“I think . . . that the thing about losing someone isn’t the loss but the absence of afterwards . . . The endlessness of that.”

Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Grief is such a difficult feeling to portray because it looks different for every single person. You also have to factor in that the circumstances of every loss are going to be different. That being said, when you find a story that effectively and completely delves into that, even if limited to the experience of just one individual, it can be as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes a fictional depiction of grief “good” or “bad,” but I can always identify the best of them because the emotion that it brings out is so hard to replicate.

There is nothing I love more than a story that makes me cry. I don’t cry easily when it comes to fiction, so when something elicits that kind of response in me, it’s memorable. All that being said, let’s take a look at grief as a process through some of my favorite stories about grief.

Disclaimer: As I’m sure you’ve gathered based on the subject matter, this is not going to be a particularly fun or lighthearted read, so keep that in mind as you proceed. It was hard to write at times, but I really wanted to share these thoughts. Read in your own time, at your own pace.

There is a particular reason I chose to write this now, and it’s because of the first story I want to unpack: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I sat down last Sunday and read this book cover to cover. And then I just kept thinking about it. No joke, it was 4am that night, and I was just sitting in bed thinking.

The very first line of this book sets us up perfectly: “The deep sea is a haunted house, a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.” What I expected to be a horror novel about the deepest depths of the ocean turned into one of the most moving accounts of grief I can think of. This opening line turns into a sort of metaphor for the circumstances of the book. Leah, one of our two narrators who is married to the other narrator, Miri, has just returned from a deep-sea expedition gone awry. It is immediately apparent to Miri that something went horribly wrong, as the person who returns to her is not her Leah. Physically, she’s the same woman, but she’s not there like she used to be.

“Grief is selfish. We cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person.”

- Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

We as the reader also learn, as we get more into Miri’s head, that she has thought a lot about her own potential death, but not Leah’s. It seems that she has always subconsciously assumed that she would be the one of them to die young, saying that she “would look into the mirror and imagine only [she] could be, in any sense, finite.” Along with that also comes this feeling of hoping that she’ll be the first to die so that she won’t ever have to live a day without Leah, which she finds to be a very selfish desire. The reality is that, more likely than not, one of them will outlive the other, and therefore one of them will have to suffer that loss. 

What makes this story even more fascinating is that Miri doesn’t realize that she’s grieving. By all accounts, she got Leah back, she came home. But there’s an understanding underneath it all that Leah will never again be the person she was. It asks a complicated question: how do you even begin to grieve someone who is still sitting right in front of you? Especially in this case, where this is the person Miri has shared her life with. Leah has always been her most consistent support system, and Miri is reluctant to look elsewhere for that support out of the feeling that no one else could possibly understand what she’s going through.

“Support system” is often a phrase that comes up in conversation with grief. Grief is something that can be so isolating, but there’s also a lot to be said for allowing yourself to find new connections at a time when you feel so alone. Easier said than done, obviously. Which brings me to what I find to be a lovely story about finding connection through grief: Big Hero 6. 

I think it’s important to bring this movie up because it is notably made for a younger audience. There is a heavy burden on a storyteller to find the best way to present grief to children. The reason it’s so crucial is that, unfortunately, profound loss can happen to anyone, no matter how old or young. Big Hero 6 is a movie about a young boy named Hiro who loses his older brother, Tadashi, in a fire. He ends up teaming up with Tadashi’s friends to uncover the true cause of the disaster.

Hiro, as a person, often feels very misunderstood, and what makes this so heartbreaking is that Tadashi was the one person he felt truly did understand him. We see Hiro grieve in a lot of different ways in this movie, but we also see him find community among his brother’s friends (as well as his medical robot, Baymax). They also cared very deeply about Tadashi, and they want to get their own answers while also looking after his younger brother in the wake of his death. Baymax himself also feels more like a manifestation of Tadashi’s memory because he was created and programmed by Tadashi.

Being so young, we get to really see Hiro go through many of the different emotions that can often accompany grief. At various points in the story, he isolates himself, he lashes out, and he pours himself into his work so as to not have to think about Tadashi’s death.

The idea of the five stages of grief can often be misconstrued because not every person is going to experience them the same way, or even in the same order. As a refresher, the five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Depending on the person, they may linger for longer in one stage or another or even skip some. However, that doesn’t mean it can't be effective storytelling to have a character move through these stages in a cycle.

