Symbolic Grief?

My father died a couple of weeks ago.  He was 99.  I am 71.  I didn’t know him very well – he left me and my mother when I was still a young boy.  Initially, there were the monthly, court mandated, visits of course – mostly involving a slap-up meal, a movie and a guilt-fueled trip to the toy shop – but generally speaking, he was absent from my life.  Demonized by my mother and her family for having abandoned us for “that woman” (this was 1950’s England, after all) his existence was barely ever mentioned.  Back then, “nice families” didn’t experience divorce and the social stigma of middle-class non-conformity was palpable. But my mother and I muddled on, she as a single mum and a teacher, me as “the boy from the broken home”.  And, as a scholarship boy in a rather upscale private school (confusingly called “Public School” in the UK), seemingly replete with happy, wealthy, noble families, I never really fitted in, and rapidly learned the art of being a self-sufficient social chameleon.  Actually, that experience has served me well, so I suppose I should be grateful.

Throughout my adult life – marriage, parenthood, career, and so on – my father and I maintained a rather restrained and distant relationship, civil but never particularly warm.  Our rare conversations tended to focus on everyday trivia – his latest book writing projects, my latest career moves – but never about feelings or regrets or emotions.  And that was OK with me.

So when, a few months ago, he announced that the doctors had discovered “a cancer in my lung” (typical of the rather uninvolved way he had of expressing himself) and that it was terminal, his greatest concern seemed to be that he might not make it to his hundredth birthday, on which date in England, every new centenarian receives a congratulatory telegram from Her Majesty the Queen.  Well, he didn’t make it – he was four months short – and that telegram will now never arrive.

I attended his funeral via Zoom.  It seemed oddly appropriate.  I searched within myself for some of the tell-tale signs of grief and found …… none.  Except for one that I hadn’t expected.  I was experiencing a sort of symbolic, generational grief.  I was no longer someone’s son, (my mother died over two decades ago, also of lung cancer), and as my therapist friend observed “you are now, officially, an orphan”.  It occurred to me that I was also now, in a sense, next in line.  My own mortality had taken one small step – and one giant leap – closer. 

And as I look around me, the departure of some of the rock icons of my youth, along with a growing number of fellow “boomers”, reminds me on an almost daily basis that, (as Jim Morrison of The Doors once said), “no one here gets out alive”.  So the whole experience has been poignant – sad, in a way, for what might have been in another parallel universe, but also invigorating.  A reminder to live in the present; to seize the day; and to be grateful for the love of those who truly are close and the magical nature of nature in all her glory.