How #TheGoodPlace Is Helping Me Face My Fear of Death

Death! I talk about it a lot, don’t I?

In my defense, there’s been a lot of it about. My last but one entry talked about two peoples’ deaths – David and Lyra. Two different people with two different – and two violent – deaths.

So forgive me, it’s been on my mind. It’s always on my mind, really. I’ve talked at length in this blog about my death anxiety – thanatophobia for the Greeks out there – and its vampiric impact on my life. I’ve been in therapy for it before, but it was the wham-bam-thank-you-mam CBT, which did nothing to address the elephant in the room. Or, in Phillip Larkin-speak, the wardrobe.

The elephant is trauma. It’s terror. It’s checking for breath with a mirror when you’re 6. It’s shameful grief, collective grief, lost grief and grieving. It’s feeling it is shameful to grieve. It’s trying to understand why I am the one who wakes up screaming, and not my husband. He has watched countless people die, but he’s not afraid. (He’s not a serial killer – he was a carer for 8 years).

The Grieflings

I started therapy (again) a few weeks ago. This therapist is of the psychoanalytic variety, so some of it so amorphous it’s hard to get a grip on what it is actually is, and what we’re talking about. I went, ostensibly, for my anxiety. My anxiety – again, which I’ve written about at length here if you want to hear more – can occasionally be so incapacitating I struggle to cross a road. Far from impulsivity, my primary problem, for some years now, has been indecision.

When I sat down in front of the therapist – the kind of slim, green jumper wearing kind of one – I decided I was going to talk about death. Because I have come to realise that it is the genesis of my anxiety, all of it.

I am sometimes so afraid of crossing the road because I’m afraid a car I will hit me. I am sometimes so afraid of meeting new people and making a friend because they will die (ha, I mean, this is valid, let’s be honest now). I am afraid of happiness because it will end – I am afraid of all endings. I am afraid of saying something stupid in front of someone or to someone because I am afraid it will harm them. I have felt unsafe my whole life and I need to be safe and to keep people safe. Basically, here’s that big

D again.

I can’t actually remember the first session now, except that I cried for around 4 hours afterwards. I talked through some of the losses in my life. Throughout my life, it has been a procession of violent ends. Vicky, who killed herself, she was 16. My dad, of alcoholic liver failure, when he was 47. Brendan, who died of an overdose when he was 32. David, suicide, when he was 40. Lyra, murder, she was 29. That’s not including the constellation of troubled but then distant friends who lost their lives, the grandparents and my childhood too. My sister jokingly and affectionately says death stalks me. It does sometimes feel that way. (Edit – reread this recently and since this blog post, two more of my friends have died. Our beloved Sam Challis died in March 2020, just before lockdown proper hit. And the amazing Dawn Foster, immortalised and eulogised elsewhere better than I ever could, died in July 2021).

These losses are complicated and different from each other. Anyone could understand my grief at my dad’s death. But they’d have understood it a lot more if he’d died of cancer and had been a smiling Werthers Original type dad, and not someone who died how he died, and had lived how he lived. The head tilt, “At least he’s not suffering anymore” is coded, “At least you’re not suffering anymore”. But we were, just differently. In the same shame we lived with while he was alive – your drunk dad – there was shame when he died, too. How can you let someone you love so much die like that?

Lyra and I were not best friends. She is so widely loved and adored I have felt another sense of shame around my grief for her. I have felt I do not deserve to grieve and that my feelings are stupid. I don’t grieve for her or know her as people close to her did and do. My feelings are tied up a bit in the crushing sense of regret – that I pushed her away when she was being kind to me and that I wasn’t kind enough in return. I was no loss- she had so many people to love and be loved by – but I wish I hadn’t allowed my own grief in 2018 shut me down to our friendship, and I am trying so hard not to let my own grief shut me down again. It’s tied up too in just sheer anger and rage on her behalf, that she was taken as she was. It’s tied up in fear of the future. She was one of my biggest champions moving back to Belfast – telling me, you will be happy, you will have a career, it won’t be like it was back then, things are different. And then she dies, and how.

