The importance of goodbyes

By menysnoweballes on July 1, 2024

Painting by Emily Tammam, from here

Today on my lunch break I decided I'd make jam from the fruit I'd macerated overnight, and while I set it to boil I read Emily Tammam's blog post about the death of her little daughter: specifically, her death and the immediate hours after it before her funeral. So I found myself making jam with tears running so hard down my face they slid down my neck and into my bra, and my mouth tasted of salt and strawberries.

Emily's writing is always beautiful and profound, and honours her daughter Neve's short life in all kinds of ways that matter. One thing that Emily has written about again and again is the right we should all have to a good death, that is (in my reading, anyway) a death that is as comfortable, as free of pain, as giving of human dignity, as supported and in community as possible. This is important for the dying person but also for the people who love them.

What is sometimes less discussed is how the immediate time after death should be treated. There is a great deal that needs to be organised but there is very little discussion of how to be. In Emily's account of the 40 hours after Neve's death, I saw examples of the many ways that both health services and our personal networks can make this period of transition a sacred, cocooned time where there are many opportunities for gentle goodbyes.

Part of my grief response was, I know, because of course I couldn't have a time like that with Kieran. Because of the manner of his death and because we were deep in covid-time, I didn't get to see him until nineteen days after his death. It took a long time for his autopsy to take place and then for the coroner's office to release him to the funeral home, and then for his dear body to be prepared so that he could be seen by us. I remember very clearly the funeral director gently telling me how many more days she thought she would still recommend as good for visiting him. She didn't need to explain any further what she meant by that.

I am very grateful for the modern processes of refrigeration and preservation that made it possible to spend meaningful time with Kieran so long after his death, but it was not the goodbye I might have wanted. My family tradition, as Belfast and northern English Catholics, involves wakes and keeping company with the dead, usually as soon as possible after a death until the funeral, which in normal times would take place only a few days later. I remember my maternal grandfather, who died in a hospice, being brought home by the funeral directors, and all of us talked to him (while naturally a lot of drinking and talking happened around him, too!). On the day of Kieran's funeral, I was told that due to some bizarre Covid restriction, I could touch his coffin before it was taken to the crematorium but not once it was taken out of the car. It was a rule that made no sense, but I didn't fight it. It just felt terribly surreal, after all, to touch that lacquered box and know that soon it would be swallowed by fire and the dark. Better to remember the day I said goodbye to his body, which was so very cold and different, but in places still just as it ever was: in the feeling of his fingerprints, the soft hair at the crown of his head.

It's been some time since I felt spurred to write publicly about my grief. The urgency of that need to share has dissipated in the three years since Kieran died. But I felt moved to write this, both to share Emily's brilliant work with you and also to say that we as a society must do more to make our transitions out of this world kinder; that part of being a civilised society should be judged on how we move out of life as much as in how we are supported to live. And also to say - if you loved someone and your goodbye had to be different from what you would have chosen, I see you and I feel your grief, and I hope you can find ways to process it. I think we have as a culture failed to note the importance of a good farewell.