Naked Grief

A few years ago comic-book writer J.M. DeMatteis put Spider-Man into a murderous rage against one of his long-time foes, the chameleon. He was basically fit to kill. At the end, however, Chameleon had some kind of nervous breakdown, and as a result Spider-Man couldn't push through with clobbering him with the huge tombstone he'd been about to use to bash the guy's head in. The rationale the writer gave was that 'such naked anguish is hard to look upon.' I don't know whether or not DeMatteis coined the phrase, but it left quite an impact on my mind, such that fourteen years after reading that comic book, I find myself revisiting, if not slightly altering it to describe the collective experience of mourning Jay Tan.

The outpouring of grief during his wake and funeral mass was unlike any I'd ever seen, and although I'm not what I'd call a regular at such events, I've been to more than my fair share. Of course, considering how dear Jay was to me it was fairly easily for me to be swept up in the tide of grief; though I had cried a fair bit in the first few nights of the wake, it turned out, a bit to my surprise, that I was basically just warming up for the grand finale on the day of his funeral. Even through my own tears I could see how many others were being shed for such a dear friend, a son, a brother, a cousin...a great person in general.

Grief does strange things to people; during the last night of his wake a large number of people ranging from his co-workers to his friends to his immediate family had quite a few stories to share and some of them would have been pretty embarrassing to the speakers themselves under any other circumstances, but it didn't really matter. This was the last hurrah, on this earth anyway, of someone whom everyone gathered had loved in one way or another.

DeMatteis' choice of words, i.e. 'naked' and a word equated to profound sorrow, just feels completely appropriate; other writers may have used 'stark' or 'pure' but 'naked' just works so much better because of the things associated with the word: vulnerability, shame, discomfort among other things. People (theoretically) get naked with and in front of someone with whom they feel an emotional bond.

There we were...a whole bunch of naked people. Some were less comfortable about it than others, but even those most determined not to show too much emotion found themselves crying. In one instance, I consoled a friend who had been hell-bent on keeping in the tears...but failed. I said, "it's all right; it's for Jay anyway."

Just as Jay would have wanted, we will get over him; the healing process has already begun. But it's certainly going to take awhile. I hardly think Jay will begrudge us that.