But they are my feelings – I can’t deny that they are. They may be wrapped up in the other unresolved grief, in the other unfair, horrible, violent and just not fucking right deaths of people who had so much more to give and who deserved so much better. But they are still feelings that have left me howling on my bed in the foetal position, and now in therapy, trying to make some sense of them.

So I’ve been trying to talk a bit about them. The shameful grief of my dad’s life and death. The unseen grief of David with no place to go but a scarf I wear and a voice in my head. The formative grief of a beautiful 16 year old friend ending her life, and the trudge through mud almost 20 years later to a tree you vividly remember. The collective grief and rage of Lyra – rightly so – but everywhere, hard to escape from, knowing your own tiny speckness in it all, but it still lays you out crying and not knowing who or what to turn to.

I think this is why I am so afraid and Robert isn’t. He saw people feeling ready. My experiences of death have been people who are not. Who shouldn’t have died. This does not make me special. I am not unusual – lots of people have experienced lots of losses, and of people closer, in ways much worse. But I can’t picture another experience of death. I can’t form another image in my head that isn’t the face of people I have loved not being ready. And I’m so afraid for myself and the people I love because that idea is agony to me.

Whenever you’re ready

So, what’s this got to do with the Good Place? Are you just tagging your post this for the clicks?

No! Well, a wee bit, yes.

My second session was on a Friday morning. I love the Good Place. It’s something I watch with Robert, but I knew what was coming from the episode title. So before I went to my session, and without telling him, I watched it by myself. I knew I’d have a possibly unpredictable reaction to it and I wanted to be alone with it to process it a little. Which was just as well as I sobbed for about 2 hours and then had a panic attack for another.

How is that helping me cope with my fear of death?

Because I was still crying when I got to my therapy session. I didn’t stop crying all the way there, and I didn’t stop when I was there. I didn’t apologise and I didn’t try not to cry. I just kept at it. Had a cry, in public, in front of someone else.

How are you so certain?

The therapist asked me this when I told him what I thought happens when we die (nothing, basically). I’m not certain, I can’t be, nobody can be. But I’m as certain as I can be. And I think this certainty of one thing or the other is shaped by our experiences of death. If someone has a, “good death”, you could well imagine they are free and their soul has gone somewhere. Likewise, you could well imagine that is the end because they change so much in that moment- but either of those things, you can imagine and the imagery isn’t coming from fear.

I said I don’t find debating the what ifs comforting or useful. So maybe then what is the point of this therapy?

I still need comfort. I still need a way to navigate these feelings so that I can live my life. I have so many regrets and my absolute greatest will be that I wasted my life worrying about death. Because that wardrobe’s going to crash right onto my head one day.

“Picture a wave”…

I’d never heard of or read about Buddhist conceptions of death, beyond reincarnation. I am drawn towards the finite perceptions. I am drawn, generally, towards the topic, though also repelled by it. I can’t, for example, really tolerate graveyards. I hate zombie things, and I have a bit of a discomfort around, “old” things. But I like Camus and existentialism. It terrifies the shit out of me, but not in that cold, creeping way a graveyard does.

Other things I’ve read posit that we all become energy and give back to the world when we die. Through natural processes, through, “ripplings” as Irvin D Yalom described, through what we leave behind in art, love, music. So a sort of reincarnation, really.

There is one place I always find comfort, and that’s by the sea. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s something as elemental as the song of the waves. Whenever I’m feeling low or untethered, I am drawn towards it. Which maybe is why Chidi’s speech above gave me more comfort than I can express. It is an idea of death I’m okay with, and one I can intellectually reason with. It’s an oneness and going back to where you belong – not away from, not leaving. It’s a concept and one explored in public and collectively that helps me to find a language to express and explore it.

Love and grief

 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.

Nick Cave

It occurred to me in this session that I had stopped remembering the people I loved or cared about who had died. I had stopped recalling their faces (voices, harder). When I get too emotional or feel overwhelming feelings, I shut down. For all my splurging on here over the past decade, and on social media in the same, I am a guarded person emotionally in real life. I geyser out occasionally, then when overheated, shut down. Sometimes for an evening, sometimes for months. Sometimes it’s feelings that feel so private and personal and sharing them makes them someone elses’. But they’re mine.

