A Constant Ponderer: The Never-Ending Pursuit to Make Sense of Grief
The death of a legend — Prince — nearly brought me to tears today as I walked through the city streets of Brno, so far away from Minneapolis — his hometown and practically my own. My eyes swelled with unformed tears and my heart began to race for reasons larger than him, for reasons larger than any one human death. **I say this not in disrespect as I know many are grieving the loss of Prince for the impact he had on their lives and my heart goes out to him and them.**
Hearing the news again of his yet unexplained death provoked a subtle sense of grief in the pit of my stomach; a grief that usually lies dormant, permitting me to live my day-to-day life in relative ease. I shall try to explain.
Death, as we all know, can be peaceful or death can be cruel. It can pull someone away from us, slowly, or it can rip them away from us, brutally.
Humans are unique in that we have an innate cognisance of death. As individuals we may seek to suppress this knowledge and may succeed for a short time, but inevitably our efforts fail and we feel the heavy weight of our timed existence pressing on our minds once again.
The pit of grief in my stomach is not merely a fear of death or a fit of despair at a sudden, tragic death, such as Prince’s, but an uneasiness with how often we forget to lavish praise and love on deserving individuals when they are ALIVE and able to cognize our actions.
My heart aches as I consider the days and weeks of mourning yet to come, simply because I want him, Prince Rogers Nelson, to see this total outpouring of love and affection, but he will not. I am sure he felt loved by his family, friends, and fans; I am not casting doubt on this. But I do fear that human rites of mourning are always a bit in vain. How much better would it be for Prince to feel, in his bones, the intensity of the love now being poured out for him? He’s gone; he’ll never see the flowers that now lie upon his Minneapolis home, or hear his local radio station play ALL of his songs in alphabetical order, or hear the heartfelt odes being offered up for his creativity and passion.
The rites of mourning are helpful for those of us still alive, but they too are a tragic occurrence.
The pit of grief in my stomach, upon closer reflection, is not about Prince, the man, at all. It is about the ubiquitousness of tragedy. Too often we lose loved ones to war, suicide, cancer, old age, drugs, et cetera BEFORE having had the chance to say goodbye or embrace them one last time before the stroke of death. This is grief; this is the sorry state of humanity. We see death all around us, we know it is coming, yet we are never prepared.
When one is taken from us tragically, our hearts break and we spew forth love and adoration, and rightly so. If only he or she could hear our cries, feel our love, and weep with us about the miraculousness yet utter ridiculousness of life.
I do not believe in an afterlife and am not religious, yet there is one passage from the Old Testament that I can attach some sort of belief to, and it is Ecclesiastes 3:20: “And all things go to one place; of earth they were made, and into earth they return together.” (Douay-Rheims Bible) I think we must find solace in death by choosing to carry on the memory of loved ones who have gone before us. We can smile, albeit sometimes through tears, at the thought of their own imperfect yet beautiful smiles, their voices, mannerisms, accomplishments, and follies.
We can keep them alive for as long as we are alive, and for this we must be grateful.
“Take it that you have died today, and your life’s story is ended; and henceforward regard what further time may be given you as an uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.”
— Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), Meditations, 7.56
