This post isn’t technical, nor very long, but I’m posting it anyway. The content of the post should make it obvious why I want to post it.

Ever since my dad died (especially early on), whenever someone asked me how I’m doing, or what I’m all about, or about my identity, I had the same answer: my dad just died.

That is, short term, medium term, and long term, the overriding theme of my daily life is “my dad died.”

I would blurt it out in conversations. It was like my identity.

I read recently that Victorians used stationery with thick black borders in the months after losing someone, and of course wore very obvious mourning garments.

Before grief, I thought this was a societal restriction, something kind of annoying, like the mourners are forced to identity themselves as mourners out of tradition and nothing else.

But now I understand it — when you lose someone (at least when I lost someone), you want everyone to know. You want to say it to every person you speak to.

So the Victorians had it right — they gave the mourners permission to loudly proclaim their grief.

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”