Written on July 20, 2020
How familiar we have become with grief in the past several months and what more in the last hours. When they announced the spread of COVID-19 and the lockdown across the city, I wasn’t sure how to respond. With disbelief? With anxiety and trepidation?
One day stretched into another. The weeks turned into months. Slowly we learned to cope with a new kind of normal, a new kind of existing in a world of closed shops and masked people hurrying past. Flights were grounded. Companies closed offices and sent their employees home. No more running off to the malls for coffee with friends. No more exercising in gyms. No more domestic and international travel (at least not for pleasure). Zoom and Messenger became the new places for hanging out. “Stay safe” became a passcode, a prayer, that we would use to sign off our messages.
We pride ourselves on being resilient. For weathering storms and seeing the light in the middle of them. For rising out of the dust and ashes that life sometimes hurls at us. We go through what we have to go through and we emerge having beaten it. Or at least we think so. We come out wiser and stronger. Or at least we hope so.
COVID-19, however, brings about much more than just empty restaurants and virtual socialisation, cancelled travel plans and the disruption of hopes and dreams. COVID-19 brings about grief. If someone in your family or circle of friends has succumbed to this illness or any form of it during this time, you know what it feels like. You wake up to the news of a celebrity or someone you know who has gotten sick and passed away.
You know the worry. You know the fear. You know the impatience of waiting for better news and brighter days and the frustration when nothing happens. Even if it is a neighbour we don’t see much, a distant relative we never met, an acquaintance whose last name we can’t remember, we still worry. We still care. Situations like this often bring our hearts closer, make us more sensitive to the needs of those around us. Make us more susceptible to the feeling of helplessness.
These days, I dread reading news on social media and friends’ statuses. It’s not that I want to escape from the bad news, but it just seems to get worse at every turn. I dread phone calls and seeing my phone light up with notifications. I went to sleep last night with the fear that the morning would bring news I didn’t want to hear.
And it did.
Nina George, in her book, The Little Paris Bookshop, says that grief is like “swimming in unwept tears and you’ll go under if you store them up inside.” And that’s how it feels right now. That’s how it feels today.
Grief has a way of shaking you. Of making you aware of what used to sit on the back of your mind.
When loss hits you, even if you’ve prepared for it, it still takes some time to sink in. And when you haven’t prepared for it, everything seems so devastating, so surreal so you sit in a daze, unsure of what to do next, think next, feel next. All you can think about is how short life is and how some things are just so sudden that they catch you unawares. You think about happier times, smiling faces, cheerful greetings.
I like positivity, I like to hope. I like dreaming about new things. I’m a “we-are-all-in-the-gutter-but-some-of-us-are-looking-at-the-stars” person. But not today.
Today, I’ll feel a loss that hits close to home. Today, just like the rest of my family and our extended family, I’ll cry a little.
Maybe tomorrow, the sun will be brighter. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll look outside and see hope and beauty once again. “If I can get through today, I can get through the rest of my days too” (Nina George). Maybe tomorrow and in the days to come, we’ll be able to sort through the painful memories and set aside the beautiful ones.
Today, however, I’ll think of my soon-to-be-born niece whose grandfather from her father’s side (my brother-in-law’s dad) will only live through the stories we’ll tell her. Today, I’ll grieve.