‘Things in Nature Merely Grow’ Tackles Death Differently
Yiyun Li’s beautiful and complex autobiography Things in Nature Merely Grow is not about death or loss; it is about who we become when we lose.
grief
‘The Shrouds’ and David Cronenberg’s Cinema of Bodily Grief
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds harkens back to his early body horror obsessions with a poet’s tone, retaining the connective tissue that embodies him.
‘Grief Is for People’ Is a Loving Model for Sudden Loss
Grief Is for People is a loving portrait of a dear friend and an offering of shared wisdom for the bereaved rooted in emotional chaos and its subsequent clarity.
‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ Can Help Children Cope with COVID-era Death
As the COVID-19 pandemic upends our families, communities, and way of life, children, especially, struggle with loss. Rachel Shukert's Netflix series, The Baby-Sitters Club can help.
‘All the Lives We Ever Lived’ Finds Comfort in Mourning with Virginia Woolf
These days, when personal grief becomes a public performance on social media, it's heartening to have a book such as Katharine Smyth's All the Lives We Ever Lived, wherein deep introspection is given space and literature provides both solace and inspiration.
‘The Widower’s Notebook’ Compassionately Explores How Men Are Allowed to Grieve
Enduring loss and grief is never easy but it's rendered remarkably in Santlofer's work.
Sallie Tisdale Offers Practical Advice for Future Corpses…and Those Who Love Them
When a title sets the tone for a book, readers can see themselves invited into a conversation with kindness. Such is the case with Sallie Tisdale‘s Advice to Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them: A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying. The title’s diction, and the curious asterisk used in the cover art, indicate the author’s intention for as lighthearted a discussion as one can have about what remains a difficult topic in much of the Western world.
Tisdale writes from a perspective that is informed by her work as a nurse, and particularly as a palliative care nurse. Although she is a practicing Buddhist, she notes early on that the book is not a Buddhist approach to dying. Nonetheless, those influences color her choices in how she tells the stories of death and dying. Tisdale weaves the story of her Buddhist teacher’s death through the text, providing examples of dealing with death from resistance all the way to joy.
The book is written in a gentle tone, but without euphemisms, as you would hope to hear from the person who sits beside to tell you that you are going to die. Someday. That is Tisdale’s mission, as is the mission of the “good death” movement. Instead of being afraid of our inevitable death, can we ease the fear by learning some things? “How do you get ready to die?” Tisdale asks. “The same way you prepare for a trip to a place you’ve never been. Start by realizing you don’t know the way. Read a travel guide: they tell you what to expect, and have maps…” Advice for Future Corpses is intended as a travel guide to help readers on their way.
There are things we need to know about dying, and there are things we need to know about being with those who are dying. Tisdale addresses both. For those who have been caregivers for a dying person, there are sharp moments of remembering: that for those who do not die suddenly, from a heart attack or a car wreck, or other fatal event, death is a long and slow process. As future corpses, and those who love them, this reality may be different from the scenes in movies and novels that have taught us about what death is like.
Tisdale invites the reader to take a seat at the deathwatch, where we are reminded to be aware of our own reactions to emotional scenes: self-awareness can help you better understand the situation you are in with a person who is dying. Mindful listening, for one, is imperative. “Half the energy of caring for a dying person is listening, really listening.” That means not planning what you will say next, not panicking about what the other person has to say, and allowing them to have their say, even when it seems strange or nonsensical. Because Tisdale imparts some wisdom: “If you are dying, you can say anything you want.”
Aligned with this view is the firm assertion that a good death should be defined by the person who is dying, not their caregivers, family members, or doctors. Tisdale bemoans the rhetoric of obituaries that describe death as a “brave battle” in which one remains “dignified throughout her illness”, that frame dying as having a particular tenor to which we should aspire. As a palliative nurse, she offers poignant anecdotes that show that death is, in fact, difficult to manage with what we might call dignity. Dying is messy, revealing what it really means to be a human living in a body, and dying in one as well. For those are afraid, Tisdale gently asserts: “Dying is perfectly safe. It isn’t going to hurt you.”
Death can, however, be unexpected. So can a diagnosis or a realization of death’s inevitability. With this in mind, what might your relationship with death look like? Tisdale writes: “I want to meet death with curiosity and willingness. What do you want to do? Do you want to meet death with devotion, love, a sense of adventure, or do you want to rage against the failing light? Cultivate those qualities now. Master them.”
Tisdale is as plainspoken about grief as she is about the process of moving toward death. This, too, is refreshing. “No one tells you that grief is like a long march in bad weather,” she writes, but she tells the reader many things about the way that death is disorienting. The person you were, who knew the rhythms of daily life with the person who is dead, dies as well. Part of grieving is figuring out how to find your way through days with a different construct.
Perhaps most important is realizing that there is not a “right” way to grieve, and that grief may take unexpected shapes. Against the common attitude that grief is something you just “deal with” and “get past”, Tisdale offers some scientific evidence that grief is large and luminous. MRI scans show that unlike emotions that only light up one sector of the brain, grief is everywhere: in parts of the brain that deal with metabolism, visual images, and memory, among others. Rethinking attitudes toward death and dying may also bring about a shift in attitudes toward grieving, another way to make the difficult work of death a bit easier.
Oscar-Snubbed ‘Foxtrot’ Is a Deft Commentary on Systemic Corruption and Grief
What do we even know about war, Foxtrot seems to ask, except that it's a dance that will surely never end.
