How grief found Susan
Photo by Susan Cadell of a framed Picasso poster gifted back to Susan by Bill upon his death.
Rob. Doyle. Jean Pierre. Bill. Greg.
Rob was a first for me. I had been doing volunteer work in the area of HIV/AIDS for some time but had never met someone living with HIV. Not only was he the first person whom I met who was HIV positive, he was the first person I knew to die of it.
Doyle was a first in so many ways. He was the first openly gay person I knew. He taught me so much. He loved fiercely and could hold a grudge like no one else. He was a superb chef; taking him to my favorite restaurant in Paris to sample dishes that he had only ever read about is one of my most pleasant memories.
Jean Pierre and his partner, William, were a parallel love story to my own. They met about the same time that I met my husband and we four were great friends. The last time I saw Jean Pierre, I was hugely pregnant with my first child.
Bill was the first of two of my friends to die in 1995. He was also the first person, outside my family, to tell me he loved me before I said it. Bill had the first kitchen painted black that I had ever seen. Bill was the first to involve me in planning for his funeral and talking to his family about his wishes. I was heartbroken and powerless when his family did the exact opposite of what he asked.
Greg was the second to die in 1995. He listened really hard to all my stories about how Bill’s family betrayed Bill’s wishes. Greg made sure that it did not happen to him. He wrote his own obituary: that was a first for me. He made arrangements so that his parents could have his funeral in their small town in Ontario. I made arrangements so that we could hold his celebration of life in the public library where he had been on the board. His parents attended both: Greg would have been very proud.
Now, many years later, I have to pause and check that I got these names in the right order. Thirty years ago, their deaths were engraved in my being; no checking was needed. I knew when each of their death anniversaries, sometimes called death-aversaries, was approaching. I felt it without needing to check the calendar.
Thirty years later, it still brings tears to my eyes to write all this. And sometimes these days, if I am feeing out of sorts and don’t know why, I will reflect on the date. Often it is a death-aversary that has snuck up on me.
All this happened in the mid 1990s. They were all my friends. They were all gay men who died of AIDS. (Technically they died of HIV-related causes but that was language to come later.)
I was getting married and having children. Many of my friends were also getting married and having children, however some were not legally allowed to marry those whom they loved. Also at that time, partners of people dying of AIDS were often not allowed to visit at the end of life. They were also often excluded from funerals and inheritances. Legislation about same sex marriage has improved all that. Nonetheless, I am someone who will defend anyone’s right to be who they are and love who they love – in living or in death.
While I was grieving at that time, I had no language to describe what I was going through. No one around me had language to help me understand what I was going through. This is one of the reasons why it was important to me that we defined grief literacy and one of my principal reasons for beginning Grief Matters.
I know firsthand how much it matters that we can talk to one another about grief. I know from Rob, Doyle, Jean Pierre, Bill, and Greg that grief matters.
