of Stratford showed up to pay their respects. At that time, donations in lieu of flowers garnered the largest gift in the history of the Perth County Mental Health Association.

I had no idea who 98% of the mourners were. It was overwhelming greeting them all, shaking hands while screaming on the inside. All those people, all those faces and I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t smile, I didn’t join in the memories, the history. I just stood there, tucked up in a corner of some Church basement. Once the hands were all shaken, the greetings all made, I just lingered in that corner. People laughed and made merry. I could not find one thing that was funny. I resented having to be there. I cursed God for doing this to me. I wanted so bad to understand. Watching all this interaction made me realize that my pain was artificial. It wasn’t really for him, it was for me. He was already long gone and no longer needed me. Apparently, I still needed him.

“If you want to really know what your friends and family think of you,

die broke and then see who shows up for the funeral.”

(Gregory Nunn, American entrepreneur)

People entertain grief and use death as an excuse. They disregard their entire life and focus only on the corpse. They make promises. They try to fix things. This position usually ends when the pain runs out. We change, if only in increments. Quite often, the sorrow makes us do things and say things that we easily disregard after the appropriate amount of time and tears. Whether we care to admit it or not, the way we react says more about who we are than who the body used to be. It shouldn’t be about us but it usually is. When someone dies, a human being will do and say anything to try to purge the guilt. We should strive to have less ego about it. We should try to remember that this too shall pass so we don’t need to implode in our misery.

“Life can change in the blink of an eye

You don't know when and you don’t know why

‘Forever Young’ is a big fat lie

For the one who lives and the one who dies.”

(Shovel in Hand, Amy Grant 2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZQI1jgOC_g