Like I quoted in another blog post, “You write because you have to, because it gnaws away at your insides if you try to ignore it” and that’s what I’m doing now. A blog post with no direction, just a single thought, comes your way.
Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia in Star Wars to many, has passed away, it was announced today. The last we’d heard, she was in a stable condition, following from an on-flight heart attack. Now, aged 60, many hear the news they did not want to hear. She no longer is.
I unexpectedly you refer you to Harry Potter. “It doesn’t matter that Harry’s gone. People die every day.” What matters is that it affects us: people. As human beings, people matter to us. Well, most of us.
2016 will go down in history as the year an exponential amount of people went on their respective journeys to another world, their spirits departing from Earth.
To Harry Potter again, “Do not pity the [departed], Harry. Pitty the living,” Dumbledore most likely said this, as those left behind must carry the burden of the pain and the hurt.
“But you know I’m not constructed that way. I exist accross all of time and space and YOU talk and bring home strays.” – Idris/The TARDIS, Doctor Who: Series 6: The Doctor’s Wife.
Humans have not been constructed to support so much pain. This is why some of us need to take time out of our daily lives, while dealing with a great loss. Some remarkable people remain as unsinged by such news, as The Doctor inside the Tesselecta of himself. “That’s life” they’ll say and express no chagrin, unless perhaps in private. The rest of us cry universes of tears, even after we’d thought the time had passed for them. An unexpected attack of agony presents itself to you, while you’re doing your coursework, because someone in the background has said something which has reminded you of them or you catch a glimpse of that CD you’d given them for Christmas. You scream in agony and stop what you’re doing, once again feeling like Voldemort, everytime a Horcrux was destroyed – perhaps, the only time in your life you will be able to empathise with the antagonist of a story.
To, on top of that, be surrounded by death, in a non-escapable manner, only adds weights to the collossal amount of chagrin one is already experiencing, especially if they were a special person in your life. It becomes insupportable, as we say in French; just too much. A key component of grief is closure. To be surrounded and perhaps even feel suffocated by an element which you are trying to get closure from is not helpful to anyone.
So, yes, “people die every day,” as Neville and many others, perhaps to try to bring some normality to 2016 have said, but that does not automatically genetically engineer humans with a switch, they can switch off the grief with. Sometimes, it all gets a bit too much and that should be acknowleged.
I’m just a product of my past. So is everyone else because we are all influenced by our surroundings. So, if we find this year difficult, after all of the attrocious news we’ve heard, that’s why. It’s OK to complain about how much bad news there is going on in the world. It’s OK to complain about how sad a year it’s been, no matter what anyone says. Minor spoiler alert ahead, as Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them has shown, repression never leads to good things.
As 2016 draws to a close, let’s take this chance to say goodbye, but let’s also look after eachoter.
Time Made Of Strawberries - Un Temps De Fraises 