The language of dying etc...
Dear Reader,
I don’t think grief ever really ends. It just changes form.
The last book I read was The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough.
I finished this book earlier this month, and I've carried the thought with me because I couldn't get over some parts of it.
I have always known that dying has a language, like the sentiments that surround the tales people tell when someone dies. Things like, “as if he knew he'd die, he told me xoxo…”
When I lost my friend in uni, her last messages stuck with me. Maybe now I know they were her dying language.
I want to tell you about two different things that stuck with me whilst reading this book:
1. Grieving a lost loved one is eternal.
2. People want children for different selfish reasons.
1. Grieving a Lost Loved One Is Eternal
The narrator was unnamed throughout the book, so I'm just going to call her Pen. Through Pen's lens, she walked us through her dying father's life. He was battling cancer. All his kids had left home for greener pastures as they grew older.
The first two chapters were so difficult for me to read. I was up in the middle of the night, not fighting back tears, as I relived these symptoms through a fictional story. These were my father's reality. Seeing them in a fictional book opened some kind of wound, and I could feel the claw of regret clenching into my skin.
Reading them felt like I had chosen to be ignorant of these signs in my father's sickness for ten years, when it was so glaring and information was available. I struggled to read past the losing of weight, the stench, the weakness. Gosh. The signs.
Pen lived her life, loved, lost, and then went back home. After caring for her father for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for death to claim him, she later snuffed life out of him herself and embraced her insanity.
The build-up of emotions that led her into taking her father's life was a lot. And I wonder how my mother was able to pull through it.
Holding on to a false hope that her husband was going to come back to her. Cleaning him, cleaning after him, cutting his nails, trying to make him look better even though he had lost the better part of himself and was reduced to a bony frame that saddens my heart whenever the pictures come to mind.
They come often. And sometimes I just wonder how Mother was able to come back to life after going through all those years.
The grief is not going to end, knowing that this loss is eternal. It's not something one recovers from.
Sometimes, I'm hit with a heavy wave of sadness and an urgency to speak with my father. In that moment, every memory comes rushing back, and I struggle to see what is right in front of me. Sighs.
2. People Want Children for Different Selfish Reasons
The narrator was unnamed throughout the entire novel, like I said. So she'll be called Pen.
If you're a vague reader and you've read this book, you'll wonder why I want to talk about Pen's mum when she was, in fact, not relevant to the better part of her kids’ story.
Pen was the middle child. She had four siblings—two older ones and two younger ones. Their mum loved the idea of kids being kids. She enjoyed their babbling and ignorant stage and never wanted them to grow up.
She began to detach from her kids as they started growing up and stopped being kids. She basked in the idea of being a lord over children and instead of raising the ones she already has, she kept on having babies after babies.
It was so jarring when I saw something similar on social media. Someone said the reason they want to have kids is to have a purpose, something to give them a sense of meaning.
From where I’m standing, I think there’s something naturally and fundamentally wrong with that mindset. You shouldn’t derive purpose from other people. That’s too much responsibility to place on someone.
It’s such a possessive mindset that I can’t help but say it’s selfish also.
What happens when the child grows and wants to leave? Okay.
In the end, Pen’s mum left and never looked back.
When I finished the book, I was silent for a while. As much as I’m taking some things in, I’m trying to filter through and let some go.
Moving Forward, I'll make a deliberate effort to read a book that's not sad next.
If you’ve ever read a book that left a mark, small or big. I’d love to hear about it.