The Shape of Emptiness

Or, what happens to us when we die

I’ve lost three friends this year. Three friends. Important people. People who were important in different ways. I wasn’t able to tell two of them they were important. And now it’s too late.

That’s the thing about death.

How do we go forward and comfort ourselves when we lose people? When we can’t say the things we should have said? What happened to them? Where did they go?

We all ask ourselves these questions throughout our lives. I remember when my dad died when I was 24, trying to be brave and feeling utterly lost. I remember being on a night out with friends a few months later and suddenly feeling overwhelmed by this question of ‘where did he go? Where is he?’

By the time my stepdad died when I was 33, I knew how to survive a death, my medicine was keeping things close, going back to basics: eat well, sleep well, exercise. No big groups until you feel safe again to be out in the world. It’s the advice I give others now, even when they haven’t asked for it.

What happens when we die? …