On Grief
In 2018, Nick Cave received a letter from a fan named Cynthia, who asked in it whether Nick still managed to communicate with his son Arthur, who'd died three years before, in 2015 -- after taking LSD and falling off a cliff. Reports at the time stated that Arthur had sent a message to a friend moments before plunging to his death asking "Where am I? Where am I?". In Nick's words, Arthur was a "bright, shiny, funny, and complex boy".
Nick wrote back. His words are a balm to those in grief, much like myself. And a guide to redemption and growth, as with all things that have led me to where I now stand.
Dear Cynthia,
This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.
I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.
With love, Nick
Benedict Cumberbatch's interpretation is heartbreaking in itself, but how I'd love to hear Nick reading this. Sullen steadiness and all.
As for Arthur, for my Father, and others I've loved and lost: Where are you? Where are you?
In the depths of our hearts and minds, that's where you'll live on. Until we, as well as those parts of your legacy that stayed with us, live on in other minds and hearts. Trickling down, forever.