This photo is mostly generative AI. I found a tiny thumbnail of a time before core memory, a mere 960 x 899 pixels and 336 kilobytes of perhaps the most important document in our possession, and ran it through Photoshop’s “generative extend” tool, because I barely recognized it. It was already uncanny.
There’s my mother and father, but who is that child? I asked mom and she, with a slight hint of urgency, solved the mystery:
“Habibiii it’s youu.”
It just didn’t look real. Even the kid looks mildly suspicious.
So, I ran the generative fill again and again until its uncanny unfamiliarity leaked through the surface. Artificial hallucinations putting digital flesh and bone to the hauntings of the past.
There’s a solipsistic insularity to grief. The source of our pain is witnessing another becoming wholly other, an unfathomable leap at the very edge of our imagination that fills us with both terror and sorrow but leaves us trapped in our own inadequacy to comprehend.
Comprehend (v.) mid-14c., “to understand, take into the mind, grasp by understanding,” late 14c., “to take in, include;” from Latin comprehendere “to take together, to unite; include; seize” (of catching fire or the arrest of criminals); also “to comprehend, perceive” (to seize or take in the mind), from com “with, together,” here probably “completely” (see com-) + prehendere “to catch hold of, seize.”
Death is the absolute limit of comprehension. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to join in with, nothing to keep. Death is the taker. Death is the separator. Death is the letting-go. And so, we grieve instead.
Grief (n.) early 13c., “hardship, suffering, pain, bodily affliction,” from Old French grief “wrong, grievance, injustice, misfortune, calamity” (13c.), from grever “afflict, burden, oppress,” from Latin gravare “make heavy; cause grief,” from gravis “weighty” (from PIE root *gwere- (1) “heavy”).
Heavy in our bodies. Heavy in our memories. Heavy in our regrets. Heavy in our aliveness.
I have not wept since hearing the news of my father’s passing, but I cried for hours when he first entered his death pangs. He endured five days of agony. That alone is cause for relief. But I know that my sorrow is deeper than tears now.
I grieve the son that should have become for the father that could have been. I grieve the passage of time that will memorialize a man as past, one heartfelt condolence at a time. I grieve the practicalities that will make death more manageable for us still living. And I take solace in knowing that one day, I’ll stop grieving and start comprehending, crossing that unfathomable passage myself.