Grief in Unexpected Places: What Airports Teach Us About Love and Loss.

Departures and Arrivals: Invisible baggage

I've always been fascinated by airports.

Maybe it's because I travel so much, or perhaps it's because my work has made me a little more curious about people and the things going on in their lives that we know absolutely nothing about. I love people-watching in airports. You can learn an awful lot just sitting with a coffee (or something stronger!) and observing the world go by. Of course, you can also make up some wildly inaccurate stories about complete strangers, which is half the fun. But there's something about airports that I find particularly interesting. They're one of the few places where people experiencing completely different moments in their lives are thrown together, often sitting just inches apart.

Someone might be heading off on the holiday of a lifetime, while the person sitting beside them is flying home to attend a funeral. One person is celebrating a new beginning, while another is facing an ending they never saw coming. And neither has any idea what the other is going through.

I've boarded planes on my way to wonderful occasions, exciting opportunities and adventures I've been looking forward to for months. I've also travelled with a heavy heart, worrying about someone I love or dealing with something I'd rather not have been dealing with. I’ve boarded flights crying my eyes out because I had been robbed.

Yet when you look around an airport, everyone appears to be doing much the same thing. We're checking departure boards, queuing for coffee, trying to find a charging point and silently judging the person who has somehow managed to bring six pieces of hand luggage onto the plane. BUT you never know what was going on beneath the surface.

The person rushing through security might be desperately trying to get home before someone dies. The woman staring blankly out of the window might have just received some devastating news. And the person laughing with their friends at the airport bar might be heading to a funeral where they'll spend the next few days trying to hold themselves together.

That's something I've become increasingly aware of through my work in deathcare. Grief doesn't necessarily look the way we expect it to. We tend to associate it with tears and sadness, and of course those are part of it, but grief can be surprisingly ordinary. People still have to get up in the morning, catch flights, go to work and remember to put the bins out.

Life carries on, even when someone's world has been turned upside down.

I've always found that strange, actually. How something enormous can happen in your life, and the rest of the world just continues as normal. People are complaining about delayed flights, arguing over armrests and wondering whether it's too early for a glass of wine (never IMO), while someone nearby is quietly trying to process the fact that a person they love is gone.

And then there's the other side of it. The person travelling to a funeral might be genuinely looking forward to seeing family members they haven't seen in years. They might find themselves laughing over dinner, sharing stories and having a lovely time together, even though the reason for the gathering is heartbreaking. I think we sometimes make grief more complicated by expecting people to feel one particular way about it. We can miss someone terribly and still enjoy ourselves. We can be sad about a death and grateful for the life that came before it. Sometimes we can even feel relief, particularly when someone has been suffering. All of it can be true at the same moment in time. Perhaps that's part of why I love watching the arrivals hall. There's something lovely about seeing people searching the crowd for a familiar face. The excitement when they finally spot each other, the hugs, the children running towards grandparents. I can happily sit and watch it all unfold.

Departures can be just as moving, although perhaps a little harder to watch. Those last few minutes before someone has to go through security, when everyone knows they should probably say goodbye but nobody quite wants to be the first to let go. I have felt that heartache of the unknown - will I see them again? When? And sometimes, of course, it's just a couple arguing about who has the passports.

Working in the memorial profession has probably made me more conscious of these moments than I used to be. When you spend so much time hearing people's stories, you realise how much is happening in other people's lives that never makes it into everyday conversation. It's also made me think about how quickly we judge people. We get annoyed when someone holds up the queue or seems distracted. We assume the person who doesn't acknowledge us is being rude. Maybe they are. But maybe they've got something going on that would make us see them very differently if we knew about it. I certainly don't manage to remember that every time someone cuts in front of me at the airport, but I'm trying! I think that's really what fascinates me about airports. All these people passing through the same building, each carrying a completely different story, briefly becoming part of one another's day before heading off in different directions.

Some will be back in a few days. Others are leaving somewhere for the last time. Some are going to see someone they love, and others are travelling because someone they love is no longer there.

Most of us will never know which is which.

So perhaps the next time you're sitting at an airport gate, take a moment to look around. You might find yourself wondering about the stories behind the people sitting beside you.

And maybe give someone a little extra patience if they seem to be having a difficult day.

Because while we might all be carrying roughly the same luggage allowance, what we're carrying emotionally can be very different.

We grieve because we love.

And airports, with all their hellos and goodbyes, are a pretty good reminder of just how much.

— Jennifer Muldowney
The Glam Reaper
Muldowney Memorials