I have been trying to forget. I have been dishonouring them by not allowing their ripplings to ripple. How do I remember?

Anyway. Here are some unformed thoughts on this unformed therapy and unformed focus. Will it help? I don’t know. At least I’m thinking about this stuff without my shut down switch going off. That’s progress, I guess.

My Friend, Brendan Hollywood.

I was asked to write something about my friend Brendan for Cook’d and Bomb’d, a prominent comedy forum on which he was a poster, and the stamping ground where we met, over two years ago. It was a kind of textual variation of, “Our eyes met across the room…” From his introductory post there, I knew he was amazing and that we would be friends. Now I walk past cafés and smile, remembering us in the window. It’s only been three weeks. Only one week since his funeral. It feels like a thousand years ago. Like it happened in a different world, to a different person.

I had to tell the forum of his death. It shocked people- he was incredibly well-liked, for his wit, his eloquence, his humanity and his intelligence.

I have never seen such a reaction on a forum. The internet is cursed and blessed for its facelessness and anonymity. We can walk as tall as supermodels if we desire; can be men or women, can be geniuses or fools. From anywhere, to anywhere. It is hard to miss people online; threads of communication can be abruptly stopped, for so many reasons, an identity, wiped, to be started again. And Brendan was utterly himself and he will be genuinely missed there.

Brendan was an extraordinary writer. He never wasted a word, he was gloriously gifted. His book, “I Am A Modern Monster”, about the life of Alex Tower, is a fantastic piece of work. You can read the first chapter here and you can download the whole book here. Please, if you know any literary types who may be interested in publishing it, pass it on. It truly is a work of splendour and it deserves to be read. Download it and you’ll see.

So, I wrote something about Brendan. It was difficult. His death has brought back a lot of memories about my dad’s death. Two people with similar problems that I loved and I couldn’t save, in the end. I close my eyes and see my dad’s deathbed and my dad, and I try to think of something else. At least London’s streets did not have our footsteps upon them; but they have mine and Brendan’s. Our routes, our cold arses shivering on plastic seats in an empty train station, I remember them all.

Above all else, I want him to be remembered. The pain of remembering is not like the pain of being forgotten. He will be remembered. Not just by me, and those that loved him, those that he loved, like his family, even those who only knew him by his words on a forum. I want him to be remembered by you, and everybody who reads this. Like I do with my dad, who I write about all the time, to keep him here, to let people know, he was here, this incredibly important person to me and to others, cannot be lost. Will not be lost.

I am posting it here you can understand who he was, to me at least. A tribute to my friend. I don’t think anything I say, do or write can do justice to the wonderful person that he was, and how much he is loved by me and so many others. But I tried.

Brendan Hollywood.

Neil has asked me to write a bit about Brendan. I’ve sat here for a good hour trying to put into words what kind of person he was. I can’t tell you who he was to the others that loved him; to you, to his family, to his other friends, to his lovers and companions over the years, because I can’t speak for anybody else. I can only tell you who he was to me.

If he’d been writing this himself, it would have been done and dusted fifty five minutes ago. Although there would probably be as many cigarette butts withering in the ashtray. The last time I saw him, we were wheeling a massive table up the Blackstock Road. It was about five minutes from my house but we took turns smoking the whole way there. We wheezed and puffed our way up three flights of stairs. Our hands- mine, short and stubby, his, long, slim and stained yellow at the fingertips- were shaking in the winter windchill as it blew our laughter into the afternoon traffic. Physical labour wasn’t something he was fond of- he could be incredibly lazy- but I needed his help, and he would never refuse someone in need. It’s weird to be sitting at the desk now, looking to my door, the last time I saw him, the last time I put my arms around him. He seemed out of sorts that day and hugging him goodbye after he drank the coffee I made him (I don’t drink coffee, but I always kept a jar in my flat for him when he came round, since he was absolutely hooked on it), I thought, I’ll see him again soon. I didn’t, I never saw him again, although we spoke many times. I was supposed to see him shortly before his death, and I missed him because I was asleep. He had always been there for me; and I regret deeply that in that last week, I wasn’t there for him.

