The pandemic has taken its wrathful form just to actualize our worst fears still a tiny hope remained that things will be alright. The second wave has proven us all wrong.
There is death. There is loneliness. There is humour. There is anger. And there is grief. No way to understand and justify our losses but a common thread of compassion holds us together amidst the cruelty that we are facing. Someone we know, someone we have loved, someone we have cared for has been taken apart from us, unprecedented and hastily.
Grieving isn’t limited to an individual, collective, personal or communal, silent or loud experience but its universality lies in its ability to evoke memories. Yet because of the nature of the fickle virus, we have a hard time coming to terms with the loss.
The rituals around death aren’t for the dead, it is for the living. The right to mourn, hug, to talk has been stolen from us. The basic act of being with our loved ones, physically consoling, emotionally bursting out, everything seems to be an ordeal of a long lost era.
To deal with death is difficult but to deal with an isolated death in an isolated environment is beyond comprehension. The suddenness of loss cannot be missed, the incredible amount of pain it brings cannot be digested. The confusion it brings along cannot be cleared. There is no set outline for grief response. It is important for the pain to be felt, deeply just as the loss is. We all love on borrowed time. There will be half-hearted regrets of things unsaid and said. It is important to connect the immense love of a loss to the pain it brings to you. It is the mark of the fact what you had was real, tangible and cannot be broken by the absence of physical presence. It is tied with the strings of memory which will always be remembered fondly. The sorrow of loss and the joy of life are intertwined, honoring both is how you move forward. Yet there is no hurry, take your time and as long as you need to be okay.
Some of us are too young to have ever learnt how to console or give condolences. Especially when there are is a lack of escape too, often we have to sit with our grief secluded. It is the harshest after effect of the pandemic so far. It is important at such heightened times of trauma and stress that we confide, borrow and converse with our closest and trusted people. Do not be dismissive of emotional outbursts, it is okay to cry, it is okay to feel angry, it is okay to laugh even. What is not okay, is pent up emotions. It can come up later to haunt us in uglier ways.
For all the lives cut short so cruelly, for all the hopes dreams, ambitions and aspirations that died with you. We remember you. We will remember you always.
We all have our own sufferings stockpile near us as our eyes sweep across day and night. But remember this the pandemic has created a pitcher of awareness, nostalgia, emotional turmoil, grief and loss. It will never be forgotten yet learned from and never be repeated and maybe somewhere up there God will finally bestow our prayers and forgive his sinister yet innocent creatures.
We are living in a time of deep tragedy and we all need to accept what we cannot change.
If our grief is collective, our healing needs to be collective. Let’s talk about our loss as every time you share your vulnerable side you normalise for someone else.