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When I was growing up the favorite hue of a favorite aunt was anything but black. Any color was fair game for her closet. Evenings out were cloaked in patterns of pink (hot) and varying shades of red or wine (from Beaujolais to bordeaux). Church clothes were saturated gem tones – amethyst, lapis, citrine and amber. I was forced to go and change one Easter because my dark palette was offensive to the spirit of the Resurrection. Black was for mourning, maaaybe I could have gotten away with it on Good Friday.
Growing up in Toronto, the black scarfed avo was a staple of our Portuguese neighborhood. I finally asked my mom why a neighbor wore the same clothes every day and was shushed harshly. The harshness was more to do with my inability, at the age of six, to master whispering – we were passing by her porch, where she was inevitably seated. Like all unanswered questions I followed up and got my information at school. Not from a teacher, but the schoolyard. It turns out grandmothers were forced to wear black when their husbands died. Because dressing myself was one of my earliest forms of self-expression it didn’t seem fair or make sense, and it was probably the foundation of my early feminist viewpoint. Yes, I embraced feminism at the age of six.
But later when my mother and shusher died, I yearned for a uniform of grief, something that screamed to the world I was in pain. Today the LBD* is a fashion staple – every woman has one in her closet. Like most women, when I wear all black I look sleek and stylish, not sad. I wanted something that would be an indisputable signifier of mourning. Like the ID bracelets that inform perfect strangers of a lifetime medical condition or the Handicap placard that simultaneously explains and excuses the inconsistent driving pattern of the car ahead. It’s a tricky thing to equate grief with a handicap but there’s no question that we are temporarily handicapped by the psychological blow. Grievers vacillate between an anesthetized stupor and the screaming intensity of an exposed nerve.
In the first few months there was no rhyme or rhythm to the waves of grief, I was always caught off guard. I still am, but less so. But there’s no laminated card to hang from my rearview to let the world know what’s going on. The onus is on me to tell people and that is exhausting, but that’s another post. Anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you blurt out at the dry cleaners because the person ahead is harassing the clerk about the dangling button on their newly cleaned shirt. It’s hard to explain to strangers you just want to get home and have a good cry.
It’s pretty clear to me this is a First World/North American issue, there are plenty of cultures that have maintained symbols and traditions to convey mourning. I remember the pilot episode of SIx Feet Under summed it up beautifully. My mother was still alive but Nate’s memory of passionate Sicilian mourners and later tirade at his father’s funeral resonated deeply for me.
” … it’s like surgery, clean, antiseptic, – business. The fact remains the only father we’re ever going to have is gone. Forever. And that sucks but it’s a goddamn fact of life and you can’t really accept it without getting your hands dirty. I do accept it and I intend to honor the bastard by showing the world exactly how fucked up and shitty I feel he’s dead.” ~Nate Fisher
I feel less and less that I need a uniform (that masquerades as permission) to grieve. I’m okay telling the world, ‘today feels shitty without you mom’.
*little black dress
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