If Brendan was writing this, every sentence would be filled with something self-deprecating. He could be a harsh critic of himself. In snatches of clarity, he could sometimes see himself how we saw him; how violently funny he was, how intelligent, how full of potential and talent. Every single post he made here sparkles with his customary wit. He was an extraordinary writer, but his confidence failed him often. He had already written two books, the latter, “I Am A Modern Monster”, constantly edited, sent to various people, seeking approval and reassurance that he was worth it, that he was a great writer. We could tell him til we were blue in the face; and one thing this forum offered him, amongst so many others, was the confirmation of his talent. He was instantly likeable. His friends I’ve met, and his family, all uniformly love and adore him, and believed in him, his talent, and his gifts. He glittered.

My friendship with Brendan actually started here. He was this funny bloke called john self. I was, then, Banana Woofwoof (“you can’t greet me with “Woof!” anymore- you have to say, “Hello! Here is my raincoat!” now…”) I thought he was fantastic, from the first introduction post that he made. It was clear from the offset that this was someone incredibly special. He sent me various PMs thanking him for being so friendly to him. I then convinced him to come to a meet I organised- which was, by most accounts, a failure. But I met him. I have never so immediately clicked with somebody. He was obviously incredibly nervous so I thought I’d say, “Shut up, newbie”, to him which for some reason made him laugh and we warmed to each other totally. We dispensed with the usual polite pleasantries and spent most of our time huddled together giggling. He made me laugh so much. There was a man at the bar- “the chinless wonder”, as we called him, we had created a whole life for. We renamed the area, “Smug Rapist’s Alley”- don’t ask.

From there, the complicated, wonderful Brendan Hollywood became a part of my life.

We saw each other often- he would rob the Silverlink of their paltry fares from his home to mine. We sat in many cafés, chainsmoking, then eventually going outside to smoke. We visited each others’ flats. He was the only friend I ever had who travelled across London at 5am just because I needed him. We met in familiar areas- Finchley Road, Finsbury Park, Crouch End, to sit in empty afternoon pubs, cokes in hand, talking about our days, our lives. He’d roll endless cigarettes, talk quickly, listen, laugh that uninhibited, wonderful laugh that he had, always dressed smartly, with ever-changing haircuts and ties. When we weren’t together in person, we spoke on all ends of the internet, on here, on MSN, on other websites we both frequented, on the phone, by text, smoke signals, Morse Code. I have chat logs, texts, e-mails, messages that at the moment I still can’t really bring myself to read through. We rarely ran out of things to talk about. Brendan, no matter what mood he was in, was always interesting.

Brendan had been through it. He had an alcohol problem that had landed him in rehab and hospital and had dogged him throughout his life. He also suffered from depression that he struggled with until his death. He could be, as well as hilarious and open, sad and withdrawn. Our friendship, when he was drinking, was fraught. I lost my father to alcoholism and I couldn’t bear to lose Brendan, too. In the end, it got to the point where I told him that I wouldn’t see him when he was drinking. I would talk to him, of course, and be there for him to talk to, but I could not see him when he was drunk. It was a bit of a rubbish incentive that worked up until a point. He would send long messages saying how he wanted my love of him to be “present tense”- “if it had been in the present tense, would have been a beautiful, wonderful, utterly-reciprocated delight. Sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? Anyway, I want that back; I want that present tense back”.

It was always present tense, though- I loved Brendan almost as soon as the first time we shyly met up, and did throughout our friendship, and will, forever.

