The New Reality

Sadly, I know a few people who have lost someone very close to them, unexpectedly, unfairly, suddenly.In most conversations with these friends they talk about a new reality. The death of their Mother, their sister, their child, created an earthquake in their daily life that, in the aftermath, did not return to life as it had been, but rather forced them into a new world. For sure I have experienced this with the death of my sister, in ways too common to write about - in the way my relationship with her family, with my parents and with my other sister, have shifted - but also in ways completely unexpected, and seemingly out of the blue. A few months after my sister died, I took a month off sick. I was exhausted from the trauma of the previous months. My GP thought I needed to rest. I did too, but on my first day away from work I put on my walking boots, grabbed my Oyster card and instinctively sought out a part of the city I had never visited before. I spent the day exploring back streets and staring at unusual buildings and exploring whole boroughs. I did it again the next day. And the next. By the end of that month I had rediscovered London through some of its most beautiful sights - Highgate cemetery, the back streets of Bloomsbury, Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill - and through some of its grittiest districts - Dalston, Peckham, the East End.  And something else had happened. I had, somehow, unaccountably, suddenly developed an interest in art exhibitions. Here's the thing. I have never been interested in art. Pretty much all my life I have found art galleries pretty yawn inducing. Music was where I got my creative inspiration - playing it, singing it, listening to it. After my sister died, music became unbearable. Listening to it, and in particular singing it, would break up my insides even if I was having a good day otherwise. At my local community I would routinely find my cheeks wet after singing along to a melody wholly unconnected with my bereavement - indeed, it still happens six months on, regularly. So I have stopped playing my piano or guitar, I rarely listen to my favourite tracks, and will often spend my Friday evenings at my community sitting dumbly by, deriving comfort from the community but wholly unable to participate without unravelling. Looking at beautiful things, on the other hand, seems to have grown out of my month of walks. Julian Barnes, who lost his wife five years ago, has published a book recently in which he describes his seemingly unaccountable interest in opera after the death of his wife. Before then opera had seemed incomprehensible to him. After his bereavement it was as if the emotional outpouring of opera seemed totally normal for someone whose emotions had been subjected to pain and loss so unbearable that opera seemed like a natural expression of it. I read this with dawning understanding. This could explain my reaction to art. Grief and loss had not just temporarily made me more emotional - they had broken me up with pain, and as a result different things now moved me. I derive enormous comfort from taking in beauty through art. My next London walk, which I now do monthly, is to the Tate Modern, a place I would normally avoid like the plague, and my plan is no more than to wander till I find a piece that arrests my eyes, and sit in front of it for as long as I feel the need. Can it be possible that something so terrible as the loss of someone you love from an illness you can do nothing to prevent or cure, can produce positive responses such as these? Is this what healing is about?