My friend Dave, 39, was funny. Not just a little funny but side-splittingly funny. His death during Melbourne's latest lockdown was tragic and also deeply confusing, writes Sally Spicer grief mentalhealth
When I think about death, I always picture the middle of the night. A sombre knock at the door from a sombre looking policewoman, Maybe a gentle nudge from my husband, easing me into his disclosure of a tragedy that took place while I was dreaming.I had a missed call from a woman I used to work with. It’s the kind of thing that happens on the regular. Inconsequential. Maybe I’ll call back today. Maybe I won’t.
Dave had opal eyes, short sandy hair and a broad, impish grin that always made you feel like you were in on some secret joke that only the two of you shared.Two weeks before his death, Dave asked me to a movie. We Melburnians were living through our fifth lockdown, and I was exhausted. The idea of braving city traffic for the first time in months and fighting for a park at Federation Square was too much on the day. I cancelled and I never saw him again.
Without a funeral, my pilgrimage through grief has been confusingly nonlinear. A couple of weeks after Dave’s death, an avalanche of anguish left me bedridden for days. The pain festered like an open wound. As the Delta variant swallowed Sydney, the funeral was postponed until Dave’s relatives could get here. At the time of writing this, it still hasn’t happened.
It was not just Dave’s life that was made small but the grief of everyone who loved him. Without the send-off he deserved, Dave turned to ash, smoke-filled haze and forgetfulness. The day he died, I sent him a Facebook message. It felt nice to spend a brief second in a liminal state of hope that the message would flick over from sent to seen. Why did I do that?
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