There is nothing decorous about it.
It's physical. Raw. Visceral. It manifests in tears, in lethargy, in sleep and sleeplessness, in nightmares, in searing pain and numbing cold, in the disconnection of mind and body.
Yet we, as a society, try to avoid it. We speak of it only in hushed tones and do our best to ignore it, as if by avoiding it we can will it out of existence altogether.
We will never win.
Grief will get in, with or without our help.
All we can do is survive.
*
Catherine Owen knows all of this. She can smile now, even laugh, as she shares her story. But the truth of it, the raw reality of the journey she's been on, is evident in her controlled tone and in the earnest, honest eyes that look across the table at the Heritage Grill.
Owen is an artist, the creative force behind the art that surrounds us on the warm orange walls. The exhibition of photos is called Skins (of grief), representing three stages in Owen's journey to deal with the grief of losing her spouse, Chris Matzigkeit, in April of 2010.
He was 29 when he was found in his truck on the side of the road in downtown Edmonton, dead from a crack-induced heart attack. They had been together for eight-and-a-half years, years of intense love and companionship, of creating music together, building a life together.
At first Owen could do nothing but sleep and cry and cry and sleep some more.
Not only was she dealing with the grief of an unexpected death, but with all the associated guilt and stigma attached to the fact that drugs were involved - and that, despite her love and her support, Chris hadn't been able to overcome his addiction.
She sees, now, what a fragile person he was; she understands, after years of reading, more about the complexity of addiction and the enormous uphill battle of overcoming it.
"It's so hard when you love somebody to give up that kind of hope," she says.
She got through it with the help of those who reached out to her - with small gifts that reminded her of Chris, or by coming over to watch a movie, or order a pizza, or just cry with her.
But Owen learned how the world at large seemed to want her to just let it go and move on, to quit talking about Chris, to quit dwelling on his loss, as if somehow the very act of grieving was holding her back.
That reaction, she's come to understand, is the product of a society that no longer in any real way acknowledges death - unlike in past times and in other cultures, where death has been surrounded by ceremony and ritual.
"We're so not used to seeing the dead anymore," she says. "We don't wash them, or dress them. ... We may not even see them. They are just disappeared. I don't know how you can connect to loss if you can't even process that they're dead."
It's particularly true for those who, like Owen, have no connection to organized religion - those who must create their own rituals to help process the reality of their loss.
Owen knew that, for herself, she needed to confront her loss and her grief in the best way possible - through art.
She recruited the help of her best friend, Karen Moe, a photographer whom she's known since university.
Together, they embarked upon the photo shoots that were to become Skins (of grief).
For the first, they took a hike out into the forest. It was July 11 - exactly three months since Chris's death and, as it happened, Owen's own birthday. She carried with her Chris's ashes. She covered herself with them - first on her face and neck, while wearing her chosen black velvet dress; later on her unclothed skin.
It was a way to connect physically with Chris, with his loss, with her own grief.
She buried the rest of the ashes then, under the cedars in her parents' front yard. It was one step forward, one step to moving on.
The second step - and the second photo shoot - helped her to deal with the inevitable process of getting rid of the loved one's belongings.
She took some of Chris's clothing and wore it for the photos, wrapping herself in the feel and smell of him one last time.
After that, she says, she could put them in storage; she didn't feel the compulsion to hang onto them, to sniff them again looking for his scent, to wear them to bed at night.
It was another step forward.
The third and final photo shoot in the series was designed to embrace the moving forward of their relationship. She put on some leather clothing Chris had made for her and, again with Moe behind the lens, shot a series of erotic photos to celebrate that relationship - the acknowledgement that, as has been said, death ends a life, not a relationship.
"There's still this evolving relationship. There's still this desire to connect in a new way," she says. "They're still present for you."
For each of the shoots, Owen told Moe what she wanted to achieve; Moe, she says, served as the "midwife" to the creation of the art.
"She was unafraid, and that's what was crucial," Owen says.
Each of those three shoots allowed Owen to move through her grieving journey and to deal with what she needed to do in order to move forward in life.
At the same time, they became a powerful statement for her as an artist.
The photographic works of art that resulted became part of Visualelegies: Art, Act, Artifact, a group exhibition of grief art that ran at Vancouver's ARC Gallery in 2014.
Owen is thrilled to have the chance to show them again - in an expanded exhibition that now covers the walls of the Heritage Grill's main room.
She's grateful to owner Paul Minhas for allowing them to be shown, recognizing that the work may not be what some expect to see over drinks and food.
Owen acknowledges that the work has raised a variety of reactions from people.
"I've dealt with everything, from welcoming this expression of grieving to just hatred, real anger that I was doing this," she says frankly. "I have definitely faced opposition, but I have faced more support."
Each time the art is seen, she says, there's an opportunity for people to connect to their own personal stories of loss and grief.
For many people, she notes, death and loss are things they never consider - until it hits them, often unexpectedly.
"It wasn't something you were schooled in from early on, that people are going to die and you're going to have to deal with it," she says.
What she knows, now - with the wisdom that comes from five years of coping and creating and reading about death and loss and grief - is that each person dealing with loss must confront it head-on, in whatever way works for them.
"So much pain comes out of not being able to find closure," she says.
And that means people shouldn't fear talking about it, or immersing themselves in grief - as she did with her art, not just the photography series but with poetry, non-fiction, music.
"For awhile I thought, 'This is it, my whole art work is going to be consumed with death work,'" she says with a wry smile. "But it hasn't been. If you don't deal with it, it's always going to sit in you, as the stone within. ...
"It doesn't mean you're going to be sitting around depressed all the time. You're just propelled by that loss.
"You have much more to fear about NOT talking about it."
And she doesn't wallow in self-pity that she has had to cope with such loss at her stage in life. Rather, she accepts loss as one of the possible consequences of choosing to love.
"You just love somebody, and you have a life with them, you have no idea what it's going to bring you," she says. "That adventure can turn any way. That's the beautiful, terrible price of love."
Owen welcomes anyone who'd like to discuss her work to email her at [email protected].