I had been through it, too, suffering from manic depression, as I do, and landing myself in hospital. We actually bonded over that experience. He was a fantastic friend to me, and we were close. Brendan was one person who was understanding, someone who was patient, someone who listened to me, helped me, cared for me, loved me and most importantly, someone who made me laugh when the world seemed unfriendly and grey. No-one could get me out of a bad mood like Brendan. There was a time he came to visit and I was flipping out over something unimportant. The first thing he said as he walked through the door made me crack up laughing, and my anger was forgotten. With everything he had been through, he had time for other people, and he was someone to swap, “Fun in the mental hospital” stories with, although other people sometimes looked at us weirdly when we would laugh our heads off at tales of our outrageous behaviour, stories that are painful until shared with someone who had been there, too. I could tell Brendan anything. He was there for me through what were two of the most difficult years of my life. We confided in each other, sharing secrets, stories and cigarettes. We had fun, singing along to our favourites (Bowie, Morrissey, both whom he idolised), pulling ever more ridiculous faces while singing to make each other laugh. Sometimes, as you know, recording the awful results.

Brendan discussed his problems with alcohol and depression both in real life and here with a disarming candour that no doubt many people had found incredibly helpful. He was aware of his problems and he was strong, much stronger than he gave himself credit for. When he slipped, he would pick himself up again and again. His outlook on life, although sometimes tempered by depression, was almost unwaveringly hopeful. He talked about the things he loved passionately. The passion was contagious. His love was strong: for his family, for his friends, for writing, for comedy and music, for art, for untempered silliness and laughter.

So, I think I’ve gone on enough. To my extraordinary, complex, wonderful, hilarious, intelligent, witty, loving, fun, fantastic, courageous, giving, passionate, immensely talented chancer of a friend, I will give you the advice you gave me for the day I made my ascent: whatever you do, don’t kick god.

You are so loved. And you will be missed more than I can put into words.

The story of alcoholic liver failure

My dad’s death changed my life.

I had learned to live with his depression and alcoholism, but I am still struggling to learn to live without him. The memory I am clinging onto right now is Christmas 2005, the last time I really spent time with him, and the last Christmas my family shared with him. He didn’t drink the whole time, and it was wonderful. The last memory I have of him alive and well is sharing a taxi as I went to the airport to return to London. He could only go so long without drinking, and got out to go to the off-licence, paid for my taxi, and kissed me goodbye. I didn’t see him again until the last hours of his life.

He could be aggressive, angry, amazingly self pitying, violent, abusive, embarrassing, hilarious, political, sensitive, proud, loving, mad, silly. He was a deeply flawed, wonderful person.

I’m reading over old journal entries, starting from when my dad was admitted to hospital and ending the week after he died. That whole period lasted just over a month.
Masochistic, yes. But oddly comforting because he was still there, and for a while, I had dreadful hope. Sometimes I wonder how we actually got through that time as it was the most heartbreaking situation I’ve ever experienced, and I’m certain it was the same for my family. It is also reminding me how great my friends were when he was in hospital and of how brilliantly my family dealt with it. It was the one time my mum cut out her bullshit, and my big sister Paula, who was in hospital with him the most, was amazingly strong. Even my dad dealt with it with his customary cantankerous humour.

I found some photos I took on my camera phone on the day of his funeral.  In the PD (a pub) afterwards.  Actually having an alright time.  They put on a spread for us, for free, like they did when my granda died a few months before.

This is me- I had been plastered in make up that morning, and cried it all off.

Paula and her friend Adeline who came after the funeral:

Another of my sisters, Michelle:

I’m going to put the entries here, unedited, for the benefit of people who have been in that similar, not knowing what to believe or think situation. I’m also going to put normal entries here, that don’t mention him much, because that Life Goes On. I also want to put this here for my own bizarre reasons in that I like stamping my dad all over the world, no matter which way. It will be a very long entry.

If any of you manage to read this whole entry I will give you a prize.

What surprises me, but also doesn’t, is that a lot of the entries I wrote in that time were happy and hopeful because it was generally a nice time in my life, before it all kicked off. I liked my job, had a beautiful boyfriend and things, usual brain weirdness aside, were good. It wasn’t until the very end that I began to really believe I was going to lose my dad. The further down I read, the more I remember what that time felt like.

People ask me why I am so explicit and forthcoming with things like this. I don’t want my dad to be forgotten. And I blog like this because I want the stuff we went through to mean something, even if it’s just one person in the world who felt the same.

Anyway, click below.

Mental Illness and Mortality

Last night when my brain was car-crashing, I was reading about 10 articles per five minutes. One them was this about serious mental illness and mortality.

