Dealing with death

Last night I gave my mother the Morginblaðið page that had my brother's death announcement. Obviously she was upset, but then she began to speak of how much better Icelanders do death than Americans. There is a feeling in Iceland that everyone has suffered a similar loss, everyone understands the pain and anguish involved, and indeed almost a sense of shared national mourning since everyone, I mean everyone, gets a death announcement in the paper. The response I got from co-workers in Iceland was really amazing, so heartfelt. In California, where I am now, although my friends have been good about it, a quite common response is to say something like "I just cannot imagine what your family is going through." There is in fact some sort of pressure for us to then create a narrative for their consumption, a narrative not only of "who" he was, but also of our grieving process, a Hollywood "happy ending" if you will. "Oh, it has been really terrible, but we are pulling together, all of us."

I would not say that Icelanders are always so good about dismissing image and narrative as meaningless, but in the end, when it comes to the place where words fail and emotions take over, they know that all of that is but a shell.