"'He told me about his will, his life insurance policy, all of those horrible buisnesslike things that feel so inappropriate to think about when someone has died.' 'You were disappointed?' 'I was angry.'" (297)
"I asked why, but what I really wanted to know was why I started writing letters after Dad died. He was trying to say his goodbyes. He wrote to people he barely knew. If he hadn't already been sick, his leters would have been his sickness." (296)
Death involves the 5 stages of grief whcih are, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. All people go through these stages differently. Some go through all some through only one.
This book has plenty of different peoples experiences with death. Oskar's obviously, Oskar's grandfather who stops speaking and starts writing, Mr. Black who had never left is apartment, and Ruth Black who had never left the empire state building. Each person has a different reaction to the death of one of their loved ones, but yet they are similar too. Oskar seems to be portraying his emotions through the text when he makes inventions or tells what he wanted to happen before correcting himself with what actually happened, like the Jimmy Snyder incident, when he described him killing him and beating him, but thats not what actually happened. Also Mr. Black and Ruth Black are both grieving similarly in that they never leave their buildings, and they are trying to hold onto their past for reasons they don't know. Ruth stays up their because it reminds her of the large spotlight her husband used to shine at her, and Mr. Black stays with all the things that remind him of his own wife too.
I was 'impressed'/surprised ta the character Oskar's reaction to his father's death even a few years later, even though he is an atheist, most people, believers or not, put some sort of blame on a higher presence which makes them feel better about it but Oskar doesn't really do that.