Gareth O'Callaghan: Finding comfort in the mystery of grief during the Christmas season

One such moment happened to me on the train back to Cork last week. Since it was almost Christmas, and I was feeling sorry for myself, because of a heavy cold that had been hanging over me for a fortnight, I decided to spoil myself and pay the extra €20 for a seat in first class. 

It’s about as luxurious as public transport gets: A wide Pullman-style seat, a free coffee, and a quaint lamp by the window on the table in front of me.

I counted 11 others who had availed of the swank as I also watched out my window at the hundreds of passengers piling into the lowlier carriages, where you would usually find me. But not today. 

'Ghost' of Christmas past

And then it happened. I was settling in to the journey, when — in what felt like a movie in slow motion — I noticed my father sitting two rows ahead of me, facing in my direction on the other side of the carriage.

He was reading a magazine, wearing one of his familiar cosy pullovers, occasionally inching his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose; just as he would do when we would sit in my parents’ kitchen drinking tea and chatting. 

It was one of those heart-missed-a-beat moments that left me speechless, if only because my father passed away six years ago; a huge loss that impacted me deeply, and still does, especially at this time of the year.

In that second, the likeness to my father was uncanny — his nose, his jawline, his hair; such was the overall resemblance — whoever this stranger was. He looked up towards me and nodded, as though he knew me from somewhere. 

Suddenly, he looked different. While this man was my father’s living doppelganger, he wasn’t my father.

For the remainder of the journey, I couldn’t help stealing a glance at him every chance I got. He left the train at Thurles. It was an experience that has stayed with me since, although it wasn’t the first time it occurred. 

It seems to happen around Christmas each year, when I least expect it. The first ‘sighting’ of my father was on the Christmas Eve of the year he died: It shook me to the core, possibly because I hadn’t experienced anything so otherworldly in decades.

Years ago, when I was much younger, I had similar ethereal experiences after my grandmother passed away. I was 20 when she died, and had been very close to her. 

Similar to my experience last week, on the train, her likeness would appear in the most unexpected places, including one morning, years later, while I was driving to work. 

I had stopped at a red-light pedestrian crossing, and, suddenly, there she was crossing the street in front of my windscreen. She looked me in the eyes and shot me the briefest of smiles. My heart melted. It was her; except, of course, it wasn’t. 

As I looked more closely at her, I realised her face was not the face of my grandmother, but a stranger’s.

Cynicism could have ensured that my curiosity didn’t run away with itself. But some things in life mute cynicism, such as experiences like these that go beyond even the deeply personal, to a place within that twins the sheer happiness of childhood memories with the nagging pain of lasting grief.

Grief

Grief never goes away. The price of real love is that it can’t be exchanged for any other experience except grief; the latter being the inevitable outcome of the former.

During my childhood Christmases, we spent a lot of time in my grandparents’ house. My favourite place was kneeling up on a chair in the kitchen by my grandmother’s side, while she baked scones and kneaded the dough for brown bread.

I would set out the baking trays and the mince-pie tins, while she made the trifle sponges. Her Christmas cakes and puddings were the stuff of legend — recipes handed down from her own mother on what were now tanned pages of neat handwriting, instructions and measurements and incidental side notes.

I would see her in the most random places for years after she passed away. They were comforting reassurances that while she was no longer here in the physical sense, she was still watching out for me; as though they were a reminder that life goes on after death in a way that can often be too overwhelming for those grieving the loss of a loved-one to understand.

Asymmetrical encounters

I LATER found out that these often bewildering sightings are called asymmetrical encounters, and they happen to everyone and not just to people we think are ‘clairvoyant’.

It all happens in an unexpected, split second, when the grieving person catches sight of the face of their much-loved deceased parent or child in a stranger they encounter; but when the stranger looks back, all they see is the unfamiliar face of someone they don’t know. 

A profoundly deep recognition suddenly becomes a sharply felt, one-sided case of mis-identity, and it can be shattering to a grieving person. It’s almost as if those earliest moments of raw grief flare up and swallow you all over again.

Grief is like stepping off a familiar path in a dark forest, and this asymmetrical encounter can feel cruel, because it can shake up the submerged pain of grief and the profoundly lonely sense of loss.

Many people who have experienced such encounters often say they felt cheated, while others cherish them, those briefest of moments when they relive the joy of seeing a loved one brought to life in the features of a stranger.

Grief plumbs the human condition to a cellular level of emotional hurt, one where there are no words to describe its pain. Any respite from grief’s private journey is a welcome relief. I haven’t been able to locate much research into this phenomenon, which others might simply pass off as a trick of the light, or a form of daydream.

Nick Cave

However, musician and writer Nick Cave, whose 15-year-old son, Arthur, died in 2015 (another son, Jethro, died in 2022) acknowledges these somewhat lonely, yet mystical, encounters in the ‘Red Hand Files’, his online journal. 

There, he answers questions from fans on topics he describes as “a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency”.

“Often, while grieving, many of us are gripped by a form of madness, and start to believe, against our better judgements, all manner of lunacies and magical thinking,” he writes. 

“We believe our loved ones visit us in our dreams, we see them across crowded rooms, we think we hear their voices, we believe they inhabit other forms, we feel their ghost-hands in our own, we experience their presence all around.”

Cave’s advice to us is to “quietly, covertly, embrace the mystery that presents itself. It is yours alone”.

May you feel the joy of love from those you love this Christmas.