That was the article that triggered my panic attack. Here’s another:

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Clinical & Research News

Death Data Have Researchers Searching for Answers Eve Bender

People with serious mental illness are dying at higher rates and at earlier ages than people in the general population who don’t have mental illness.

Metabolic dysfunction caused by some medications may play a role. People with serious mental illness in one sample of psychiatric inpatients had more than three times the rate of death of those in the general population without mental illness and died an average of 32 years earlier.

The leading causes of death among people in the sample, most of whom were diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, were heart disease, suicide, accidents, and cancer.

The findings call for increased screening and monitoring of patients with serious mental illness for medical comorbidities, according to the authors of the study, published in the October Psychiatric Services.

Researchers collected medical information on 20,018 patients hospitalized on at least one occasion at one of nine hospital sites associated with five behavioral health care organizations in Ohio’s public mental health system between 1998 and 2002.

They matched patients’ hospital records with death records from the Ohio Department of Health and identified 608 patients who died during the four-year period (hospital deaths were included in the sample).

The patients who died had been diagnosed with a number of mental disorders, including schizophrenia (134), schizoaffective disorder (128), alcohol abuse (101), bipolar disorder (87), alcohol dependence (85), major depressive disorder (80), cannibis abuse (59), other mixed or unspecified drug abuse (56), and cocaine abuse (35). The majority of patients in the sample died from heart disease (126), suicides (108), accidents (83), or cancer (44).

Researchers also measured years per life lost for those who died, which is a measure of premature death based on the current mean survival age for a cohort matched by age and gender in the general population. Patients with serious mental illness died an average of 32 years earlier than patients in the general population, according to the findings.

The average age of death for the people in the sample was 47.7 years. When researchers calculated the standard mortality ratio for patients in the sample who died, they found 3.2 times the rate of death as that of the general U.S. population.

The most prevalent comorbid medical conditions for patients in the sample who died included obesity (144), hypertension (136), diabetes (70), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (62), and injuries (39). Among the 126 patients who died of heart disease, leading comorbidities included hypertension, obesity, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and disorders of lipid metabolism.

Previous research has yielded similar results. For example, a report released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April said that patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder lose as much as 20 years off their average life expectancy compared withsimilar individuals in the general population without seriousmental illness and had elevated rates of heart disease (Psychiatric News, July 7).

At a 2004 meeting convened by the American Diabetes Association and attended by several APA members, the organization issued a consensus statement confirming the risk of metabolic changes associated with second-generation anti-psychotics and calling for careful monitoring of patients on these medications.

In the study of hospitalized patients with serious mental illness in Ohio, researchers could not draw conclusions about cause of death. They speculated, however, that underlying factors may have included medication-induced weight gain, poor personal hygiene, reduced physical activity, increased prevalence of smoking and substance use, and inadequate social support, according to C. Bayard Paschall III, Ph.D., chief of the Ohio Department of Mental Health’s Office of Performance Improvement.

“The question is how we tease some of these characteristics away” from others to be able to associate them with cause of death for patients with serious mental illness, Paschall told Psychiatric News.

Study findings indicate a need for closer collaboration between psychiatry and primary care, according to lead author Brian Miller, M.D., M.P.H., a PGY-2 psychiatry resident at the Medical College of Georgia. In ideal circumstances, patients with serious mental illness could walk from their psychiatrist’s office to an office across the hall to see a primary care physician “who might screen them for some of the comorbid medical conditions we observed in our study,” he said.

In addition, he suggested that psychiatrists and other physicians treating patients who take second-generation antipsychotics carefully monitor these patients for side effects associated with metabolic dysfunction and also write orders for tests of fasting blood glucose, lipid profiles, and liver and thyroid function. Miller and Paschall are conducting further research on some of the factors that may be contributing to excess death rates among people with serious mental illness.

 

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I’m not sure what to draw from that as they don’t mention if the alcohol/drug abuse is co-morbid with mental illnesses. Still, it is sobering and frightening. Especially given just how low on the agenda mental illness is in Britain.

My dad died right on the money- aged 47.11 years.