Mourning While Queer: On Death, Grief and Regrets
Illustration by: Hellim
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This article was originally published in Turkish by Velvele on November 14, 2021. It has been translated to English by the author.
Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. For the last five years, I have spent almost every day trying to understand what it means to lose her and how it makes me feel. It is a process full of so much pain, grief and regret. By writing this piece, I want to remind those who have walked down a similar path that they are not alone.
Grief is a word we hear a lot, but don't really know what it means. We tend not to talk about it. We keep it to ourselves because for some reason it is coded as a private process. In fact, we conceal grief so much that sometimes it takes a long time to attain. It gets difficult, it becomes belated. Grief manifests itself by consuming you insidiously or by hurting you unnoticed. Sometimes it is a miracle to even understand and realize it. Mine has been so.
My mother passed away on November 12, five years ago, after battling pancreatic cancer for two years. It was very difficult to witness those two years, but the toughest part was her last ten days. When the doctor said she passed away, my first feeling was: “Oh! She will no longer suffer.” I didn't cry. I went to a café and ate something. Everyone was going to our house from the hospital. I didn't want to be under the same roof with that crowd. I had no strength. So I went to the café across from the hospital and sat with a couple of friends, ordered a lot of things and ate. I felt guilty for not being able to cry. I got hungry as I felt guilty. This cycle took hours, until closing time. I said goodbye to my friends and went home late. At home, the food brought by the neighbors piled up in the kitchen and on the balcony. Nobody was crying, people were eating and drinking tea. Although I didn’t cry myself, I got angry with others because they were not crying. I sat down and ate again. My appetite grew insatiable.
The next day, a large group of family members set out to take my mother’s remains back to her hometown in Kurdistan, where I was also born. All the relatives I hated all my life were there and I spent every second of that long, nightmarish journey grumbling to myself about what the hell I was doing with them. The road took me to the hometown where I had been humiliated, pointed at and abused for being a fag. For a week, I served tea at the men’s condolence house. (taziye evi, a place where the family and friends of the deceased come together to pay their respects. I'm talking about the hall of the biggest venue for weddings–and condolences–in the district. Goran Bregović would really like it.) At my own mother’s funeral I became invisible as the "tea-serving boy", as did my grief. Those who visited were offering their condolences to my father, uncles, and even cousins, but not to me. I was serving tea. I asked them if they wanted sugar, they said "God bless you" when receiving their tea. But it occurred to none of them to offer their condolences to me. Those who had begrudged me my existence were now taking away my right to experience my pain. My right to mourn, to grieve, and to cry. Instead they burdened me with the labour of serving tea to people I hate.
In the evenings I had to watch everyone console my sister and treat me like a distant relative. At home, no one asked me how I was holding up. At some point I became so alienated from my own mother's death, I tried to comfort my sister, aunts, and cousins. None of them objected. So I served tea, I served fruits, I went to the bakery to get bread. I listened to stories of my mother from people I did not know or remember. I told them I was sorry for their loss and they thanked me. I wanted to laugh out loud, but if I accidentally laughed, my invisibility would evaporate instantly and I would get scolded. This was the way things were in my family.
I couldn’t be alone in any room, or even at my mother's grave. Those funeral scenes we see in Hollywood movies, they're all lies. No one leaves you alone by the grave to have a word with the departed. Nobody talks by the grave anyway: dig, place the body, cover it with dirt, pray, leave. I was going to the bathroom when I had a breakdown, two minutes later someone knocked on the door. They would neither allow me to be a part of what they were going through nor leave me alone to feel my pain or to contemplate on it. A shit-show of selfishness.
A night before our flight back to Istanbul, a huge fight broke out. Uncles, aunts… hours of arguments. Wrists rubbed with cologne, massages on the temples… I watched everyone with an open mouth and embarrassment. I was amazed that they turned my mother's memorial into something ridiculous. If I had to describe that week in my hometown in one word, I would say "injustice." It sums up everything they have deemed fit for me as the family disgrace, the undesirable faggot. Five years passed with that sense of injustice I felt that week. I've spent five years wondering what it would be like if someone hugged me, asked me how I was doing and cried with me during that funeral week. I am still very offended and angry with everyone who withheld something so simple and humane from me. Because they prevented me from getting in touch with my pain. Because they ignored me.
When it comes to discrimination against LGBTI+ people, similar things come to mind: violence, death, dismissal, humiliation, and so on. However, phobias spread to daily life/relationships in a much more insidious way than we think. Like the treatment you receive in a condolence house for your own mother. It makes you feel like your own mother is a distant relative. It alienates you from the loss of your mother. It cuts you down to size, it shows you your place and says that you don't belong here, there is no place for you in this picture. All of this is told without a single word. It is conveyed through silence, through unanswered questions, through raised eyebrows and sneering smiles and through looks of disgust. Making people like me feel ill at ease and unwanted all the time is an ancestral sport. All those who are good for nothing (who can't be good at anything else in life) contend for gold with their performances in this category.