Films in ‘Found at Mostly Lost’ Are Mostly Concerned With Avoiding the Police
Tramps, dapper husbands, fake dinosaurs and young William Frawley.
‘The Walking Dead: Michonne’ Confronts the Issues of Surviving Grief and Trauma
Grief and trauma always seems a side venture to The Walking Dead's plots, never the central focus. Michonne seems to want to put these concerns front and center.
‘Flowers’ Weaves a Beautifully Melancholic Tale of Grief, Loss, Memory, and Love
“You have to leave the cut open,” says crane operator Benat (Josean Bengoetxea), regarding the stems of flowers and the proper care for a bouquet; “Over time, the wounds heal.” This metaphor extends to the heart of Flowers, a film that quietly meditates on the nature of grief and what that can mean for different people.
Artfully directed by Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga, the Basque-language film follows the separate lives of three women whose paths irrevocably intertwine when each experiences the loss of a loved one in different ways. Spanning five years, these women find that time doesn’t make grief disappear; instead, grief continuously evolves, morphing into different forms and changing each person, affecting them for the rest of their lives.
Ane (Nagore Aranburu) works at a construction site, and when we first meet her, her life seems empty and bare. Her marriage is unfulfilling, her job even more so. Things begin to change for Ane when she receives flowers from an unknown sender. The flowers awaken something in Ane: excitement, possibly, or a sense of purpose. Her search for the mysterious sender explores the disconnect she feels with her husband.
Meanwhile, Ane’s coworker, Benat, has his own struggles at home. His wife, Lourdes (Itziar Ituno), and his mother, Tere (Itziar Aizpuru), are constantly at odds over Tere’s interference with their lives and the pressure she puts on Lourdes to have a child.
Shared tragedy brings Ane, Lourdes, and Tere together in a fortuitous set of events, and throughout their journey through grief, flowers remain a symbol of how loss can change through time. The flowers mean something different to each character at different points in their lives, connecting them to love and to understanding one another. Memory also plays an integral role in Flowers, moving viewers to contemplate what death really means for a person’s spirit.
Nagore Aranburu portrays Ane with elegance and subtlety. Her feelings are so subdued that at times it’s difficult to discern what she’s thinking. The tendency to keep her feelings to herself partly prompts Ane to become swept up in Flower‘s tragic events. The breakthrough performance, however, is delivered by Itziar Aizpuru, who portrays the widowed Tere. She’s fierce and proud, but grief is etched in her face, and her eyes convey her longing to keep remembering the deceased.
Lourdes is a more complicated character, as someone who wants to forget, to push her grief aside so that she may move on. There are times when Lourdes is somewhat unlikable for her refusal to face the facts. Itziar Ituno plays those nuances perfectly. I wish more time were spent on her character. The emphasis on Ane at times makes Lourde’s grief seem less important, and I would love to explore Lourdes’s mindset as she deals with her loss.
Garano and Goenaga maintain a minimalist approach in conveying their story about loss. The cinematography is simple and stark, focusing on a few key images that repeat throughout Flowers. Through this simplicity, the characters’ emotions are brought to the forefront, and the focus on these women’s lives really makes the film shine. The realism presents the story as ordinary, and this timeless feeling of grief becomes a universal story that transcends language and culture. At times, the imagery can be a bit on-the-nose: flowers wilting and dying, and arrows pointing the way to move forward, but they’re so beautifully shot that you can simply sit back and soak in their symbolic meanings.
The music also follows the rule that “less is more”. There are a few moments when Pascal Gaigne’s orchestral score underscores the climax of a scene, driving emotions such as longing, fear, and mystery, but more often than not, the silence is more profound, as the subdued noises only serve to heighten each character’s feelings. The silence not only aids the characters but also gives the viewer time to meditate on the film’s meaning and emotion, making it a participatory experience and making the story less voyeuristic and more a shared reflection on the human condition.
Flowers stands out as the directing team’s most mature effort to date, and is the most successful at representing their artistic style and vision. Take their 2010 film, 80 Days, which also stars Itziar Aizpuru and features Pascal Gaigne’s score. Like Flowers, this film is quiet and meditative, meandering through the lives of two women as they explore their identities in old age, but it often lingers on scenes for their own sake, eschewing meaning for atmosphere.
In Flowers, the directors imbue the film with their slow, thoughtful style; they have also learned to use these tools to convey character depth and growth and to move the story forward even as it pauses to reflect. For example, the pervading silence symbolizes stifled communication, and the lingering focus on flowers prompts viewers to constantly reconsider what they might mean at any given moment.
Too often, films in the grief genre try to impart a treacly message at the end: words of wisdom about the importance of moving on or about how death can teach us to live more fully. Flowers takes the opposite direction, observing that there is no end to grief, and sometimes all you can do is simply let it run through you. Ane, Lourdes, and Tere pass flowers to one another like a baton, and by the end of the film, each woman has begun a new cycle of grief. All we can be sure of is that as long as someone remembers the deceased, the cycle will continue.
The DVD, distributed by Music Box Films, includes “The Making of Flowers”, a short documentary on how the film was made. Like the film, the documentary is minimalist, offering a few interviews but mostly focusing on behind-the-scenes clips. Also included are a Q&A with the filmmakers and a press conference from the San Sebastian film festival. These informative features provide insightful commentary on the film and its themes, and are well worth a watch.
‘H Is for Hawk’ and for Healing
This book about grief and hawks and T.H. White is so beautifully written that even readers unable to tell robins from parakeets will be entranced.