Distancing

In a book I am reading, The New Black, I stumble across the phrase anticipatory grief.

Defined by the book's author, Darian Leader, as follows: the painful realization that the object already contains the possibility of its non-existence. 

An object, by definition, contains the potential of its removal.
Object versus non-object.
Georgina versus the space that might have contained Georgina.
Myself versus the absence of me.
Because everything has impermanence built into it on the factory floor.
Like those clever washing machines that break down the day after the guarantee expires.

I often wonder why the loss of Georgina is so very, very painful to me.
Why, I believe, the loss of a child has a different quality to other bereavements.

I have grieved for the loss of others. For uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends. For relationships, friendships, love affairs, gone wrong and sour.
I have anticipatory grief for my parents who I expect, naively, to die before me.
As a child, one of my deepest fears and recurring nightmares was that my younger sister would be snatched away from me. In dreams she was engulfed by a giant manta ray, stolen by a tramp, taken by eagles and, on one memorable occasion, borne off by a motorbike riding pterodactyl.

Those dreams are probably the closest thing I have to a fore-runner of my grief for Georgina.
I mourn for her as if she were already dead because love and fear of her loss were always closely bound up in my relationship with my sister. I have mourned her for as long as I was aware of her existence.
Perhaps because she is my only sibling. And if she were to die, I would be alone. Alone with my parents? Alone if my parents died?
Who knows what caused the panic to set in. But it was the loss, at the heart. I could not bear to lose her. Because I love her so. And my brain seemed to need to conjure up scenarios where I did. Maybe in the interests of toughening me up. Didn't work.

The author describes the phenomenon of anticipatory grief as a distancing, often occurring in relation to one's parents. The parent ages, the inevitable approaches and, so, the child withdraws. Perhaps to preserve the parent as the all powerful, caring, strong image that is so important to the child. Even when the child is grown up. Because we don't want to see our parents, our mother, our father, doddery and uncertain and infirm.

I read about this so-called anticipatory grief and thought to myself, huh? Bunk! Who does that? Who retreats when their parents get old and ill? Surely it is the other way? We run towards them rather.

But oddly, in conversation with a friend of mine, anticipatory grief reared its head, sneakily. And I thought, ha! You might be being subtle and trying to snake past me but I see you, Mr. Anticipatory Grief. And now I have read BOOKS on the subject I can even name you for what you are.

She said, 'oh well I don't want to become too reliant upon my mother for companionship because, one day, she'll be gone. And if she was the only person I visited every day, imagine how I would feel when she died.'

Suddenly this strange thing that I didn't really believe in was right there. Waving about in my face. My friend distancing herself from her mother in anticipation of her mother's death. My friend who, was actually far closer to death a year ago than her mother has been as yet. Interesting, the dry, theoretical part of my brain observes.

But we don't experience, at length, anticipatory grief for our children. I experienced three days of anticipatory grief for Georgina. Three days when I knew she would, in all probability, die before me. Nobody conceives their children expecting that. It's always comes at us from the left-field. Because you only have months of preparation, at best. If best could ever be the right word.


I don't dream about my sister dying, not these days.
Perhaps I am now, at peace, with impermanence.

Hah! Who am I kidding?

But I don't think I would distance myself from death, from the process of dying.
Not now.
If Georgina taught me anything it is not to turn away.

I find that I am now interested in death. Not in a morbid gothic way. Not in a ghost-y spooky way.
But in that way that, should Jessica become interested in horse-riding, I would become interested in horse-riding. Jessica is interested in ladybirds. As a result, I keep an eye out for books related to ladybirds. Clothing with a ladybird theme.

One of Georgina's defining characteristics is her dead-ness. Thus, I am interested in death. I don't want to distance myself. I want to sit in graveyards and feel at peace. I want to read books about mourning. I want to know what anticipatory grief is.

I want to be closer to death. Not necessarily my own death. But I want to be on nodding terms. With my own death, my husband's death, my parent's death. I want death as an acquaintance. He took my daughter don't you know?

My husband says that this is always where I end up. At death. Her death.

Just trying to get closer. That's all.

If it were up to me, there would be no distance. And that puts me somewhat at odds with the majority.