Grief in Speak with the Dead
One of the themes of Speak with the Dead is grief. This response to loss is something everyone has experienced and it can come from a variety of places. I thought it was important to explore those feelings and the way that people react to them in different ways in a setting and plot that keeps moving, just like the world keeps moving around us when we lose someone.
First, let’s talk about different kinds of grief. The most obvious catalyst for grief is loss of life, such as when a loved one dies. It is a fact of life that everyone will eventually die, but that death sits with those left behind and weighs on them, especially if the death was sudden or traumatic. Grief also arises when someone leaves, or even changes so much that they’ve become a different person. While this loss may not seem as powerful, it can be just as traumatic as a death. In addition to the loss of a loved one, someone might grieve the loss of a community or home, their job or career, a dream or goal, good health, financial stability, youth, or fertility. Often, when someone is preparing for death, they grieve their own life.
Next, let’s talk about what that grief looks like. While everyone and each situation is different, these are the common stages of grief used to understand the process of grieving. Denial is first, a period when someone can’t accept that the loss is real, followed by anger. They might be angry at themselves, god, someone else, or even no one in particular. After that is bargaining, where the person attempts to find an agreement that results in them not having to deal with loss, or they regret past actions that they think might have spared them from this loss. Next is depression, and all the complicated emotions that come with it, and finally acceptance. Though the person has accepted the loss, they will most likely still feel pain.
Throughout Speak with the Dead, I highlight multiple stages in this process for different characters. In the beginning, we watch Anna go through anger and depression as she decides to isolate herself, and though she eventually reaches acceptance, her isolation and pain linger. Hers was an anticipatory grief as she watched her father become sick before passing, and then a slightly delayed grief as she made the plans for his funeral before allowing herself to truly feel his loss. There is also abbreviated grief, when someone quickly processes their grief, inhibited grief, wherein someone represses their feelings and which can lead to physical symptoms, cumulative grief, when someone experiences multiple losses, and collective grief, when people grieve as a community.
Last, I’d like to briefly talk about what grief means to me. I have, of course, experienced loss in multiple forms. I’ve had a grandfather pass when I was young, and then a grandmother pass when I had just become a teen. Later as an adult, my aunt suddenly and unexpectedly passed. Not long after that, someone close to me changed in a way that made it difficult for me to be close to them the way I always had been. In this situation, it took me time and guidance to realize what I was experiencing was grief. I was grieving the relationship we had while struggling to accept that it would most likely never be the same. I won’t say that this situation was more difficult than my other griefs, but it was more difficult to accept. While in the other situations I was faced with the fact that those people were gone, in this situation they were very much still there, and they wanted to act as though nothing had changed. I had hope that they would realize what had happened and return in some way to who they were, but with the help of a therapist I came to understand that I couldn’t make them. That struggle with hope and my feeling of responsibility dragged out my grief and made acceptance more difficult. I’m sure I will inevitably end up writing about it one day.
Finally, and most recently, I lost my dog. Odin was my and my husband’s first dog together, our first dog as independent adults. I’ve heard people say that a certain dog was their ‘heart dog,’ and while I believe you can have more than one, Odin was certainly my ‘heart dog.’ He was my writing buddy and cuddle buddy and was always there to lean on me (great dane owners know). We understood each other in a way I haven’t fully experienced with a dog before. He passed suddenly last winter of a health complication big dogs like him can get known as Wobblers, and by the time he showed symptoms it was too severe for treatment and he was becoming paralyzed. He was fairly young, only seven years old. He was next to me as I wrote most of Speak with the Dead.
All this to say, grief is an integral part of life. We love, and we lose, and we do it again even though we know it hurts, because we also know that the time before the loss makes it all worth it. I thought it was important to show this complex and difficult process within Speak with the Dead, to showcase this cornerstone of the human experience, so that readers could relate and know they’re not alone, and so that, selfishly, I could understand myself a little better. I hope that it helps you, too.
I referenced the Cleveland Clinic in my definitions of the stages and types of grief. That information can be found here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24787-grief
If you or someone you know is struggling with grief, please practice self-care, stick to a routine to give yourself some normalcy, give yourself time to attend to your emotions rather than repress them, and reach out to others. Whether you call a friend or set up time with a therapist, it is important to hold onto connections, rather than isolate yourself. If you are in the USA and find yourself struggling, please call the mental health hotline: (866) 903-3787. Other resources can be found here: https://mentalhealthhotline.org/grief-loss-hotlines/