On dying & grief (postscript)

It did not take long after I had written and distributed the body of this essay (i.e., Parts 1-4) for me to find out what grief in losing a close friend would look like. On June 2^nd of this year (2023), my high school basketball coach and dear friend, who is referenced in this 5-part essay, passed away very suddenly while working in his yard. This was entirely unexpected, as I know he looked after himself best he could, even going to the gym several times per week.

I was on a motorcoach driving assignment in Dartmouth, NS the following day and was sitting in the bus in a parking lot, waiting for my passengers to be done with their activity inside. The phone rang, showing an area code and number I did not recognize but I picked it up for some reason anyway. It was my coach’s (he will always be my coach) daughter, who told me straightaway that her father had died very suddenly the day before. 

Looking back, it is interesting to gauge my response at that time: I was gobsmacked and very confused – all I could do was repeat, “I’m so very sorry!” about a hundred times because I just did not know what else to say and did not want to believe what I had just heard. I almost wanted to argue: “No, you can’t be right!” – it just did not make any sense. Overall, my feelings and responses were unlike those in the wake of any other death in my lifetime – this one really cut to the quick.

I was starting to arrange my affairs so that I could go to Manitoba for the funeral but I was dismayed to discover a day later that no public funeral service would be held. This was in accordance with his wishes and reflected the kind of humble person he was; he just thought that there was no need for any fuss once he was gone. While humility is rarely anything but laudable, the absence of a funeral resulted in a whole lot of people not having the chance to come together to mourn and to celebrate the person who had given so much to so many in teaching and coaching over the years (the condolences found on his obituary page in the Winnipeg Free press are a clear testament to this). 

I personally needed to grieve – a lot – and would have loved to do it alongside my coach’s family and my former teammates, but this was not to be (although I was very grateful that the family allowed me to write something that his daughter read at the private family service). I would have to navigate the grief process a different way.

It has been interesting as to how that grief has manifested since early June. For instance, since we moved to the East Coast in 2019, I had been looking forward to having my coach visit us here. Well, that unfortunately never happened, but I certainly dreamed that it did and I have to admit that I found this extremely comforting – dreams play an important role in grieving and sometimes in healing grief, as I have since learned.

I have also written a bit of poetry about this particular loss and continue processing my grief through writing this very piece, as well as through discussing all this many times with my patient and empathetic wife. Overall, this is the one passing that has caused me to grieve for longer and in a more profound way than any other.  The question is: why?

I think there are a number of reasons. One is that he was one of the final connections to my life in Winnipeg and to a time that I will always cherish. High school is not a joyful memory for everyone, but it was for me because my coach and my teammates made it so. It was not all smooth sailing, but I often wonder what would have become of me without the purpose and identity that being part of that team gave me. I now not only grieved the loss of that connection, but grieved the swift passage of the years since that connection was forged. “Yesterday” becomes “a long time ago” in the blink of an eye.

Another reason for my level of grief is that he had such a profound impact on who I eventually became. He was the best male role model I ever had, and that is saying something, as he was only 27 when he started coaching us. 

And it didn’t stop there: while we were not in constant touch over the decades, we had opportunities to get together from time to time and he was never very far from my thoughts. Then, in early 2018, when I was fortunate enough to be awarded the University of Alberta Augustana Campus Alumni Citation Award for 2017, my coach came to Alberta to watch me receive it and even managed to join me at an early morning open basketball practice at the middle school where I was coaching at the time. It felt like the circle had been squared and that I was honouring him by doing what I was myself doing with young athletes. 

The friendship continued when we moved to the East Coast in 2019. He was always checking on us, making sure we were getting through some of the hellacious storms we get here from time to time. All in all, I was grieving this loss on so many levels – a loss of what used to be many years ago but, perhaps more importantly, a loss of what had even been a concrete presence in our lives here in New Brunswick. There would be no more phone calls, asking how we are doing.

Finally, I think that my coach’s passing was a stark reminder of my own mortality and that realization engenders its own kind of grief. I noted earlier in the essay that, in some sense, you are not really a grown-up until you have buried both your parents. Well, I had done that some time ago already but I perhaps did not fully understand the extent to which my coach’s presence in my life staved off the last vestiges of not being parented in any way.

As I said, when it comes to grief, there is no set time to “get over it” or to “move on” and that is a good thing, since my coach’s passing has had an impact and timeline all its own. With tears still welling up from time to time, I have now experienced a kind of loss that was unfamiliar to me to this point and now understand better the grief and grief responses that I have seen so many times in others. At this point, his absence plumbs the depths of my grief in a way that no other has yet done, and my outward responses to this grief reflect that. He left too soon and I will miss him dearly.