Stefanie Preissner

The Stefanie Preissner column

On grief

Is it just me, or has anyone else ever suffered a bereavement and been astonished at how the things you thought were big worries became totally insignificant? One minute, your diary is full of ‘have tos’ and ‘shoulds’ and then you lose someone, realise how precious human life is, and suddenly the appointments scattered through your week are like sausage-roll crumbs on a paper plate.

I was recently bereaved, and found myself having to cancel several appointments, meetings and commitments. Beforehand, I would have been the type to bend and twist myself into the shape of pretzel in order to meet a commitment — from the very small ‘I’ll send you on the number of that hairdresser’ to the larger, more time-consuming ones, like driving people places or reading their CVs or blog posts or text messages; even to Tinder dates.

Bring reliable is part of my identity. Habits become behaviours, and behaviours become characteristics, and it’s through that process that I have become characteristically reliable and diligent. I have an identity crisis if I’m late or if I can’t manage to meet the specific requirement I said I would.

And then I experienced grief. People say grief changes you, but I didn’t think it would be so systemic. I knew grief made people sad, distant, maybe sometimes a little forgetful or confused, but this is like a personality transplant.

It feels as if my personality, my life, my values, and my heart have been plunged into a NutriBullet. I’m powerless to do anything except watch the details of myself spin around, being blitzed into obscurity.

Once it stops, I may be able to sift through the smoothie of my life, trying to pick apart pieces of pulp and identify them as parts of my ‘before’. I might fish out a strand of humour here, a mushed-up interest in Netflix there. I might even be able to salvage an ability to read a book. But until then, I just go on as if everything has changed.

But it’s made me realise the things I thought were non-negotiable — the work meetings, the writing deadlines, the medical appointments, the catch-ups, the coffees, the lunches, the briefings, the pitch meetings and development deals — are just spinning plates. It’s all noise.

I have had to make lots of phone calls this week. One number I rang came back with the message: “The voicemail for ... is full”. I craved the luxury of a mailbox with a limit. My phone and my emails fill and fill and fill, but never get full.

I feel like I am drowning in kindness and condolences and platitudes and well-wishes. It feels like kidney stones. It makes me want to curl up and hold myself, because the love feels so intense, and I’m so raw that it burns like napalm.

It’s hard to have something as raw as loss be so visible and blatant that even strangers tilt their head at you. Every time I blink, I access a level of nauseous dread that refuses to be soothed by other people being lovely.

People say, “You just need time.” Is it just me, or do other people find that a very simplistic motto? I don’t need time. I need black clothes and clean underwear and a phone charger and access to a printer and someone to bring me waterproof mascara. In fact, time is the only thing that seems to be taking care of itself. It just ticks by and seems endless. I have loads of time — more hours and minutes and seconds and decades than I know what to do with.

I spent a lot of time with the person that I’ve lost. I’m looking at the smoothie of my life now; dividing up the blended mess, spreading it thin over the excess time I have been given in exchange for my gran. I don’t want time. And yet the more appointments and meetings and deadlines and coffees and consultations I cancel, the more empty minutes and hours and days are handed to me.

Has anyone else ever had one of those monumental paradigm shifts where there is a definite line drawn across your life, and from that moment on there will be a ‘before’ the event and an ‘after’? But ‘during’, in the eye of that storm, you have to surrender and stop trying to pretend it’s not happening. It’s impossible to have a work meeting and pretend your favourite person isn’t slipping away, one miligram of morphine at a time, in a local hospital. We spend so much time juggling our lives, fitting it all in — and then, one day, you just have to let it all fall.

Which is worse? To have a deadline or to not have a deadline? To have something or to have nothing?

I feel like I already know too much about having nothing.

I’ll meet the deadline.