The 'D' Word

Notes on grief with the passing of someone taken too soon.

Anybody that knows me well enough knows that my hard rule for writing is that I don’t write about death. It’s the only subject I stay absolutely clear of. I haven’t unpacked it much but I just think if you dedicate your time to creating art, why spend it in a headspace surrounding something so depressing?

As I write this, I recall a conversation I had in Silverlake, CA, a couple of months ago with Haley, the founder of @dignifieddepartures. That night, we spoke about death openly and freely and she’s made it her mission to destigmatize the way we view, experience, and talk about it. I break this hard rule, just this once, with her words in mind.

I attended a funeral, yesterday. My first funeral. The ceremony was located in a very beautiful place painted by voluminous pastures of greenery. We parked on the side of a road and walked up and then down a hill attached to mini mountains.

I didn’t know exactly who would show up but I saw people I went to Elementary school with. People I hadn’t seen in over a decade. I disciplined myself as I felt excitement and joy to cross paths again with long-lost friends, it felt wrong to feel any sort of joy in the setting.

And while the circumstances of why we were brought together were grim, I was astonished by the effect of one person and how they could bring so many different people together.

I spoke to a childhood friend of Tal’s the night before and he expressed that Tal was made fun of a lot and bullied and the punchline to people's jokes. Another testament to treating people with kindness as you never know when it could be their last day. But there I stood and 200 people from all walks of life showed up in his name. One single person can be the reason all these other people come together.

This gathering was what America thinks it looks like— an actual melting pot. It was interesting to see how before the service, people maintained their stances within their various cliques and whatnot, then afterward how much the groups dispersed and people began to intermingle. All trying to find their footing on this steep hill.

I stood next to a friend of mine from Elementary school who I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years. Others seemed to be on their own journey of grief, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Trying to find a better vantage point to hear the rabbi and his wonderful speech on existence. Moving around aimlessly and then intentionally between other clumps of people.

Although this was an orthodox Jewish funeral, I couldn’t help but notice people were hitting their vapes and cracking open Buzz Balls. Sonya, the girl next to me from my childhood shot me a look of disbelief.

“Really? Buzzballs? At a funeral? You know what, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut,” She said.

I was shocked myself but I dared not to judge them. In a moment like that, I felt there was no right to look at them with a side-eye. You don’t know the ways in which they were close to the victim or the toll it’s taking on them. I felt I better not dare judge someone on how they grieve because we all do it differently. It’s that human thing we do, make judgments. I’m trying to do this less, in general.

It’s unique in these circumstances how all sense of decorum leaves the body of the mourning as they try to reconcile. And in this same experience, all senses of ritual are upheld. There are logistics on how to handle the body, the religious rules and regulations, and the spiritual formula for a safe transition.

The ceremony was gut-wrenching and I found myself completely still as I listened to the sounds of the parents desperately wailing for their child. It’s a sound you pray never to hear again and it’s a sound you never forget.

When I heard the screams, I felt how much they wanted to tell their son that they loved him. The yells were a testament to the undying love a parent has for their kid. The screams felt like they needed to say it so loud to let Tal hear it just one more time. And through sniffles and tears, we were a helpless audience as there’s nothing one can do at the moment to help the parent's love get communicated across.

As we remained powerless, I took a gander at the crowd, I couldn’t help but think Tal would’ve appreciated all the people that came out to see him. He would have marveled to see how many people gave their undivided attention to him for an hour and a half. And that’s why it was really important for me to not try and detach and break away from the moment but to remain in it no matter how much it pained me.

Everything nowadays is a demand for our attention and so it’s a privilege to maintain one’s attention and so I wanted to give him mine, undivided. I felt a lot of sadness around but I couldn’t help but ask myself, how is this real?

The loved ones of the family use a shovel and jam it into a heap of dirt to pour over the casket. An older lady in her 60s gives me a grimace. I grimace back in what I hope comes across as an “I’m sorry for your loss,” without having to say those words out loud.

And I wince and show a forced smile that says hello and she does the same back before she taps on my shoulder and says, “It’s crazy to think that there’s just a body in that box, and it’s just there. It’s so crazy,”

And I look over, considering this is some sort of lure into a trap of inappropriateness. She’s an older woman so I’ve assumed she’s been to many more funerals than I have, a 22-year-old.

I agree, I say “I know.”

And then it occurs to me that it doesn’t matter how old you get or how many of these things you go to, it always feels surreal.

She’s the first person at this funeral I’ve spoken to who I haven’t known beforehand and she chats me up in a way that makes me feel very comfortable. This feeling feels nice. It feels like I’m talking to an old friend and not a mother of two with a son who’s my age.

Then, as the bulldozer came rolling up that hill to push the rest of the dirt on top of the casket, it just felt like something really final was happening. I think there’s this inkling of hope in everyone that the deceased person will just bang on that wooden box and break through. And I think when you add the pounds of dirt and soil, it’s eliminating that small sliver of hope because it’s finalizing the deed. Even if they were to break through the box one day, they wouldn’t be able to get through the ground and so you have to fully conceptualize the fact that this person is no longer going to be with you, physically.

And so I think this process of death just happens—you have to be there to witness it happening to fully realize that person is gone.

The feeling of a loved one being buried is a feeling of defeat. As we go about our daily lives there’s this carelessness to living life with all these distractions helping us not to realize how fragile everything we depend on is.

And when there’s a funeral we attend, there’s this ephemeralness that is at our front door. There’s this air or finality that we don’t typically face in our daily lives so it’s really hard to take it into our personal lives and funerals shove it in our faces. It makes you walk slower, your heart heavier, and you think twice before smoking that cigarette before aggressively opening the box and inhaling it deeply as some sort of revenge and vengeance for the way that life can be so brutal without our consent.

And then you want to avenge the person who’s gone but that person doesn’t feel pain anymore and so they wouldn’t even want you to do that. And it’s this whole cycle of perspective and loss and grief.

And then sometimes, you feel better for a split second and then you remember. You’re enamored by this wonderful feeling of joy. It’s something you haven’t felt in a while so you wonder where it has come from, then you realize you’ve felt it before but then wonder where the feeling has been, then you remember why you lost it and it’s this cycle over and over again.

Rest in Peace Tal Mazuz. You’ll never know this but for the last three weeks I spoke of you non stop. I wanted you to help me and my friends with a show we’ve been talking about starting. I never got to tell you and it’ll be something I regret forever. It was great seeing you at that party three weeks ago, too. I knew very few people there and when I saw you, I remember being so relieved to see a familiar face. Fly high, buddy.

Please feel free to donate to the Go Fund Me that was set up to help with funeral expenses for Tal. As always, thank you for reading. Much love, T.