Grief

The way other people treat the deaths of celebrities is grief at its best, according to this psychopath.

My Aunt Teresa died on Friday. It was the end of a short and sudden battle with an aggressive cancer. Not a bad way to go all things considered, as you hear of people fighting a painful, drawn-out cancer over a number of years, with multiple remissions and recurrences before it finally getting the better of them.

However, the speed and abruptness of this (just over eight weeks from diagnosis to death) has hit members of my family hard. Her husband, my uncle, is heartbroken. My grandfather, who celebrated his 90th birthday in May, is especially devastated, having already lost another of his children to alcoholism about seven years ago. My mother and my other aunt, who are the eldest and have always been closer to each other than to their other siblings, are in shock.

Well, what can I say? Ever since we got the news about the cancer, I have watched my family go to pieces in disbelief and shock, which has been quite alienating because I don’t feel the same way. I can’t say I was expecting the illness, and then the death, but equally it’s not as though these things are unheard of. Why shouldn’t it happen to someone we know?

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time at Teresa’s house in the countryside near the coast. It is – or was – an ideal place to get away, as the house is big, and both my aunt and uncle liked their privacy so we only saw each other for an hour or two in the evening on some days. However, being well-educated they were interesting people to talk to. There is great hiking countryside around, so I could disappear all day doing that, or one of them would drive me into Eastbourne or Brighton so I could go hunting girls and/or guys with a wadge of their cash. She liked having me around as she had no children of her own and I could make her laugh.

At about the five week mark of her illness, I visited Teresa in hospital to have what I expected – and turned out – to be our last conversation. I informed her that since she was dying, she might as well know I was a psychopath and didn’t love her, but that I had genuinely enjoyed my visits to her house and that I hoped she would consider leaving some money towards my future, the plans for which I divulged. She was all weak and drugged up so she didn’t say a great deal, but did tell me she loved me no matter what and had already written me into her will. I guess I’ll find out whether that’s true within a few weeks.

A couple of days later, I went on a two-week holiday to Lanzarote and enjoyed myself immensely exploring the volcanoes, watching some rare birds, and eating seafood.

I’d been home a week when Teresa’s husband phoned to tell us the news. That day I spent some time thinking about my aunt and what she had been to me, remembering the interesting conversations we had had and thinking it was a pity there wouldn’t be any more visits to her house now that she was dead. In other words, I mourned.

The next day was Saturday, and I got on with my life. The sun was out and I had a book to read, and places to be that night. The phone calls from tearful relatives did somewhat test my patience, but overall it was a satisfactory weekend.

The funeral is next Tuesday, but I need to be free for job interviews so am not going, and to be honest the job interviews are just an excuse because I’d rather attend my own funeral than bore myself at that emotional shit show. Should probably send flowers to make people think I mean well.

At this point, I am seriously sick of the histrionic drama of my mother, grandfather, alive!aunt and all the rest of them, so am glad they will all be elsewhere for a couple of days. All this random crying and sullen silences is very dreary when you’re the only one feeling upbeat, and it’s all utterly pointless, because Teresa is gone and not coming back. I don’t believe in the afterlife, but maybe it really does exist and she’s been saved! More likely, she no longer exists and the fact that she’s dead matters not one jot to her because there is no “her”. Nothing.

Now I know our brains are hardwired differently so they physically can’t react like me, but I honestly think it would be simpler for them if they could have just spent a couple of hours on Friday remembering/discussing the good times they had with Teresa, celebrating the life she had, and then paying someone to dispose of the corpse in a way that would be appropriate and that would give us all a good laugh – maybe donate it to the Wolf Conservation Trust (she loved those animals) or launch it with a trébuchet into the sea from the cliffs near her house. Alas.

This blog post will, I hope, be the last time I give more than a second’s thought to my dead aunt, but I’m writing it specifically because French singing legend Charles Aznavour has also just died; they ran a 30 minute feature on the radio celebrating his life. It was brilliant – they summed up the sort of man he was, brought out Paul Gambaccini to recount the first time he met Aznavour, and played some of his biggest hits. It was short and to the point, giving those of us who knew of Aznavour a chance to feel sad he was gone and informing those who didn’t why they should care. Tomorrow, the news cycle will roll on, and that’s how things should be for all deaths, no matter who it is.

In fact, since Monsieur Aznavour actually left behind some music that can still be enjoyed, perhaps he’ll be in my thoughts more often.

Aunt Teresa, this is for you:

Emmenez-Moi means “Take me away”. Off they go.