Rules of Grief

High efficiency, tightly scheduled ended abruptly for me a little more than three months ago when Ray left this earth. I wasn’t prepared for grief, I’d been too busy.

But not too busy to buy a black vest. I had no plan for widow’s weeds, or dyeing a few shirts black. Who does that anymore? I just wanted a light weight non-down vest, so I opted for the $19.00 model.

The online blonde looked pretty good in the black version so I ordered it. Not knowing I would wear it nearly every day for three months. The color was an afterthought until I realized it was a statement, my sorrow nest. I have other vests, green, purple, silver-gray. Putting on the black one was and is a way of disappearing unnoticed into my grief zone.

There are no prescribed rules for mourning these days. Unlike the late 1800s when there were rigid social conventions and rules of attire related to the loss of a loved one. The whole mourning process took over two-and-a-half years. And continued on indefinitely with seances which Emily Midorikawa writes about in her book “Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice.” Seances attracted hundreds of people wanting to communicate with a loved one who had passed to the other side. The women who conducted them became famous and used their notoriety to step out of the shadows and into the public dialogue of the time.

My daily post office visit usually includes obligatory inquiries which I appreciate because some days this is the only time I speak to an in-the-flesh human being. Their all-knowing,” How are you doing,” is akin to asking me if I’ve sufficiently recovered from the flu. Gone are the death rituals of earlier times. Today mourners are relegated to a “process.”

We’re supposed to get on with it.

Would we prefer otherwise? Is mourning underrated and under-appreciated these days? Queen Victoria wore mourning dress for 40 years after the loss of her husband, Prince Albert.

Photo by Arturo Añez on Unsplash

Victorian England’s mourning rituals leaned heavily on dress. Grieving fashion norms were rigid, highly structured and calendared into Full Mourning, Second Mourning and Half-Mourning spanning two-plus years. Reflective fabrics weren’t allowed in Full Mourning, Second Mourning conceded to a little jewelry, softer fabrics, still black. Shades of grey and lavender surfaced in Half-Mourning. Clothing stores devoted to mourning dresses flourished.

Of course more people died in those days, losing a loved one hit all the classes. Theodore Roosevelt’s socialite mother “Mittie” died of typhoid fever contracted from contaminated water.

Today not all of us would want to go full-on black-on-black to announce our status as mourners but would those of us left behind feel more comforted in their sorrow and less relegated to the “just get over it” camp if they wore a black vest or a piece of Victorian-style mourning jewelry made of onyx with their loved one’s hair woven in?