Article

Christmas survival

Comment

21 December 2023

7 min read

Dealing with death at Christmas

On the darkest December day, a grim anniversary is recalled.

Jean Kabasomi

Jean Kabasomi works in financial services in London. She also writes and broadcasts.

A moody sky overshadows a shingle beach on which a lone empty deckchair stands. A pier with funfair is in the middle distance.

Brighton Pier.

Nick Fewings, via Unsplash.

Thursday 17th December 2020 - a day I won’t forget.

Christmas 2020 was already proving to be a little strange. The UK was in this weird place of tiered restrictions, a sort of semi-lockdown approach. In London and the southeast, we had a bit more flexibility than folks in the north of the country, but people were not really out and about. Most people were saving their interactions for Christmas Day, so the streets were mostly quiet.

Like virtually everyone working in the financial services, I was working from home. The night before, my older brother had left the house after an argument and not come home. My younger brother and sister were concerned about his whereabouts. His phone kept going to voicemail. They were worried. There wasn’t much to do or anyone to see because everyone was regulating their behaviour and saving themselves for Christmas. I, on the other hand, was more nonchalant about his ‘disappearance’. My view was that he was an adult and had a habit of doing ‘immature things’ to get our attention. I thought, ‘He would come back home when he needed to.’ Little did I know how wrong I would be.

At about 4:50pm, as I was winding up and about to log off at work, I saw a police car in our street. My room is on the second floor of our house and my desk is positioned so that I can look directly out of the window onto the street in front of our house. The police car stopped in front of our house. The officers got out and opened our gate. I remember I went downstairs and said, ‘The police are here.’, just before the doorbell rang. I was slightly annoyed, I remember thinking, ‘What silly thing has my brother done now?’

My Mum invited them in. But they wouldn’t speak to her. They were looking for my sister. This seemed really weird at the time. Mum kept asking them what they wanted. But they wouldn’t reply. They just kept saying that they needed to speak to my sister. They wouldn’t speak to my sister in front of all the family, so they led my sister outside into the garden. It was dark outside. We couldn’t hear what they were saying because the back door was shut but we could see my sister’s reaction. She was deeply distressed. My Mum was beginning to get upset too, because she could see my sister through the window. They came back into the house. The police remained silent. It was just strange. My sister kept saying that we all needed to sit down in the living room. Mum kept asking the police what was going on but they remained silent. My younger brother and I were also frustrated and wanted to know. ‘Just tell us what is happening’, I remember saying. But my sister kept saying that we needed to sit down and go to the living room.

We finally all sat down and then one of the officers began to speak. I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to the effect of ‘A body was found this morning at Brighton Pier. From the belongings found on the body, we have identified that it is the body of your brother.’

At this point, I don’t think any of us really understood what he was saying. Someone must have asked, ‘Does that mean he is dead? Are you saying he is dead?’ ‘Yes.’, was the response. ‘How did he die?’, was the next question. Again, more weirdness. It seemed that they didn’t really want to use the word suicide, but that’s what it was. We kept asking for more details. What time? How did it happen? Was there anyone with him? But nothing was forthcoming. It all felt like a cover-up. And then it was over. They left and it was just us left to process it. It all seemed so surreal.

That evening is all a bit of a blur. I am quite a practical person - I knew I was leading a bible study meeting that evening. So, I messaged, the pastor in charge to say I wouldn’t be able to lead it that night. After that, the next feeling, I remember is annoyance towards my brother. I felt it was selfish on so many different levels. Why did he have to do this? How does it solve anything? Why is he always looking for attention? Why would anyone do something like this just before Christmas? I remember feeling he had destroyed Christmas for us forever. Why didn’t he just say something to us? We had just started playing tennis on weekday mornings before I logged into work, why didn’t he mention he was upset then? My younger brother and sister were deeply disturbed and didn’t know what to say or do. Both were blaming themselves. Mum was totally shocked. I kept thinking and saying that he didn’t mean to do it. It was just a mistake that he couldn’t undo. If we weren’t in this quasi-lockdown situation, maybe someone would have noticed him in the water sooner and he would have been rescued? Maybe someone would have been walking along the Pier that night, seen him in the water, jumped in and pulled him out? We didn’t need a hero, maybe someone would have seen him in the water and just called 999? Maybe someone would have noticed him pacing up and down, and tried to speak to him before he went over the edge?

The run-up to Christmas that year was extremely difficult. The government announced a full lockdown again and my family had to travel to the morgue in Brighton to formally identify my brother. I chose not to go with them, I felt at the time, that I wasn’t ready to see my brother’s body. We also had a tree in our garden whose roots had ruptured the sewer pipe, causing our bathroom to flood. It was all one big mess.

I am in charge of the Christmas shopping operation in our house. Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I love the carols, the weather, the darkness, the cosiness, the services at church, the Christmas TV schedule, the food and the opportunity to rest, pause and reflect. I love everything about Christmas. But now it felt weird celebrating Christmas. The delivery came. On Christmas day, I cooked, my sister baked. But it was all just so sad. We sat in silence through a lot of it just eating. Sometimes we spoke about the days leading up to my brother’s death. At different points throughout the day, one or all of us would be struggling to hold back our tears or silently sob. That period was one of the most difficult periods of my life.

I do not have to be in a state of constant mourning throughout the Christmas period. Neither do I need to pretend or ignore that I haven’t experienced death at Christmas.

Three years later, Christmas is still my favourite time of the year. Why? Despite everything, I still believe in the hope that came into the world at Christmas through Jesus Christ. It is that hope that helped me pull through that time. I held on to the comforting words I found in the Bible. I found people who supported me and worked through my grief on the Bereavement Journey. On this course, I discovered that it was okay to be angry, guilty, disappointed and sad about death. It was all part of the process. It was okay to grieve differently from my siblings and my Mum. I didn’t have to force them to feel like me, nor make myself feel like they did. As we began to piece together my brother’s final days, I slowly understood that he had his own mental struggles and sadly was unable to find the help he needed.

