Why I hate ‘grief memoirs’

I’m not a fan of grief memoirs as it turns out. Which is ironic as I flirt so often with the idea of writing one myself.

I recently heard an interview with Cheryl Strayed. I liked the sound of her no-nonsense Midwestern approach to life and writing so I looked up her book ‘Wild’.

The blurb told me that in 1995 she’d walked along the west coast of America single-handedly as a way of dealing with the grief of losing her mother and the break up of her marriage.

‘Urgh’ I thought, ‘of course you did’ and clicked off the page in disgust, with no further wish to read her writing.

Uncharitable 

Last month I read ‘H is for Hawk’ by Helen Macdonald.  I read the book to the end but quaked with irritation through the sections devoted to Macdonald’s experience of grief, preferring those parts about the life of TH White or the progress of Mabel the hawk.

I don’t know what it is about grief memoirs that makes me so uncharitable.

When I was sixteen my best friend’s mum died. I went round to ‘pay my respects’ as soon as I heard the news with my mum and dad. Whilst they burbled their condolences to her dad in the other room I remember standing in front of my friend.

“I’m so fucking sick of everyone telling me they’re sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

She was standing in the corner of the room. The late evening summer sun behind her reflected off the garden wall and in through the window.

I nodded, as though I understood, but all I really got was a sense that grief was personal, that you couldn’t touch it or get close to it, not even if you really loved the person who had died too.

Spirit of friendship

When my own mum died, almost sixteen years later, another friend gave me a copy of Joan Didion’s ‘The year of magical thinking’, a grief memoir that Didion had written during the year immediately after husband died.

 “I think you’ll find this helpful,” said my friend with confidence.

I hated that book. I threw it across the room a couple of times whilst reading it, only to retrieve it later feeling guilty, as though I had betrayed the kindness and spirit of friendship in which the book had been given to me.

But here’s the thing.

What these memoirs have in common is that they are written in the context of someone stepping out of their every day life for a year to deal with their grief by taking a major hike or training a goshawk for a year.

I’ve known a lot of people who’ve lost people they loved.

And in all cases, life demanded to be carried on.

And so their grief is lived in the getting up and the going to work even when nothing makes any sense. The insomnia they suffer means another day of numbed reactions, mistakes, slowness and a sense of disjointed, unbelonging. Their grief is a weight carried around that shifts and kicks likes an inverse, never ending pregnancy, varied only in the frequency and potency of attack.

I have, it turns out, read grief memoirs, however unknowingly, looking for these heroes, the people I have had the good fortune to know in my life. Inevitably, then, the selection that I have read so far can do no other than fall short.

That does not, of course, in any way undermine the pain that the authors felt or the routes they took to manage and self-medicate their loss. It does however point  the way to the kind of thing I would most like to write, if I were to pursue the theme…

Mayor presents BTA contributors with copies of book celebrating 25 years of friendship between Bristol and Tbilisi

First published on the Bristol Tbilisi Association website.

The Acting Mayor of Tbilisi, Sevdia Ugrekhelidze, celebrated the publication of Tbilisi City Council commissioned book on Saturday 8 March with a presentation ceremony at the Colston Hall in Bristol.

The book ‘A Bridge of Friendship – Between Mtkvari and Avon’ is filled with the personal stories of a number of people who have been involved in twinning links between Bristol and Tbilisi.

At the presentation the mayor met with a number of people who have contributed both to the relationship between the two cities over the past 25 years and to the content of the book.

Speaking to the group Mayor Ugrekhelidze said: “The most important thing is the friendship between the citizens of these cities.....the personal relationships are the spirit and soul of the connection. It is very hard for any book to adequately reflect such friendship.”

The mayor explained the book is an attempt to catalogue the projects and initiatives between the two cities over the past 25 years.

She said: “I was personally keen to meet all the people involved in twinning links between Bristol and Tbilisi. The book is as a result of the contributions of all of you present and a number of other people who could not be with us today.”

Mayor Ugrekhelidze highlighted the work of Professor Henry Parry and Paul Garland. She described them as: “pioneers....who laid the solid foundation for what has become a 25 year long relationship.”

The mayor concluded: “My hope is for many more good pages and chapters to be added to this friendship in the future.”

The book presentation occurred after a busy couple of days in which the Tbilisi delegation had met with, amongst others, Bristol elected Mayor George Ferguson. Ferguson has said he is very enthused about the relationship and has in principle committed to a return trip in October to Tbilisi when the city hosts their own jazz festival.

The delegation met with Andrew Kelly Director of the Bristol Festival ideas and John Hirst Chief Executive of Destination Bristol as well as key people involved in the Harbour Festival, Balloon Festival and the Arts Council. Ideas were shared and discussed about potential cultural and economic collaborations between organisations in Bristol and Tbilisi.

Mayor Ugrekhelidze’s words were translated by Nino Beglarishvili, Chief Officer of the Department of International Relations in Tbilisi’s City Hall.

Story by Rebecca Megson

The Stigmatism of Loneliness in the UK

A BBC poll last week suggested that half the adults in the UK experience a significant sense of loneliness some or all of the time.

A blog was posted on facebook several times last week by various friends of mine.  '7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook' was as dull and cynical as it sounds.  And long.  Really long.

To summarise, 'waitbutwhy' suggested that there were seven deadly 'status' sins committed on facebook.  People posting these statuses were categorised as being motivated by one or more of the following: narcissism, image crafting, the wish to induce jealousy, attention seeking/craving and loneliness.

I felt quite sad at this categorisation of people, especially the sense of criticising people for being lonely.

Listening to Clare Balding's Good Morning Sunday show on Radio 2, she raised the issue that being alone is stigmatised in the UK.  This is strange given that a third of us now live alone, whether through choice or circumstance.

My mum was widowed when she was in her mid 50s.  She married my dad when she was 19.  She had no idea how to exist without her other half.  I don't mean she wasn't socially and economically capable but emotionally, spiritually her heart wasn't in it.  What was the point if my dad wasn't there.

It took her nearly ten years to get the point, to get comfortable with living again.

She felt the stigma of being a woman on her own.  She felt people weren't interested, as if her right to exist was now called into question.  With bereavement comes the sense of being a burden on everyone.

She found a route through her loneliness, which involved all the things that make up life for everyone - through friends, through family, through a job, activities in the local community, through radio and television.

I lived with my mum for a few months a couple of years ago.  My head was full of my own exciting and changing life. I would run in and out of the house much like teenagers are fabled to do only probably with more attitude, cos, like, I'm an adult right?

One evening I was dashing through the house, running to get a cuppa and go to my room to log back on and respond to some emails that my 'important' job 'needed' me to attend to when I suddenly stopped.  I got us both drinks and sat down on the sofa opposite mum.

She looked shocked that I didn't have to go do something else. She looked pleased that I had chosen to sit down and chat, to ask questions, to engage with her as a friend, keen to know her thoughts and share opinions.

Our relationship changed that day.  There was something in that look, in the almost grateful reaction to my having the time that provided an unflattering mirror on myself.

I'm still pretty rubbish at being at and staying in touch with my family and my friends, especially face to face, but I know how important it is and I strive to be better at it.

We're sociable creatures, even the more solitary ones amongst us, and loneliness is not something we should be criticising people for.  Maybe people making those 'sinful' facebook status updates want attention, maybe they are lonely, maybe they feel they've failed in life and want to show a better image of themselves.

I'm not sure why showing it on facebook is any different really to demonstrating those things in real life, barring the medium.  That and the fact you've accepted their friend request/the ability to see everything that is posted on their wall.  In which case, who really is the narcissist?