Last year, a friend met me for a yoga class. She seemed fine—she had her matching yoga set, she positioned herself front and center in the room, and she moved through the poses with ease and grace, putting her heart into every movement. We walked to the parking lot after the class was over and I asked her how she was doing. At the time, she was leading a startup, she had been traveling all over the place, she was writing a book, and she was maintaining an active social and dating life. I assumed she was probably a bit exhausted but energized by everything positive going on in her life.
She surprised me by breaking down into tears. Her grandmother was dying, had been dying for several years now, and she was at a complete loss for how to navigate her feelings and grief around someone dying but not yet being dead. She said, “everyone knows how to cope when someone dies—your friends send flowers and thoughtful messages and maybe even bring you food, your boss gives you time off of work, you’re met with sympathy and often empathy. But no one talks about what’s an appropriate way to act when someone is dying. It doesn’t feel okay to take time off of work because a person might die but hasn’t yet. Friends ask you how the person is doing, but the level of support isn’t the same. Why is dying less hard than death? I think it’s harder.”
At the same time, I had recently read a fascinating article about a famous coffin maker in Ghana, Paa Joe. The coffins he designs are truly works of art and I was blown away by the craftsmanship. But it also prompted me to go into a deep research hole around Ghanian death and funeral culture; a hole that came full circle when I had the opportunity to speak with several Ghanians at the writing retreat in Marrakech. In Ghana, death is a celebration of life. People don’t bring the family of the dead food, the family cooks food for the entire community and throws a big party. It’s okay to mourn the loss of someone, but the focus is on the beauty of the life well-lived.
During this period I also found out about Japanese death poems, and spent time learning about the African American death doula culture.
Prior to this, I assumed death happened one way: marked by all-black attire, tears over an open casket, and an appropriate mourning period. I had never really thought about death vs. dying, hadn’t considered that coffins could look like anything other than a rectangular wooden box. Thus began my interest in the topic of grief and grieving.
Enter the fourth Parea book: a stunningly written book about dying, grieving, and how death changes how we relate to others. The author lost her sister to a multi-year battle with cancer; and while that experience in itself could be a memoir, the author and I wanted to explore a part of grief that we don’t hear or read much about: how death and dying impacts our relationships with our families, our partners, our friends, and our coworkers. We wanted to bring a depth of understanding to what it feels like to be actively losing one of the people you love most in the world, while you’re losing them. More on this book soon.
This won’t be the only Parea book that explores grief. It’s a massive topic and the a lot of the existing best-selling books (mostly memoir and self-help) focus on what happens once someone is dead and it’s usually viewed through a Western lens. My hope is to offer people different ways to grieve, to help people have conversations with their coworkers, friends, and loved ones about the experience of being close to someone who is dying, to give people who are supporting others who are grieving tools to really help.
I’m curious—what do you want to know about grief? Do you have a way of coping that you’d like to share with others?
And for anyone who’s currently grieving and wants support, reach out. Perhaps there’s a way some of these authors or cultures can help.