My grandfather died last week. It was brain cancer–stage four when they caught it in December. A kind of twisted Christmas present from the cosmos, I guess. I called him when I heard the news and was struck by how cheerful he was… and how sad that made me. But he was a cheerful man for all his life, or at least the years I knew him. But his chipper mood turned more somber and determined as the call turned to news in my life.

I’m getting married in a week, by the time you’re reading this. He told me he was going to make it for the wedding. I told him he didn’t have to, but even though the tumour had pressed against the part of his brain that affected speech, I could tell by his tone that he needed it as much as he wanted it. It gave him a goal—a thing to fight for. He almost made it.

I arranged to visit him in February, to spend a week helping him and my grandmother with his recovery. By that point, having anything less than a casual conversation was difficult for him. He had the words and the memories and everything in his brain, but the cancer was holding them on the tip of his tongue. It was frustrating for him to know the word for coffee, but needing to absently grasp toward the mug instead. Or to look at his wife and not be able to say her name. I knew that it also meant he hadn’t had the chance to fully process or articulate the way he was feeling about the last months of his life.

It was during that week I learned he was a Buddhist. My grandmother told me, lamenting that she wished I could have spoken to him before the cancer had set in, to see how bright he was and how similarly our interests and values aligned. On one of our walks around his neighbourhood to keep him moving, I decided to ask him about it. I knew it would be difficult but I knew it would help him. I hoped it would help me, too. As soon as I asked him, he lit up. Like he had grown tired of practicing how to identify colours or the words for household items and was waiting to talk about what really mattered. But I could tell he was annoyed that as difficult as the immediacy of his surroundings was to talk about, abstract concepts of philosophy were all but lost to him.

I asked if I could be his voice for what he was thinking about, so he could hear it out loud. He said “yes, please.” I talked about the impermanence of life, about how all we had was this very moment, about how desire was the root of suffering, about how our conduct in our lives matters more than the consequence of it. And for a few minutes, he managed to speak like he wasn’t sick. We veered into comparisons between Stoicism and Buddhism. About how the Stoics saw love as appreciation much like the Buddhists. About how the Buddhists discussed reincarnation, while the Stoics regarded our death as a reintegration. We talked about how we’re all just clumps of the cosmos observing itself—stardust that can laugh and cry and get cancer and love one another. As we spoke, I could see the elation on his face… and relief, too.

We didn’t discuss it after that, but he was calmer. My grandmother noticed; she said that our conversation was the best thing I could have given him. When I left that week, I knew deep down I wouldn’t see him again, and he knew it too. We hugged, we thanked each other, and we said goodbye.

What grief really is

I woke up on a Monday morning to a text that my grandfather had passed away. He went in his sleep, two weeks after learning that the treatments weren’t working and two days after saying he was ready to go. I was prepared for it, but I still wasn’t ready. None of us are, and the ones who claim to be are lying just as much to themselves as they are to you. I’ve written before about how Stoic love should allow you to think of those no longer with us like we do about a walk through nature, warmly recalling the details. “The chipmunk that quirkily rests atop a stone. The leaves of a tree rippling softly in a breeze. The clouds floating and dissipating high in the sky above. The creek gurgling below your feet.”

When I wrote those words, I said that you wouldn’t feel despair at their passing. I still don’t, but I do feel sadness. And pain. I heard this quote from actor Andrew Garfield, who had recently lost his mother, and I think it gives me all the context I need to understand the distinction between grief and despair:

Grief is the unexpressed love we have for someone who is no longer here to receive it. Grief is inevitable, and that grief will remain with us always, because we always have more love to give.

We always have more love to give. Whether you’re an old Buddhist or a young Stoic, whether you’re married over 40 years or less than 4 days from your wedding. No matter where you are in your life, you always have more love to give.
I loved my grandfather. I’m sad that he’s gone. And if you were to ask how to console me, I’d ask that you tell me he loved me. Tell me he wanted me to be happy. Tell me that none of us are ever truly gone. Remind me that the love I held for him can now be shared with others. He wouldn’t want me to keep it to myself—to let it gnaw at me with no outlet to release it. Because that love—if denied—that turns into despair.

John Kuna is a Stoic prokopton, writer, and dog lover. He likes digging deep into Stoic theory, but also writing accessible and inspiring Stoic content.

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