As I said in a previous post, I recently lost someone close to me. I had thought to keep it to myself, but since then has been so interesting I think I'll come clean and talk about it, perhaps because someone else out there might have had similar experiences.

So here it is. Five weeks ago my son Rafik died from an aneurysm - a vein ruptured in his brain.

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It was a terrible shock.

And all the clichés come to mind - how he was just finding happiness and peace for the first time in his life - about how he was finally getting on top of the long lived problems he'd had - how he was loved because he'd made himself into such a good man - about how he'll be missed. All those clichés that one hears on the television when someone dies, and arrogantly thinks , 'couldn't they have come up with something more original than that?' But then it happens to me and I find myself uttering those same clichés - simply because they're so damned true.

And then there's all the other clichés, from people all around: 'I'm sorry for your loss', and the like. When heard from a distance, they sound so trite - and yet how meaningful they become when one's own heart is bursting with loss. And you are so appreciative of the heart that those words came from, that felt so deeply it has to be carefully controlled, and packaged in the safe haven of a cliche, for the benefit of you both - to honour the fact that they cannot possibly know what you're feeling; and to keep from breaking down because so much has yet to be done and tears are not useful now. Until Rafik died I never realized all this - the beauty and care of those carefully given clichés.

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Superficially, I have no problem with death - no illusions or fears. Death doesn't spook me, nor does it particularly worry me, and I'm not particularly fussed about my own oncoming death, whenever it happens.

I've been close to death a few times - those times most people experience in the course of a life, when death flitted past just a millimetre away - when if I had have been a second earlier, or later - or taken a left turn instead of a right, I would have been dead in a flash.

In those times, as I listened to the imperceptible shuffle of death’s slippered feet fading away, while giggling insanely from the adrenalin rush of my escape, I've always been amazed by how profound the effect was of that proximity to my own death. Nothing brings such unspeakable clarity to the inexpressible exquisiteness of life as a brush with death. As Samuel Johnson is reputed to have said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully".

As one who has always been curious about death, I had the opportunity a number of years ago, of watching an autopsy (research for a book). A friend who was an ambulance officer at the time dressed me up in one of his old uniforms and signed me in as a trainee. It was fascinating. I saw a large man about 30 years of age, lying on a gurney with his eyes open and I could swear he was still breathing. And even as he was slowly gutted and de-brained by a medical examiner, still I could swear he was breathing.

So when the examiner extracted his heart and took it away to a nearby bench to be dissected, as he lay there his abdomen splayed open, I went up and looked down into his eyes, and I could have sworn at the time they were looking right back into mine. I kept thinking any minute he would sit up on the gurney and say, 'Bloody hell, what's going on?' - that it was all a mistake.

These uncanny hallucinations, of him still breathing, of his eyes being about to blink, all indicated to me that my brain was having great difficulty making sense of the stillness of death - the incredible incomprehension of a lack of life.

What made this all the more odd was, when I’d been a kid living in the country death was everywhere - as most country kids can attest. I’d seen ailing sheep shot. I’d killed thousands of rabbits, some with a gun, others with my hands. And though sometimes I’d paused after breaking their necks and felt their hearts speed up with the last burst of life, falter and stop, still I'd not given it much of a thought - just slung them onto the wire with all the rest of the dead rabbits and walked on. But then, as I think about it, perhaps it had been that in my ignorant country-boy universe of the time, it simply seemed normal for animals to die, yet utterly unbelievable for humans.

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So too is it still unbelievable - even now, five weeks away from Rafik’s death.

The strangest thing is, in my surface intellect I have rationalized that shocking event and packaged it neatly, ready to be stored away. When I look into my thoughts now there are no more tears or grief. And if someone were to ask how I feel about Rafik being gone, I’d be likely to say, ‘I think I’m cool with it now’. Because I think I am. I understand I’ll never see him again. The gone-ness of his going is fully comprehended now. Superficially, one could say I’ve let go and am ready to move on with the rest of my life

But wait. There’s another level to all this, but it’s not something I can express, or even understand with the mind I’m used to understanding things with.

It’s a body thing. It's like my whole body is thinking, and digesting this recent event at its own pace, quite apart from my mind/brain.

Like, it feels as if there's a deep, deep rumbling right down in the subterranean caves of my being - an immense back and forth tidal movement as if the entire inner core of my personal planet is still in turmoil as it tries to find equilibrium, while all is quiet on the surface.

And this inner dissonance has profound surface effects - I find myself feeling such ridiculous things - sudden and intense rage with no source or focus, sadness for no reason, exhaustion that comes down in an instant, inexpressible despair which, like mould in the tropics, appears from nowhere and covers everything.

So I meditate on it. I deep sea dive down into the sensations in my heart and in my body and, where usually I can manage to find the source and open it up - this strange ruction of my being appears to have no source. It’s almost cellular and as as such I cannot quantify it or even say for sure that it exists, except that I feel it.

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This silent rumbling and clashing of rocks deep in my private universe - it’s so much a force of nature I am awed by its power, and by how little I am in control of it. I feel almost humbled by it ... and somewhat embarrassed, because I am reminded that when I was a counselor, I had a number of clients who came to me with similar reactions to the death of someone close, and though I suppose I might have asked the right questions, I know now I never really understood the depth of what they felt - and how confusing it must have been for them.

Because there is no explanation!

I feel such intense things, yet I cannot explain - and that’s what makes it so strange. The disconnect between the event of Rafik’s death, and what I feel is so incredibly profound that if I was of a panicky kind, I would think I was going mad - because there is no control of this force. There is not even a sense of being able to predict its patterns because it doesn’t appear to have any.

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Another interesting thing is how isolated one feels - an intense loneliness that is not the fault of anyone, because it’s not about the lack of people. It's something else I can't get a grip on. Profound loneliness.

Very strange, because I’ve never felt lonely before. Not really. I’m not the lonely type. I never pine for people, because I”m very happy with my own company. But now I have these surprising moments when I pine for the company of others. Yet I cannot imagine who I’d want to see, or what I’d say to them if they were to come.

I think, ‘what do I want from all these people whose company I don’t usually need? Why do I pine for their company?’

I don’t know. And that’s terribly confusing on its own.

So ... there you go. This too will pass, but all the same, it’s very interesting while it's here.

Thanks for listening. It’s nice to talk ...