GriefSPEAK: Dread. Fear. Welcome relief. – Mari Nardolillo Dias

by Mari Nardolillo Dias, EdD, contributing writer on grief and grieving

Death doesn’t take reservations. If he did, Carlotta would have made them. Years from now. Unfortunately, her doctors notified her only this morning that the cancer is stage 4. Inoperable. No treatment available. Six months, tops. How could this happen?

No symptoms, just an ordinary annual exam. She told me that she believes she was forewarned by a woodpecker in the wall of her house, pecking out what seemed to be Morse Code. You… are… dying… or perhaps it is a mockingbird, doing what she knows best. She tells me her regret tastes like the silt from Narragansett Bay. Gritty, grainy, indigestible: her fear smells like counterfeit cologne. Malodorous. Unwelcome.

At the age of 51, Carlotta lived her life like many of us. Unquestioned, with death in the far distance. She couldn’t see it even if she squinted. Not even with the telescope she used to view the Devil’s Comet.  And now this. Death lay his head on the pillow beside her, like a formerly unknown lover who decided to stay. Uninvited. 

Carlotta speaks to me about the once insignificant peccadillos which she is now fixated with. She knows this is just a distraction from the inevitable grave. She bemoans the thought of dying, being remembered for awhile, and then soon forgotten. She feels incomplete. Unfinished. Her solution?  Carlotta decides to do something, anything spectacular, within the next few months. Again, six to be exact. Perhaps she might prolong the remembering of her with some wild, bold action that creates a legacy. She ponders, “What will be written on my gravestone? Should I be cremated or buried? What shall I wear, eat, hear, touch, for the remainder of my life?”

Of course, I have no answers for her questions, whether practical or existential; however, I do have the ability to facilitate this surreal experience. Help her wrestle and pin the fear, the smell, the taste. When it comes to dying, dread and fear are common companions. And in the process of dying, Death becomes a welcome relief.

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Dr. Mari Nardolillo Dias is a nationally board-certified counselor, holds a Fellow in Thanatology and is certified in both grief counseling and complicated grief. Dias is a Certified death doula, and has a Certificate in Psychological Autopsy.

Dias is Professor of Clinical Mental Health, Master of Science program, Johnson & Wales University. Dias is the director of GracePointe Grief Center, in North Kingstown, RI.  For more information, go to:  http://gracepointegrief.com/ Dr. Dias is the author of GriefSpeak