Still Standing: Phoebe Bridgers and Grieving Complicated Relationships
Lost Weekend, the latest album from Phoebe Bridgers, opens at a funeral. “Crying in a suit and tie,” she sings. “But you should see the other guy.”
It’s a fitting start.
Bridgers has always been open about her strained relationship with her dad, referencing “textbook domestic violence,” “a drug thing,” and tweeting, “God gives his s***tiest dads to his strongest soldiers.”
She was just as open about their reconciliation in 2020, calling him a “very weird combination of emotionally unavailable, but very present.”
And in early January 2023 she shared a picture of the two of them, simply captioned, “Rest in Peace Dad.”
All of which makes the double-entendre second line of the record utterly devastating. Still crying, and still in her suit and tie, she sings, “One last time for old time’s sake / I’ll watch him get carried away.”
It’s a theme that carries on throughout the album - grieving someone you’ve loathed, loved, and lost. She’s not afraid to speak ill of the dead, but also sings about the positive influence her father had - and continues to have - in her life.
In doing so, she offers us a glimpse of how we might break the rules of grief and mourn a complicated relationship.
When Grief Comes with Rules
We have many well-worn cultural ideas, expectations, and rules about how we're supposed to grieve, some of which can end up doing more harm than good.
Death is destabilizing. It disrupts the familiar rhythms of our lives, unsettles our sense of the future, and can leave us wondering whether the pain will ever end.
So it makes sense that we're drawn to models that promise some level of control, relief, and tidy resolution.
This might explain why the five stages of grief model has become such a familiar framework for how we're supposed to grieve. “The potency of the Five Stages is its simplicity. It isn’t chaotic or confusing: it’s a straight line, a linear narrative, a beautiful beginning, middle and end,” writes author, comedian, and Griefcast host Cariad Lloyd in her book You Are Not Alone. “What could be more appealing during grief, the ultimate disrupter, than a calm port awaiting you after rough seas?”
And yet, when we're led to believe that grief should follow a predictable, straightforward path towards acceptance, forgiveness, and - above all else - moving on, it can add another layer of pain and confusion when we discover that grief rarely works that way.
“Bereaved people are in this horrible place where they’ve been brought to their knees, where the loss is suffocatingly oppressively painful,” says Dr. Lorraine Hedtke, a leading voice in Narrative Therapy approaches to grief. “And then we say, okay, now we’re going to make it worse for you.”
Grief is hard enough. It gets even harder when we think we’re doing it wrong, when we’ve completed every step just to find the pain is still there.
Maintaining a Relationship with Someone Who Has Died
Hedtke challenges the idea that moving on is the end goal. “Grief psychology has superimposed ways in which people should think, act, and feel,” she says. “All of those steps have always included the insistence that we let go of the relationship.”
And yet, as she says, “We cannot not have that person in [our] life.” Complicated or not, there's often a part of us that wants to hold on to the relationship. Trying to push through that longing in the name of moving on can make it even worse.
So instead of letting go, she asks how we might continue those relationships. Hedtke calls these Remembering Practices: ways of keeping the relationship alive through the influence that person continues to have on our values, choices, and relationships.
Sufjan Stevens - another artist who has publicly mourned a complicated parent - once described this as being a “steward” of the influence of his deceased family, friends, and even pets. This goes beyond just holding on to memories. It’s about finding ways to keep them part of our lives, letting them continue to influence and guide us.
This could mean maintaining their traditions, remembering their words in hard times, or carrying forward the beliefs and causes they cared about. “I still live by the things he taught me,” Bridgers sings. “Like how to forgive when they’re not sorry.”
This can bring a lot of relief. As Michael White, one of the pioneers of Narrative Therapy, put it: “I have consistently found that, through the incorporation of the lost relationship, those problems defined in terms such as ‘pathological mourning’ and ‘delayed grief’ are resolved.”
Grieving Someone You Loved - and Someone Who Hurt You
Crucially - especially with complicated relationships - we get a say in how, and how much we allow them to influence us.
We have agency here. We can hold on to what mattered to us, be honest about what hurt, and leave behind the things we don't want to carry with us.
“When a person dies, regardless of whether that relationship was a really close relationship or one where a lot of transgressions have taken place, death provides a pause in the relational fabric for us to stop, and take stock, and to say, ‘where do I want this relationship to live?’” Hedtke says. “How much closeness do I want with this relationship in my life? How much distance do I want?”
That degree of closeness or distance can be constantly renegotiated. You can hear Bridgers wrestling with this, singing, “I am my old man’s oldest son,” in one song, and “Sometimes I want you back / But not today” in another.
Wherever she lands, it’s her choice. That freedom to choose can be empowering, especially if you had little say in the matter while the person was alive.
Speaking Ill of the Dead
But to make that choice, we have to be honest about the relationship - the good, the bad, and everything in between.
This can be hard.
When someone dies we're expected to forgive and forget, to leave the past in the past, to bury the hatchet alongside the dead.
There’s no doubt forgiveness can be meaningful and healing when - and if - you’re ready. But if it's rushed, or done out of obligation, it can produce what Hedtke calls an “artificial ending,” that invalidates the pain caused both before and by the loss.
Instead, she invites us to own and acknowledge the full complexity of the relationship - being grateful for the good without glossing over the bad.
“You left your suitcase by the bed / Like you needed to know you could leave whenever you wanted,” Bridgers sings in Still Standing. She’s mourning her father, but resisting any and all expectations to mythologize or absolve him in the process.
Moving Forward Without Letting Go
“What [grievers] need (and what society finds hard to provide) is a space where we can talk about the dead, where you can say their name, remember their good parts and their flaws equally,” Lloyd says. “A space to light a candle for them with words.”
This is what Bridgers does throughout Lost Weekend.
She pays tribute to her dad without sugarcoating him.
She lives by the lessons he taught her without shrugging off the ways he hurt her.
She lights a candle for him without casting his shadows aside.
And she shows us how we might move forward as well. Not by leaving the relationship behind, but by carrying it with us - on our terms.
“Your back to the ocean, burning red / I can’t imagine you dead,” she sings to him. “But you are every day / Thank you for everything.”
The Lorraine Hedtke quotes in this article are taken primarily from her interview on the Radical Therapist Podcast.
Click here to hear the full episode.