I learnt that grief involves the whole person – the body, soul and mind. I understood why I sometimes felt exhausted and at other times I was wide awake. It all made sense when I suddenly felt sad on my way home from my first time at Wimbledon. The body has a weird way of remembering things even when you think you are okay mentally, so I wasn’t surprised when I got a severe migraine exactly three years to the day that my brother didn’t come home. My faith does not mean that I understand everything about my experience neither does it mean that I can’t lament, question or be unhappy about the way things unfolded.

For me, Christmas is still a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the birth of Hope. But it is also a time of solemnity, even of grief. As the years go by, this will get easier but probably won’t go away. The two feelings are not mutually exclusive. I do not have to be in a state of constant mourning throughout the Christmas period. Neither do I need to pretend or ignore that I haven’t experienced death at Christmas. Rather, the most honest thing I can do is to acknowledge both feelings and take each day as it comes.

Article

Comment

Mental Health

Poetry

15 October 2024

4 min read

Auden and our anxious age

While the tropes of trauma are still with us, how to not die in our dread?

Jack Nicholson

Jack is a graduate of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge and Blackfriars, University of Oxford. He works in local government.

An outdoor vigil is lit by people holding up mobile phone lights.

Oxford's peace vigil.

BBC News.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play . . .

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

This week, we mark the 85th birthday of W. H. Auden’s poem ‘September 1st, 1939’. He describes four solitary drinkers in New York on the cusp of the Second World War. September 1st, 1939: Hitler invades Poland. Those four faces struggle to find meaning in their lives.

In a later, much longer poem of 1947 (first UK edition, 1948) Auden built on this theme, having lived through the War, to identify an ‘Age of Anxiety’. He wrote, ‘We would rather be ruined than changed / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.’

I have been reflecting on this of late, especially in light of a recent night vigil for peace, remembrance, and unity at Bonn Square, Oxford, where I live. This took place on 7 October, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023: the darkest day in Jewish history since the time that Auden wrote his poems.

In an Age of Anxiety, Auden wrote, ‘the world needs a wash, and a week off’. The gathering in Oxford was especially poignant because some 250 people chose to go out in the rain, on their Sunday-evening time off, and in the darkness, to hear prayers and readings from different communities. It was as if the world was awash with people coming together.

The Bishop of Oxford the Rt Rev’d Dr Steven Croft said, ‘Our purpose is simply to be together.’ People simply had to do ‘something in the face of the helplessness that we all feel, in the face of these terrible events’. Louise Gordon, co vice president of the Oxford Jewish Congregation, described people ‘clinging to hope’. Imam Monawar Husain stressed that togetherness as such is a ‘symbol’, a symbol of hope.

Symbols abounded. Candles were lit. In ‘September 1st, 1939’, Auden described ‘Ironic points of light’ which

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

The crowd spontaneously joined in with the protest song ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’, which was first sung in 1955.

It is striking that so many of the tropes and themes concerning what has gone wrong with the world, from our perspective, were already apparent and received clear expression from 1939 through to the mid- to late-1950s, in terrible events, then in thought, poetry, and protest song, in an age of anxiety.

If there are similarities between Auden’s age and our own, then we should be encouraged by that.

Sociologists described the ‘lonely crowd’ in 1950. This suggests that people seek more approval and acceptance from others as the physical distance between them diminishes and society becomes increasingly geared toward consumption. The capacity to come together for peace, remembrance, and unity becomes far less likely.

Philosopher Max Picard lamented the loss of the ’World of Silence’ in 1952: the capacity to be still. And later, in 1958, the word ‘meritocracy’ was first used to describe a dystopian world in which merit (IQ + effort) reigns, replacing previous relational bonds, a sense of togetherness, exemplified in the gathering in Oxford in 2024.

C. S. Lewis, in Oxford in the late 1950s, identified friendship as a kind of love which is regarded 'in the modern world' as 'quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet', which is especially true if we bypass the banquet and spend our time at the bar (or, worse, online, at home). Louise Gordon, at the vigil, also spoke of the way in which people were counterculturally 'clasping hands in friendship'.

When sociologists today describe the ‘lonely century’ (Noreena Hertz) or when so many sigh over our inability to sit, or stand, in silence, in some sense at least they have not identified anything new. War crimes are, sadly, all too familiar to us. And recently, the lawyer Stephen Toope identified an ‘age of anxiety’ today.

It is not as simple, however, as saying that we have been anxious for the last seventy years. Auden’s age was also one of creativity of which the Anglosphere has been proud, for instance, around the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948. His generation stared into the abyss. They did not die in their dread.

If there are similarities between Auden’s age and our own, then we should be encouraged by that. Lamentation is as old as love, and the choice is as stark as he put it in his poem 85 years ago: ‘love one another or die’.

The notion of vigil is equally old. Today, vigils are held for peace, remembrance, and unity. In Christian liturgy, however, a vigil is specifically a watch during the night, looking forward to the dawn of a new day. ‘As the night watch looks for the morning’, likewise the people wait for Christ, their saviour.

That silent watch is far removed from the solitary ‘faces along the bar’ who ‘cling to their average day’. Horrible events such as those which took place on September 1st, 1939 or October 7th, 2023 bring people together in common purpose, simply to be together and to cling instead to hope for a better tomorrow.

Anxiety is replaced by hope.

Candles are lit. It may well rain. But song will be sung. And people of good-will, having climbed ‘the cross of the moment’, will show what Auden described: that great ‘affirming flame’.