Good grief

My father, Carel Aron Nolte, died on Thursday. 31/05/38 – 16/04/26.

Even writing that feels rather stark and strangely insufficient. A life reduced to a sentence. A moment. And yet, anyone who has lost someone knows that the sentence is only the beginning. What follows is layered, uneven, deeply personal.

Grief is not neat. It is not linear. It is not something to be solved or managed into submission. It simply is.

I have found myself thinking a lot about how differently we all process it. There is no playbook. No right or wrong way. Some people cry openly. Some retreat. Some talk. Some cannot find the words. Some need company. Others need space.

I fall somewhere in between. I acknowledge the loss. I do not try to sweep it away or pretend it is not there. But I also work. I organise. I keep moving. I write. Much of my processing happens internally, quietly, in my own head and space. And I am deeply grateful to those close to me who understand that and give me the room to do so.

Grief, in that sense, becomes both deeply personal and strangely universal. It connects us all, yet isolates us in our own experience of it.

We all die. That is the one certainty we share. And yet, many of us still live as if it is optional. As if we can somehow defer it, outsmart it or avoid thinking about it altogether. I am not sure that serves us well.

There is something grounding, even liberating, in accepting that this life is finite. That it is, in the words of Mary Oliver, our “one wild and precious life”.

What comes after, we do not all agree on. I am a Christian, and I believe that there is more. That death is not the end. But regardless of where one lands on that question, this life remains extraordinary. A privilege. A gift.

And like all gifts, perhaps it demands a more considered response.

To live fully. To love well. To show up. To make mistakes, to acknowledge them, to ask forgiveness, and to try again. To understand that the highs are only meaningful because of the lows. That joy is sharpened by loss. That success is deepened by struggle.

My grief reminds me of all of this. It strips things back. It forces clarity.

Losing a parent carries its own particular weight. It is not just the loss of a person, but the loss of a layer of one’s identity. A reference point. A mayor piece of your own story.

And losing both parents shifts something even more profound. I’ve become, in a very real sense, an orphan. That word sounds harsh at 52, but it is accurate.

And yet, what a privilege it is to only reach that stage at this point in my life!

What a gift to have had parents for so long. To have been shaped, guided, supported, challenged and loved through formative years and far beyond. Not everyone gets that. Many lose parents far earlier. Many never have that stability at all.

Perspective matters.

I think of John Steinbeck, an author my father read widely when he was my age, who wrote often about the human condition with a kind of clear-eyed honesty. In East of Eden, he reminds us that life is a series of choices, of moral reckonings, of trying and failing and trying again. Death, in that context, is not an interruption but a conclusion to a story that was always meant to be lived in full.

There is also something in the writing of C. S. Lewis, another man my father referenced to me as he worked out his own version of faith, that has stayed with me this week. His reflections on grief, particularly in A Grief Observed, are unflinching. He does not dress it up. He does not pretend faith removes the pain. If anything, it sharpens it. But he also shows that grief is, at its core, the price of love. And that, surely, is a price worth paying.

Closer to home and my Afrikaans roots, C. J. Langenhoven (whose writings I recently rediscovered) reminds us of the importance of humour, humility and perspective in the face of life’s biggest questions. There is a cultural inheritance there for me, a love of language and story, that shaped my father and, I think, through him, shaped me.

And then there is the work of The Marginalian, which I often return to. Its essays on loss and the death of a parent are thoughtful, expansive and deeply human. They certainly are helping me at the moment. One idea that strongly resonates with me is that grief does not (should not) get smaller over time; rather, our lives grow around it. It becomes part of us, woven into who we are, not something to be discarded or “moved on” from.

That feels very right to me as I also celebrate with immense gratitude all the other people who have influenced my life and who have died.

I found myself this weekend thinking about a song I heard recently, Don’t Let the Old Man In. It is simple, but it carries a powerful message. My father did not let the old man in. Not for 87 years. He worked until the day before his stroke in January. He stayed engaged. Curious. Present. Supported by Annemarie in that – something for which I owe her deeply.

That is no small thing. It is a privilege to be able to live like that. And it is something I hope to emulate.

We will gather on 30 April at Mark’s Higher Ground, St Stithians to remember my dad. The same place where we celebrated his 80th, my parents’ 50th anniversary, my mother’s wake, my 40th and so many other moments. The broader Saints campus has been woven into our family story in a way that is difficult to fully articulate.

It will not be a religious service. It will simply be a moment. A space for friends and family to come together, to remember, to share, to mark the passing of someone who meant a great deal to many people.

We will probably speak more then.

For now, I keep coming back to something I have written and spoken about before. The idea of giving yourself a gift. A great gift. The gift of no regrets.

Especially when it comes to death.

Grief is heavy enough without the added weight of things left unsaid. Calls not made. Time not given. Forgiveness withheld.

Say what must be said. Do what must be done. Do not wait.

Because when the moment comes, and it will, you want to be able to grieve cleanly. Honestly. Without that quiet, persistent voice asking “what if”.

Good grief, then, is not about the absence of pain. It is, for me, about the absence of regret. It is about knowing that, imperfect as we all are, we showed up. We tried. We loved.

And that, in the end, is enough. And it is good.