What is the most devastating loss we can experience? Is it the death of a parent, spouse or partner, child, pet, or best friend? Or is it the loss of a marriage, the destruction of a wilderness, belief in our self-worth, or trust that our society will do the right thing?
One of Suzanne Roberts’s friends said that ‘grief used to be one room in the house, but after their son died, grief was the only room.’
Suzanne writes about the different kinds of loss she’s experienced, and how she learns to live with grief or let it go, especially when each new grief resurrects parts of previous griefs, and it feels like all of them are pressing down. Suzanne doesn’t directly answer the question, but I think the answer can only be lived. She says that holding on to the losses scares her less than trying to let them go, that the pain tells her she’s alive, and that the weight of them keeps her from disappearing.
“Grief is like water—all water is wet; all grief is difficult.” Suzanne Roberts
Three relationships that Suzanne writes about in her book Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties stick with me— her dog, her mother, and her friend Ilyse. When her beloved Rita is declining, Suzanne struggles over knowing when it is time to end Riva’s physical suffering because her spirit is still strong and her eyes still shine with love.
Death is a window we look through, but are we just looking out, or are we also looking in?
Her mother appears throughout the book, like a connecting cord, as she struggles with cancer, or is dying, or has died, and Suzanne deals with the demands of each situation. In one instance, Suzanne says that her mother thought her life held more meaning by denying that she was dying, because then she could continue being the mother who had guided Suzanne throughout her life.
Perhaps because my parents were too quiet on the subject before they died, I believe that as parents have the responsibility to teach their children how to live as adults, they should also teach us how to die. Many don’t, and this is why books by people like Suzanne are important.
New grief causes old, unresolved grief to blossom.
Sometimes the early death of a close friend shakes us to our core because we choose our friends and expect them to be part of our life forever. Suzanne writes about her friendship with the poet Ilyse Kusnetz who received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Kusnetz took the time to write about what dying was like and how she was making sense of it through language and images, like windows, wild poppies, and angel bones. I wanted to read more about this relationship because listening to two writers who aren’t afraid to dialogue about death would be invaluable.
Language shapes how we approach our traumatic experiences, and helps us understand them. It can also take us deeper into the experiences where we can explore, and it opens us up to seeing the larger connections.
“I cannot access grief without metaphor, a way to measure the unmeasurable.” Suzanne Roberts
The death of anyone dear to us is traumatic. Every death, every loss, is hard, and we grieve each in different ways. There is no scale for comparing grief. It doesn’t matter what label is stuck on the relationship. What matters is that we give ourselves time to grieve, and that we continue to take care of ourself and others. Love is what pulls us through.
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Suzanne is in love with life and the world. Her book is about living, of taking risks, of physically engaging the world by skiing, mountain biking, traveling, dancing, drinking, and sex to figure out who you are and what you value, and holding on to this as you create your life, rather than sitting back and letting things happen to you, which is boring. She interacts with people, makes mistakes, gathers stories, learns what works for her, loves others, and grows wiser as her scars accumulate. I have been a fan of Suzanne’s writing for a decade.
Besides grief, the topics she covers include movement of relationships together and apart, exploring one’s physical desires, the exploitation of wild animals for tourists in third-world countries, finding one’s self-esteem, losing a father, then a mother, losing a dear friend, having to put down her beloved pet, her husband’s colonoscopy (hi, Tom!), abortion, date rape, and society’s acceptance of male harassment of women. She thinks through her thoughts to know why she thinks this way, and challenges the decisions of others when the ends are used to justify the means, especially when the violence of the means go against their values.
If something only benefits you but harms others, then it’s the wrong thing to do.
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