As I’ve said before, my favorite story that deals with grief is the TV show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. The show is about a professional coder named Zoey Clarke, whose father is dying from a neurological disease. By the time the show starts, his condition has deteriorated so that he is no longer able to speak, and therefore he is unable to communicate with his family in any substantial way. This ties into my earlier points about grieving someone you know you’re losing while they’re still there.

We do see Zoey move through the stages of grief pretty clearly throughout the show, both leading up to and after the actual death of her father. I think it’s particularly interesting to see her making her way through the stages of grief before her father dies, almost trying to preempt those feelings, only to have to go through a lot of it again once he’s actually gone. Prior to his death, she experiences denial (ignoring phone calls from her family and doctors about her fathers worsening condition and lying about it to friends), anger (lashing out at friends, family, coworkers, and her dad’s caregiver), and bargaining (pleading with her dad to stay and thinking there must be something she can do to stop things from getting worse). Shortly following his death, we see more of the depression, resulting in Zoey refusing to go to work, hiding in her room, and ignoring attempts from friends and family to reach out and check in. It culminates in a truly heartbreaking moment six weeks after his death where Zoey confides in her close friend, Mo, that she doesn’t know if she’s ready to go back to her normal life. He tells her that, as tough as it is, she can’t continue living in a bubble and not making decisions for the rest of her life, because the world is moving on without her.

This show is an incredible example of how grief seeps into every part of a person’s life, from their work to their personal relationships. We don’t just see it in Zoey, either. Her whole family is going through this loss together, her mother having lost her life partner and her brother and his wife giving birth to their first child just days after Mitch’s death. And it doesn’t matter that they knew it was coming, because it hurts just as much.

Along with the loss of a loved one also comes regret, the what-ifs and unanswered questions, especially when it happens abruptly and with no warning. Life is Strange is my favorite video game, and it’s all about what-ifs. This is not necessarily a story explicitly about grief in the way that some of my other examples are, but grief does define this narrative. There are many analyses of this game and how its chapters could potentially be reflections of the five stages of grief, and I do intend to do a full breakdown of the game itself at some point in the future. For now, though, I’ll say that this narrative revolves around death. I know that sounds very bleak, and it is. 

If we want to look at this game in consideration with the stages of grief, the protagonist, Max Caulfield, spends a lot of time in denial. In my opinion, the most critical point in the plot of this game is when Max goes back in time to try to save her best friend, Chloe’s, dad from dying. However, as is the premise of this game, actions have consequences. Max would do anything to protect Chloe from the pain she endured after losing her father, but she ultimately can’t, and we have to watch Chloe bear it. That’s not the only loss that occurs in this game, but I’ll save the spoilers for another day. I do, however, think it’s important to acknowledge another difficult aspect of grief, which is how to support a loved one who has lost someone. It’s unbelievably hard to watch someone you love suffering and being unable to do anything to take their pain away. That’s how Max feels throughout this game, and it’s only exacerbated by the fact that she has these time travel abilities and still can’t change things for the better. 

On unanticipated loss and the what-ifs, my final example is Andrew Haigh’s film All of Us Strangers, which came out in 2023. The story follows a screenwriter named Adam reconnecting with his parents who died when he was a young boy in this surreal, dreamlike setting of his childhood home. We get to see him say the things he will always regret never being able to say to his parents, having lost them so soon, but ultimately he can only imagine what their responses would be. There are so many things that he never got to work through with them, and the relationship is very complicated. 

That’s the last layer to my discussion here — how to grieve a person with whom you had a complicated or even troubled relationship. As this movie shows us, that’s not easy. I think that some people can find healing in forgiving someone after their death, but death also does not absolve a person for their mistreatment of others. How does one even begin to reconcile those two things? Unfortunately, there’s not one easy answer, and that’s what this movie addresses. Adam wants to reconcile with his parents, but he will never be able to. He is forced to carry all of his memories with him without ever being able to unpack them with the two people who are largely responsible for them.

These stories are only a few of the many that exist about grief, but I am grateful to their creators for being willing to take on something so difficult and heavy. These are not easy stories to tell, just as they are not easy stories to watch, read, etc. As I said before, though, the best stories to me are the ones that make me feel, and I can’t deny that’s the case for the ones I’ve covered here.