(Before anyone gets too alarmed, I should say that I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and it doesn't really accurately reflect my current feelings, but I'm posting it now because I have serious writer's block and I don't have anything else interesting to share. Enjoy my melodramatic ramblings!)
Sometimes when someone dies, it's kind of OK. People say things like, "At least now her suffering is over" or "He's finally gone on to a better place." I think a little bit of what people feel in those situations is relief. When you wait so long for the end, the waiting can become more scary than the death. When it finally comes, it feels like you're reliving something that's already happened, because in a way, you are. Part of your mind has been running over and over the possibility of death for days, or weeks, or even months, already. Even though it hurts, it's nice to let that part of yourself collapse and rest at last, secure in the knowledge that the worst has finally happened. You can give yourself permission to move on, to start rebuilding. Things can only get better from there.
On the other hand, some deaths come on like a tsunami, like an Escalade merging into your living room. Those are the ones that leave people slack-jawed and wide-eyed, exclaiming in disbelief about how young and healthy the deceased was, as if the fact will somehow undo reality. I've never lived through something like that, but I've been close to people who experienced it, and I can imagine it. I can imagine how the knowledge of your loss sinks in slowly, one mundane moment at a time, and you find yourself thinking inane thoughts like, He'll never make fun of my movie choices again. He'll never drink another milkshake. He'll never tell another terrible joke. After enough of those tiny epiphanies build up, maybe the force of it finally hits you, like the sonic boom that comes after a jet passes overhead - an echo more powerful than the event itself. That's the scary time. That's the time to fear. When the concept passes from being abstract and curious and instead becomes viscerally, horrifyingly real.
Obviously, losing someone to death is more painful than losing them in other ways. But losing someone, even in a divorce or a break-up or because they moved to a distant island with no phone or internet, always involves a grieving process. The dissolution of a relationship can fall along the same scale as death: from an end that was long-expected and practically a relief, to one that feels painfully premature. An example of the former would be the relationship I was in before I was with Lee. By the time it was over, I was relieved that he had finally crossed a line that made it impossible for me to make any more excuses for him, that at last I could move forward and look for something as good as I deserved. We had sucked every bit of the marrow out of that relationship, and then beaten the shit out of each other with the bones. On the other hand, with Lee I feel like the end came too soon. Maybe it's better to end a relationship before you're thoroughly broken down and disgusted with each other, but I hate the feeling that there was still... more, is the only word I can think of. But that's just how I feel. Maybe while I'm mourning the loss of a young marathon runner, struck down in the prime of his life, Lee feels more like he's finally said goodbye to his 90-year-old grandmother after a long battle with Extremely Painful and Drawn-Out Disease.
I wonder if it's really always more difficult to lose someone to death. After death, a person lives on primarily in your memory. If you like, you're free to mold that memory into whatever is most comforting to you. You can talk to the person, pray to them, imagine that they look down upon you benevolently, that they're proud of you. You can believe that every painful word that ever passed between you is forgiven, that they would still be here with you if they could, and that wherever they are, they are thinking of you with affection. But when a relationship ends, well. In that case, reality is what it is. You don't have the same luxury of converting your memory of that person into some abstract spiritual idea. In that case, the ghost carries on, with infinite potential to stymie any attempts at establishing meaning or closure. If you're like me, constantly in search of The Absolute Set-in-Stone Truth, that could potentially drive you insane. Sure, you can tell yourself comforting things, but how do you know?? It's so easy to torture yourself with split-screen visions of painfully incongruous images: you, feeling miserable while your ex-boyfriend has an enthusiastic threesome with two Scandinavian models. Or you, drinking cheap beer alone while your ex-girlfriend is happily riding a tandem bike with a devastatingly handsome rugby player. It may be unlikely, but it's not entirely impossible. You seldom have to worry about those kinds of things when someone dies.
The scariest part is wondering how long it will be before the grieving process is over and the experience goes from being "the most traumatic thing that's happened to me recently" to being "one of the many life experiences that has proven my ability to overcome adversity and which has also put me on the path to meeting my extremely handsome and successful Doctor-Lawyer-Revolutionary husband." They say that it takes half the time you were with someone to completely get over them, which means I have roughly a year to go before I'm completely in the clear. Worse than that, it also means that I really only JUST finished getting over my LAST boyfriend. And really, when you put it that way, the bottom line is this:
Fuck.
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