Love, loss, and community

On grieving alone - and learning how to share the load.

This isn’t something I was going to write about, because it didn’t feel like my story to tell. We lost someone last week – someone at the centre of our little community. I was friends with Victoria, but not close friends. I saw her regularly at our morning swims and social events, and she was an immensely warm, kind, and funny person. But to others, she was the centre of their world.

I wasn’t going to write about it, but I can’t really think about anything else right now. First, there’s the shock of losing someone so young in such a devastating way. I didn’t believe the news when I first heard it – in fact, I’m still not sure I believe it. You wake up in the morning oblivious, before feeling the blow all over again. Then, there’s that weird feeling of loss that your mind can’t really process properly; the fact that there was once someone there, occupying a space in your world, and now they’re gone.

But the feeling that seems to linger the most is a sense of powerlessness – the helplessness of watching my friends grieve. The pain they’re experiencing is so intense, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. When it’s your pain, you rationalise it. You fight with yourself, you find someone to blame, tell yourself you could or should have done better – and then it wouldn’t hurt so much. None of these responses help, but they at least make you feel like you’re in control. As though the emotions overwhelming you are there only because you have allowed them to be there; that you somehow deserve them.

I know that all of these thoughts are rushing through the minds of my friends right now – the self-blame, the regret, all adding to the sense of loss that they’re still struggling to process through the haze of shock. But I don’t know what to say to make them feel better. Even writing that sentence feels absurd – of course there’s nothing I can say to make them feel better. You can’t reason with grief. You just have to sit in it, while struggling to hold on to yourself.

The knowledge that there is nothing that I can say or do to alleviate the pain of those I love makes me feel deeply powerless. I know this feeling is not uncommon for those living in the midst of grief. We don’t like feeling powerless, so we often shy away from those who are mourning. Knowing we can’t make it better, we’re terrified that we’ll say the wrong thing and somehow make it worse. We don’t want to bombard them with messages and gifts that they’ll feel obliged to respond to. We convince ourselves that their grief is theirs alone, and that sharing it might somehow minimise it; that if we tried to hold space for them and their pain, we would be elbowing in on a moment that isn’t ours to share.

I’ve realised over the course of the last week how misguided that instinct is. It comes from a desire to protect the sense of control we have over our lives, rather than out of true empathy. And it’s reinforced by the individualism that has become so pervasive in western societies. Somehow, we’ve come to see grief as a process to experience alone; as a Sisyphean boulder you’re expected to shove up your own private mountainside every day.

But grief was never something we were supposed to experience alone. Up until very recently, it has always been a deeply communal experience. Groups of human beings have been grieving together for as long as groups of human beings have existed. And religious institutions, which for better or worse now have little influence over most of our lives, have been supporting people to grieve together for thousands of years. I went to church every week as a child, and at the end of the service the vicar would announce deaths or illnesses that had taken place in the parish. My parents would often go and visit those in mourning. The grief was shared, even as it remained unique to those experiencing it.

But today, I often see people grieving entirely on their own. That’s not to say they don’t have support networks, or people they can talk to about their pain. They just don’t periodically spend time in spaces with other human beings who can hold them while they grieve. They don’t spend time in community.

This is not, of course, their fault. The absence of community in modern life is not a personal failing. There has been a systematic erosion of the institutions and practices that once formed the foundations of community life, not to mention a transformation of geography and infrastructure that has left us existing in detached bubbles without much connection to the outside world.

Today, in most places, and for most people, it’s immensely hard to find and build community. People work extraordinarily long hours, they’re constantly moving from place to place, and the spaces where they would once have come together have closed down. As a result, the muscles that we use to connect to others have atrophied. We’ve forgotten how to build intimacy with new people and are instead encouraged to set boundaries and prioritise self-care. Many of us slip into a default mode of being in which we’re always trying to protect ourselves from others – from their needs, their demands, their emotions.

Which brings me back to grief. I don’t think I ever realised I was doing it, but I now see that I have spent much of my life trying to protect myself from others’ grief. I couldn’t process the feelings of fear and powerlessness I experienced when confronted with another person’s pain. And it’s so easy just to retreat into your own little world, and to comfort yourself with the idea that those who are mourning need space to process their emotions.

Sometimes those grieving do need space. But what I’ve learned over the past week is that they need warmth, and comfort, and intimacy much more. Of course, no one person can provide all of this on their own without experiencing some form of emotional burnout. Which is why we need community.

The grieving person needs to be wrapped in love and warmth. Those holding space for the grieving person need others to help them process the experience too. And even those untouched by the grief itself will be affected by its echo, bouncing off the walls of solidarity that connect them with those they love.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that grief creates – or should create – a series of concentric circles of support. At the centre are those who need the most care, those who will never live without the loss they’re carrying. In the ring around them are those who have also experienced a profound loss, one that will change their lives, but who are also providing love and support to those in the centre. Surrounding them are those who feel the loss, often quite deeply, but whose main priority is protecting and supporting those experiencing more profound grief. And finally, there are those who are not grieving themselves, but who nevertheless feel the pain of watching those they love mourn, and the responsibility of supporting and caring for them.

These systems can only be found in communities – real communities, rooted in places. Families and friendship groups are too small, too tight knit. The grief is often too much for these closely bound units to bear. A significant loss can cause them to buckle, or even break. To process grief effectively, you need a real social network – one characterised by a multitude of strong and weak ties, binding together dozens of people, many of whom may never have met, but whose lives are linked by place and love.

It is strange to realise in such a visceral way that I am a part of such a network. Over the course of the last week, I’ve become deeply connected to people I never really knew before. I’ve met new people, people whose names I have heard many times on the lips of those I love. And I’ve experienced the strength of my community in a way I never could have imagined. As soon as someone breaks, five more people are there to pick them up. And when the weight of carrying someone else’s pain becomes too much to bear, someone else arrives to support the load.

This is the community that Victoria built. And now, all the people that she loved are connected because of how hard she worked to build it.

I was speaking to one of the people she loved most in the world the other day. He told me he had lost a lot of people, but he had always had to grieve alone. He said he had never experienced anything like the love and support and solidarity he had found here, in our little place. I know it hasn’t made it any easier for him – nothing will make this any easier, and the loss will never leave. But, I suspect, neither will the sense of wholeness that comes from being held by the loved ones of those you have loved.

I don’t know if there’s an easy lesson to come out of all this. I write about the importance of community and solidarity all the time, but I don’t think I ever realised how profoundly good it is to be connected to people and place – how much we all need this connection, and how little we value it. You can know something without ever truly knowing it.

I would love to share this deep knowing with everyone I can reach – but it’s not that simple. I can’t tell you to grieve communally, when the systems and spaces that would once have allowed you to do so no longer exist. I can’t tell you to go out and find community, when the world in which we live is so hostile to genuine connection. I suppose all I can say is if you do find community, wherever that may be, hold onto it. Its strength may carry you one day.