Jay here!

Hi everyone! Just a short blog post today. I wrote this the night Chadwick Boseman died. If you don’t know who that is, that’s okay! You don’t need to! All you need to know is that he played a fictional character, the Marvel superhero Black Panther/T’Challa, and Chadwick’s death made me realize something about my own grief. I wasn’t even sure if I should post this because it’s so personal, but I decided that’s exactly why I should post it.

This topic makes me feel pretty alone, but maybe there’s someone out there who relates, and this could help them. Maybe I’m not as alone as I think. Not everyone will relate or understand, I know that, because we all have our different ways of coping with grief. Nevertheless, I hope this helps someone realize something about their own unique grief, even if their method of coping doesn’t look exactly like mine. So, without further ado, here it goes. Raw, real, brokenhearted grief:

My dad’s death impacted me most, but it seems like everyone around me started dying at once. My dad died, and then 2 weeks later, my Papa died. The following year, the people around us started dropping like flies. My pediatrician, who I’d had since I was a baby, died from pneumonia. Our neighbor Joan, who used to babysit me, died. My friend, who was only a few years older than me, died from an illness. Our friend Carol, who we’d just gone on a cruise with, died in her sleep. My favorite uncle, the only one whom I loved and he loved me, died from cancer. Our insurance agent died too, and this is all in one year! One year! 365 days!

At some point, I just expected everyone I knew to die. I thought anyone I knew would just drop dead anyways, because that seemed to be the new status quo. If they did live, odds were they’d leave one way or another. If that was the case, then why bother getting attached to anyone, ever?

This stayed in the back of my brain for a long time. I put up huge walls and wouldn’t let anyone in, partly because I didn’t want them to die too. I know I don’t have that much power, but it still felt like if I let anyone past my walls they’d die, and I’d be left with the pieces of another heartbreak.

There were two people who started to get close to me: a teacher and a neighbor. I was able to keep the neighbor at a distance for years, but at one point, he got pretty close to my walls. Right as he started getting closer, he got a serious health scare.

My teacher was the closer of the two. She was my teacher for years, and she knew me well. She became pretty much the only person besides my mom to see the mess behind the curtain. She had also experienced loss at a young age, so it felt like she could see right through all my walls. She didn’t need to tear them down because she already had an idea what was on the other side.

Then, she got a serious health condition.

I was terrified she would die. Death felt like all I’d ever known—it seemed inevitable. It felt like there was a force of nature at work. She got close to me, and now she must die. No one seemed allowed to be close to me and live.

I put a greater distance between myself and people after that. No one could see what was really going on; it felt dangerous. It felt like if I let someone in, allowed someone to see all parts of me, I’d be giving them a death sentence.

I leaned further into fiction, particularly books. I didn’t need people; I had characters! Main characters don’t die, I thought, so that would be safe. I surrounded myself with these characters, and honestly, I still do. They are my comfort in an ever-changing, unpredictable world.

I quickly realized that even fictional characters can and frequently do die at the hands of authors and writers. Escaping to a world of fiction is not the same as escaping to a world without death.

Yet, for the most part, it’s still easier to handle. I could always pretend they’d come back, or hope it was fake like Sherlock Holmes’ death. While fiction death is sad, it is not the same as a human dying in this world. When a character dies, there‘s always hope the character could come back. Death isn’t as black and white in fiction.

And then, my love for fiction books branched out to the screen, and eventually the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe).

Now, Chadwick Boseman, The Black Panther, is dead from cancer. Not only does that bring up memories of my dad’s death (which it does); put an ache in my heart to know just how painful and gruesome that death was; or catch my breath because I can vividly picture the numbness, tears and overwhelming paperwork his widow is dealing with now. Selfish as it may seem, it also pricked a hole in my safe world of fiction.

The Black Panther as we knew him will never come back. This isn’t something where the writers made it so we’d think he’s dead, and then he makes a dramatic entrance and saves the day. No, he’s really dead. There really is no hope he’s coming back. He’s gone.

Suddenly, I fear for all the other actors of fiction I love. I realize my mistake—I allowed fictional characters into my heart and behind my walls, but many of them are played by real people. BBC’s Sherlock, the characters from Once Upon a Time, a few more Marvel characters, and characters from musicals. They’re all played by real people who can die at any moment.

I haven’t isolated myself from hurt and grief by surrounding myself with fictional characters; I have isolated myself to a grief that no one will understand when these actors die. Those who understand the fangirl side of me will not understand my pre-existing relationship with grief and familiarity with death, while those who understand grief and death will not understand why I’m grieving the death of someone I didn’t know.

That’s it for the blog post! I told you it was short, real and raw. I know it ends kind of sad, but that’s exactly what I was feeling when I wrote this: sad, alone and isolated. If this helps one person to know that someone else feels the same way, that they really aren’t as alone as they think, well then that’s all I’m hoping for.

Also, I didn’t plan to post this on 9/11, but given the date I would just like to honor that for a moment.

I hope you all feel loved today, even if it is some self-love. Remember to be kind to yourself and your grief, whatever that means to you! Journal, type a letter and burn it, just do what’s right for your grief! Writing this out really helped me. Keep in mind that it’s your writing, and there is no wrong way to do it! Sometimes I have this image of what grief is supposed to look like, and I have to remind myself that my grief is unique and personal to me. Please keep that in mind for yourself as well:

Your grief is unique, personal and special to you as well, and that’s okay!

Sending you all some extra love today.

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell