On the fear of the dead
(This week’s post is written by Emily Ellison, MS, LPC-MHSP.)
I have always feared the dead. Perhaps due to my fear of death itself, but the fear manifests as an overwhelming sense of discomfort… the skin-crawling, stomach-turning sort of discomfort one feels when seeing maggots or a gaping wound. There’s a part of me that has always feared if I’m too close to a corpse (human or animal… don’t get me started on the nightmare that is taxidermy) it will come to life suddenly and frighten me. It’s a joke among my friends that I fear dinosaur skeletons, preserved creatures, even whole roast chickens and fish with the head still on. I tell them it’s because I fear a “great lightning storm” will come and the electricity will shock the dead thing back to life. I know scientifically that’s impossible and it’s really just a silly way to play off my very real fear of the dead somehow hurting me.
My mother once told me she had read that it’s an important part of grief to touch the dead. I remember shuddering when she would walk up to caskets at funerals and squeeze the hand of the recently deceased, rub their cheek, touch their hair. I hate funerals. I always have. The pain hangs in the air. The open displays of emotion make me feel like running away. And the bodies, of course. The first and only dead body I touched was that of my mother.
My father passed unexpectedly in his sleep in February of 2020. I was informed after the coroner had already removed his body from the bed he shared with my mother. To this day I can’t fathom how she was able to stand touching him after she realized he was gone. I was asked if I’d like to see him before his cremation and I declined. What peace would come from seeing an empty vessel of the man who played Barbies with me for hours? I refused to go into their bedroom until the bed had been removed. The bed he died in was more than I could bear.
9 months later, in December of 2020, my mother died of COVID. The last time I spoke to her was on a nurse’s phone. He let me FaceTime her on Thanksgiving day from her ICU room in the COVID ward. She told me my father was with her and to tell everyone “they’ve been the best”. The next day she was sedated and intubated. She never woke up. My brothers and I decided once told she would need a tracheotomy soon that we wouldn’t do any more measures to save her. The next day the hospital called me and told me to make the hour drive there as quickly as I could if I wanted to be by her side when she died. I was one of the lucky ones. So many people died alone at that time. I got there and was gowned, masked, double-gloved, and wore a face shield. The chaplain asked what she would want and I asked her to pray over my mother. The doctor told me he was sorry and how very tired he was of the constant death he was witnessing. They told me it could be hours after they turned off life support. My brothers said goodbye to her over FaceTime. I held her hand while they unplugged the machines breathing for her. I held her hand, so much more swollen than I had imagined, and I asked, “Will you tell me when she’s gone?” The nurse said she had died immediately when the machines stopped. I screamed and the chaplain held me as my knees buckled. I thought I had hours. I patted her hand a few more times and left as quickly as I could. I drove home and ripped all my clothes off at the door to be washed. I showered. I felt I’d never be clean enough. My mother was cremated. There was never a funeral as the risk was too high at the height of the pandemic. My brothers and I went to Florida to spread their ashes together. That’s all my mom wanted - to be with my father forever at the beach.
I’m a therapist. I should be able to deal with death and bereavement. But I’m also human and I naturally avoid pain so I run from grief. I tell my clients pain is inevitable and to not feel it leads to more pain. Then I turn around and use every maladaptive coping skill in the book to avoid feeling the loss of my parents. My parents were sick my whole life. I felt overwhelming relief when they died alongside the grief I thought would kill me. I wish I could say that losing them so close together helped me feel less frightened of death and the dead, but I continue to avoid all things not living. I have dreamt of my mother once and it felt like I would break in two when I woke up and it wasn’t real. I have voicemails of both my parents’ voices and can’t bring myself to listen to them, even 3 years later. I got a tattoo for them and my grandmothers. It helped some. I go to therapy. I try to stay busy. I numb myself. I feel so jealous of those with a good relationship with death and of those comforted by a concept of the afterlife. I still don’t touch dead bodies. I want to visit a wind telephone, but I am so scared I won’t survive the pain. I grieve in silence and deflect with my dark sense of humor. I wear lots of pink. I avoid the macabre. I miss them most when I don’t feel well. I miss them most when something good happens. I miss them most.
