Appropriate Grief
When we lost New Zealand writer Aroha Awarau in January, it knocked the breath out of me. Larger than life Aroha, with his trademark full-body giggle and endless selfies - his coy expression belying the fact the photo was almost always his idea. He died from cancer just a few days before his 50th birthday.
Aroha spent years proudly working for the NZ Woman’s Weekly as a journalist, a career that ran alongside his remarkable success as playwright and screenwriter.
He had also made a recent return to the comedy stage which is where I’d met him 26 years ago – he was a fresh face and I was already part of the furniture. Enough for Aroha to ask me to mediate in a backstage brouhaha involving another comic who had a long record of backstage brouhaha. I did my best to broker peace but honestly, Aroha and I mostly rolled our eyes at each other and sighed, and that felt sufficiently productive.
Aroha found better things to do – journalism, theatre, film – and we saw each other round the traps as you do in the small town that is our entertainment industry. He was making a serious comeback to stand-up with a solo show planned for this year’s NZ International Comedy Festival. There will be an Aroha-shaped gap in this year’s programme, and in our community always.
I didn’t know Aroha well, but I knew him for a long time. There is a weird thought as you grieve someone about whether you have a right to grieve this much. Is your grief the wrong size for a someone not a close friend, but a longtime friend?
And what if we lose someone we’ve just met, but have come to know deeply? What’s the right size grief for them? Either way, we feel the loss of what might have been.
Every death is a message about mortality – theirs and ours. About fragility. And a strong message about grabbing life with both hands and doing it fiercely.
Every death is exhausting, even when you don’t have to do anything but show up. But how lovely it is to show up, to hear the stories you didn’t know, as well as ones that are familiar.
Aroha’s celebration – his Final Production as he’d titled it – was a full house of family born and made, with writers, actors and singers honouring him. It ended with a standing ovation. He would have loved it.
There are old friends and new ones in the crowd. I meet Jason who says, “You whakapapa to Tauranga, don’t you?” I reply that, “I have family there, yes,” which I realise is the most Pākehā response possible. Turns out we are related by marriage – or as I’ve learned to think of it, through my daughter’s whakapapa.
I have arrived part way through this conversation where Jason is describing to our shared friend Donna how, in Te Ao Māori, you are welcome to come grieve at any tangi. Which is why, Jason says, you will meet whānau from the iwi over the hill at your marae - paying their respects, yes, but also grieving for whoever else they carry in their heart.
It makes me think of that time decades ago when I went to a boyfriend’s nan’s funeral. They were a particularly stoic family. I’d never met his nan but I was the one crying.
It may take many tangihanga, many funerals, many ceremonies to release the tears, process the loss, absorb the shock. We can allow ourselves whatever size grief we feel.