Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

Author:Cecile Pin [Pin, Cecile]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-01-09T17:00:00+00:00

The International Classification of Disease, maintained by the World Health Organization and used globally as a standardised diagnostic tool for illnesses, was published in its 11th edition (ICD-11) in 2022. This iteration introduced a new disorder called Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD). To be diagnosed with PGD, six months must have elapsed since the death of a loved one and the severity of grief still high enough to significantly impair one’s life, at work or personally. Some of the symptoms include ‘confusion about one’s role in life or diminished sense of self’, ‘difficulty accepting loss’, ‘numbness’, and ‘bitterness or anger related to loss’.

In other words, PGD is diagnosed when one’s grief is no longer considered ‘normal’. There are social expectations that grief will gradually diminish over time, in a matter of weeks or a few months. Anything besides the occasional moment of sadness that extends beyond this timeframe signals a state of mental illness, which should be treated and resolved.

On the other hand, there are people who do not grieve and who are deemed monstrous. When I was a teenager in sixth form, I read The Stranger by Albert Camus. It was the book all the cool kids were reading at the time, sixteen years old and suddenly cloaked in existential dread, their cigarettes in one hand and the novel in the other as they waited for the school bus. It follows the story of Meursault, a young man living in Algiers who receives a telegram informing him of his mother’s passing. He attends her funeral, where he appears dry-eyed, smoking and drinking coffee in front of her coffin. Later in the day he encounters Marie, a previous acquaintance, and they go swimming and then to the cinema to watch a comedy. When he stands accused of murder later in the book, the prosecutor uses his apparent lack of grief as proof of his soullessness. This, the prosecutor argues at the trial, is a clear indication that Meursault is a murderer: surely, a man who does not mourn his mother must be a monster. He is sentenced to death.

I didn’t like the book when I first read it, though of course I pretended I did. I was frustrated by Meursault’s passivity, bordering on idiocy, and by the prosecutor’s focus on extraneous information. ‘Overrated,’ I concluded, as I shut the covers and put it back on my shelves.

Four years later, long past sixth form and secret cigarettes, my great-aunt passed away. She had been ill for a long time, her memory a shadow of what it once was, her speech opaque. I didn’t know her very well and I was sad, but our closeness was insufficient to provoke a strong emotion.

My family and I travelled to America for the funeral and I looked out for her oldest son, my great-cousin, at the ceremony. ‘He decided not to come,’ my mother said as I asked her where he was, and I was stunned. I mentally admonished him. ‘Shame on him,’ I thought.

We met my great-cousin the next day outside his law office for a short lunch.

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