In Which I Wonder Why I'm So Calm When People I Know Are Dead

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I am I think a man of many normal emotions. I can be happy, angry, passionate or humorous.I can also be caring and definitely grumpy. And yet if there is one thing my emotional DNA stops me from doing it's grieving when another person is no longer with us.

Was reminded about this a few days back when contacting my mother and could only hear tears on the other end of the line. Eventually she told me that a relative had unexpectedly died of natural causes.

My instant reactions were as follows:

1) Relief that my mother was fine given her problems earlier in the year.

2) Surprise that a good person had died so unexpectedly

3) Sadness

4) Calm

When I told wife/daughter about my relative's passing, their reaction was only on a level slightly below my mother's. They started looking at Facebook and Instagram accounts of that person and reminiscing.

Me? I went to bed.

Now let me stress before I go on this person and me got on fine. And, as I said before I'm genuinely sad at her passing. Also, and this I must stress as well, my reaction was not unusual in the face of death. Even my father's. He was a man I loved and admired very much. A man who I miss with every day that passes. And yet when he died as my mother was so (understandably) distraught I spent the day after at the hospital, the church, the registrar of deaths and the funeral directors. Other than specific details of the service which needed my mother's input I just unemotionally dealt with arranging the service and subsequent burial.

So then why is this? There are three obvious explanations.

1) Some sort of British "Stiff Upper Lip" thing?

2) Some sort of Machismo thing

Or, as my wife put it

3) I'm a cold fish.

Of course I don't know the answer or what can be done. And as the years roll on I'm more conscious of this now than when I was younger.

Perhaps the real answer is that when it's my turn to die, I feel unless it involves extreme pain I'm going to be equally calm at my own death. That is really how I would like to go.

Quietly.

Until the next time.