Symptoms of Death

While reading Sympathy by Virginia Woolf, I realized that much of what comes from death besides grief is sympathy and regret. We see regret in the reading through the narrator asking questions such as, “What did he mean? Why did I say nothing to make him explain? Why did I let him go with all that he might have said unsaid?” (Woolf 108). While grieving, we are often faced with “what could have been”, regret in things we did not ask, thing we did not do with the deceased.

Through the experience of death, part of what those who are left behind face are being closer to death. Not as in they are dying, but through experience. Virginia states, “So, from an express train, I have looked upon hills and fields and seen the man with the scythe look up from the hedge as we pass, and lovers lying in the long grass stare at me without disguise as I stared at them without disguise. Some burden has fallen; some impediment has been removed. Freely in this fine air my friends pass dark across the horizon, all of them desiring goodness only, tenderly putting me by, and stepping off the rim of the world into the ship which waits to take them into storm or serenity” (Woolf 110). Virginia is describing what death looks like in this part of Sympathy. While describing death, we get the idea of just how seeing death everywhere can be a symptom of experiencing death. Once you have been around someone who has died, you realize that death can happen to anyone at anytime.