Not long after my mum died, I talked to a friend’s mother about grief, and I compared what I was feeling to the loss she was experiencing after her husband’s death. She smiled warmly and reached out to hold my hand, explaining in the gentlest voice so as not to upset me that it was very different because losing your partner, your person, is unlike anything else. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I do now. My person died in 2020, and while the act of grieving shares many things, the loneliness and emptiness of losing the person you share your daily space with is very particular.
When we moved into an apartment building in 2021, it was the tail end of two years of Melbourne’s hard lockdowns and a year after my partner had died. Like most households, we’d been inside for much of this time, away from the random interactions with strangers that usually filled our days. It had been many years since I’d lived in an apartment and I’d forgotten the unavoidable intimacy of sharing walls and common spaces with so many people.
At first I worried that perhaps it would be too much living like this. I thought I wanted space to grieve alone, but within months of moving in, I discovered I enjoyed the closeness of apartment living. I started seeking out familiar faces and stopping for a chat on the stairs as I returned with a coffee or left for one. Because I was now on my own for many hours of the day after my kids had left for school, these little interactions became important. I began to make friends, trading stories of lives lived before. I discovered the joy of a ready-made community, something I was craving after the pandemic had forced us to live so separately. But the most unexpected joy came from the connections I made with people who understood grief.
There is a tolerance required in living so close. I can hear my neighbour’s music, the bark of their dog, their voices late at night and sometimes even the flush of the toilet if I’m in the right room. They too must put up with the various instruments my children play and me yelling that it’s time to leave for school. The longer I live here, the more I understand that like in any community, there are allegiances and allies, friendships and not so much, but the building hums along in a mostly harmonious way.
Perhaps it is this forced intimacy that has opened me up to sharing with some of my neighbours in a way I do not always share so easily with my friends. Few of those closest to me have seen me cry about my partner’s death, and yet I have cracked open with relative strangers who happen to live close by.
One of the women I’ve become friendliest with in our building is someone whose husband died not long after my partner did. For years we’d passed each other on the street when I lived around the corner and we’d smile a little, nod perhaps in acknowledgment, but we’d never really spoken. And then one day we bonded in the car park, somehow discovering we had both lost our person relatively recently. There was an ease to our conversation and within several coincidental meetings we were offering each other support. Had we not lived in the same apartment building and used the same lift or left through the same exit, we probably would never have met. But now we are friends.
With her, I can shed whatever pretence I might have and expose a vulnerability that can be hard with someone who doesn’t necessarily understand my grief. She can look at me and know immediately how I am feeling, identify the sleeplessness or the slightly withdrawn air. She doesn’t need me to pretend because she is living it too. We drink wine together and spill secrets. We laugh and share anecdotes about the people we miss. There’s an unspoken understanding that regardless of how well we function day-to-day we are both still shredded on the inside.
Sometimes when I’m with her, I find myself thinking back to that conversation I had with my friend’s mother all those years ago and realise she was right. It is a different sort of grief. A lonelier grief because you are now a one, when before you were a two. And that requires a complete reimagining of the life you thought you’d have. For me, there has been great solace in sharing with those who understand it best. It’s my personal version of a grief club. And I don’t even have to leave my building.