I guess my grieving process feels like living in a puzzle where I've been searching for a missing piece for five years. I have passed it by procrastinating, stumbling, crying, whining, getting angry, keeping quiet, and trying to explain, but failing to do so. For the last five years, the fact that I have lost my mother has surfaced and grabbed me by the throat in the most ridiculous, most unexpected moments and places: at a bus stop, in a government office, on the dance floor, when kissing a guy, during the hottest moment of sex, in a movie theater, at page 55 of a novel, when cooking, in the middle of a fight…
I have given a lot of thought on why I am embarrassed of what I am embarrassed of. I think it may be because things like pain, grief, death are thought of in the context of the divine; that is, they’re not seen as part of daily life. But I am not sure. However, I know that grief has taken over every part of my life. Grief is like the web the spider patiently weaves. Most of the time you don't see it, you don't even notice it. Then, all of a sudden you realize you are surrounded by it.
Everyone has an opinion about death, loss, and grief. As they do about depression. They say it's good to talk. Sometimes, yes. However, the words of people who have not experienced this usually cannot reach you. “Do yoga”, “go for a walk”, “keep yourself busy”… Even though I have no doubt about their good intentions, I have to explain every time that these suggestions do not work. Making the same explanations over and over again is so tiring that I avoid socializing most of the time. I feel tired even before I leave home. I can't remember how many dates I canceled on the way out of the door. It's getting harder to talk to even those closest. For example, I cannot talk to my husband with whom I share the same home and bed. If he's home and I feel like crying for some reason, I lock myself in the bathroom so he won't see it and I come back out only when I'm done. If I feel distressed, I throw myself out onto the balcony. He doesn't know what to say, because he doesn't know what it means to lose someone. He hugs me, sometimes stroking my hair, most of the time he stares at me silently. When useless words pour out of his mouth, it gives me yet another reason to get angry.
Sometimes, especially when I am drunk or high and suddenly face the fact that my mother passed away, I spill out a few words. In these moments I feel like people are looking at me as if to say “here we go again” and I feel embarrassed. If this happens to you too, I want you to know: NO NEED TO BE EMBARRASSED!
There is no one single cure for mourning/grief/longing. There is no one single way out. Its remedy is not to be found in one certain place. And it is not independent of the discriminations and traumas we experience. You also don’t have to be sad after a loss. Sometimes grief manifests as anger. But “why doesn't it end?” is a very legitimate question and there is no need to beat yourself up for it. This is the way the water flows; and it will keep flowing. No need for guilt.
On top of all the exclusion, discrimination and violence you have experienced when you lose a loved one, that feeling of injustice finds you again when you are expected to hide your grief. It's OK to think you've been treated unfairly. Because it is unfair. Especially if the loved one you lost was the actor of the most complicated relationship in your life. If you spent years fighting and bickering with your mother and were about to find a way to understand each other just before she died. I lost my mother when she was finally turning a new page for both of us. I can't describe the feeling of disappointment, of chagrin that she left me with. Cancer stole that opportunity from me. For five years, not a day has gone by that I don't think about all the things we could have done if my mother had lived. She couldn't travel to visit me in the country I live in, she couldn't see the life I created here from scratch and with a lot of hardship. She couldn't enjoy seeing me live in a place where I finally felt safe. I am so angry at cancer. Nothing in life makes me angrier to think about than this disease. I am so disgusted by it that I can't wish it even on the person I hate most.
For the last five years, I have started every sentence about my mother with “I wish”. I can't reconcile with the fact that she died so young. I get angry thinking about everything left unfinished with her. Every day I ask myself how this life will go on like this. How will this goddamn life be spent with so much regret? I do not know. I don't know whom to blame for this society, state, education system, religions making my existence an abhorrence to my family. All because of what I believe, how I feel, and whom I love. I have no idea whom I should turn to to get this fixed or whom I should punch in the face to calm my nerves! I am angry with everyone who keeps feeding this system that has turned the lives of people like me into an endless war, our homes into battlefields and the air we breathe into poison. I will be angry at everything that turned my mother against me. And I am not ashamed of my anger just as I am not ashamed of my pain!
Death, mourning, and grief are also political, as is everything else. If you are not in a position of hegemony, even the breath you take is political. I want to cry out loud in spite of those who tell me to hide my tears. If you have lost a loved one, if you feel the way I wrote above but cannot tell it to everyone. if this loss breaks your heart and if you feel like crying every now and then, I want you to know that you are not alone. And there is nothing abnormal about any of this.
You don’t and we don't have to experience our grief, our mourning all alone, within four walls. The myth of endlessly happy modern human beings who always have fun is also a lie. No one is that happy, nor could they ever be. I refuse to pretend. So, don't worry about yourself when you witness other people's "happiness." Death is real, it exists for everyone. We are people to whom life has not been kind or fair. There is nothing more natural than feeling hurt, sad and angry. And it is normal that you are not strong enough. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Don't feel ashamed to want to talk. Don't be embarrassed of crying around someone. And if we are not going to share each other’s burdens, let us please stop the talk about solidarity. If we don't have a hand to lend to each other, then our politics is a lie.
I wish patience and strength to everyone who mourns, grieves after their loss, keeps silent, cries, experiences loss/boost of appetite, smiles, stops, escapes, or feels distressed or exhausted. You may not believe it, but I can imagine how you feel. I hope my words embrace you with love. Kisses to you all.
Lastly:
Mom, I wish you were here with me now. I wish you had not died so soon. I wish we had had more time to show each other compassion and love. I wish you had not denied me what your own family had denied you. I wish I could tell you one more time how much I love you. I want you to know that I forgive you and I miss you dearly every day.
Your son.