Mourning the loss of "Why"

First, I must make my apology for being silent for an extended period.  Suffice it to say, it was unavoidable and I will do not wish to bore you with the details.  I will say that recent events have left me in reflective mood; hence the subject matter today....

I have been tasked to support literacy in a class where many of the students speak English as a second language.  After the first lesson, I realised that grammar and spelling were not the issue.  The difficulty arose on interpreting the wording of the essay questions.  Students would wax lyrical about a subject without getting to the real meaning of the task.  It struck me that this is a difficulty I, and many autistic people share.

I spoke at length with their teacher about strategies for helping them with the questions which involved stating their understanding of psychologically-influenced decisions, and the discussion inevitably led to talk of our experiences of perspectives and misunderstandings.  My colleague mentioned a funeral he had attended many years before;  that of a male colleague who had died in an accident.  He mentioned the reaction of the man's autistic teenage son who, mid-ceremony, had turned to his grieving mother and asked if they could 'get a dog now'.

Now, I have a particular difficulty with emotionally charged situations, especially those as heavily shrouded in social rules and ritual as funerals...  I remember the funeral of my own father, when I was 17, and the huge anxiety I felt.  Interestingly, the anxiety was caused not by 'grief', but by the fear of not knowing how to 'act' at such an occasion.  The vignettes of outpourings of grief exhibited by the the other people at the funeral were at once fascinating and bewildering to me.  I did not cry, and although I was sad about the loss of my parent, I don't remember 'feeling' any different than usual. (I have strong emotions, but most of the time I struggle to connect them to particular experiences.) It did not affect me acutely, in the way it clearly affected others in my family. But I certainly felt shame. I could not conceive of trying to 'act' a certain way for fear of being 'found out'. I even spoke with friends at college and asked about grief, what it felt like, how it should be shown and how long it should last etc.  I waited for the feelings of grief (as described by my fellow students) to begin.  They never did.  What did affect me, was the clear concern and judgement on the faces of those who realised I was not reacting in the usual way.  I don't doubt the boy my colleague spoke of noticed peoples' shock and even disgust at his words.  I cannot bring myself to attend family funerals, to this day, for this very reason.

I thought about the boy my colleague mentioned and, after many years of avoiding the subject, I realised a sad truth.  It is not that I did not experience grief - it is just that grief is a constant. In one of our many TA workshops, Peter Flowerdew talks about 'the loss of "Why"  I must confess, the significance of this eluded me for some time, but I think I understand it now, and it is dangerous territory.

So, the "Why" refers to the process of making sense of the world around us.  It is about the journey we take through our experiences and the lessons we learn from them.  It is how we acquire the answers that allow us to grow in confidence and navigate the chaos that is life, and in the answers, we take comfort.

I crave answers.  Like many people with Asperger's, I am fanatical about researching, learning and sharing information, but there are vast tracts of my world that will always be closed to me:

I grieve for the things I have lost and the things I will never have.  Every day.  I grieve for the unspoken moments I have missed, the expectations I have not lived up to, the experiences I couldn't share, the joys that didn't register, the opportunities I never saw, the disappointments I have proved.  I grieve for the friends I will never make, the belonging I will never experience, the camaraderie that cushions, the intimacy that soothes, the feelings and perspectives I will never understand.  (Regardless of new skills and perspectives... the volume is too great.)

Do not confuse this with regret.  Regret infers that there might have been another outcome had different choices been made. Grief is the response to the tragic, unrecoverable events that may happen without warning and despite our every effort.  Grief is my background.  My baseline.  It is the expectation of loss that insulates me from it.  My emotions are nerves stripped bare, the comfort of 'why' is absent, and I dare not dwell on it.

It is this fear that has me looking to the repercussions of actions, instead of indulging my emotions. (I do not have the experience or skills to indulge anyone else's.)  It is this that has me looking to the future to find new problems that I can fix, and this, I suspect, that led that boy to be thinking about a dog, when 'he should have been' mourning his loss to the world.

I don't mean this to garner pity.  Just perhaps to shed a little light on what might appear to be heartless, emotionless behaviour at a time when everyone is vulnerable.  Consider those who are so vulnerable, they cannot afford to show it.