My friends, I have barely acknowledged the massive change that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to our lives across the world. This was intentional, for a few reasons: most notably, I am so tired of everyone and their mother flooding social media with their two-cents on everything, I refuse to join the masses trying to tell you what to think and how to feel. I can disclose to you that I am writing you from Montreal, Quebec, the epicentre of Canada, where there have been the most cases of Covid-19. The last ten weeks have been trying to say the least. I did not want to add to the noise.
Now as we tenuously appear to be on the other side of the curve, I am beginning to process some of the harder things that for survival reasons, I parked in a different part of my soul. Many people in my life and connected to my life have died. I have seen my friends lose their parents and grandparents, I have lose retired colleagues who were wonderful to me. Then came a random series of deaths among my peer group of sudden heart attacks, strokes and even cancer. Then came the reports of suicide. Most of my mentees have been doing their best to embrace uncertainly and be forgiving of themselves for days when all words seem to fail us. Others have become frantic and draining to me and probably those around them. It’s hard to manage being there for someone without allowing them to use you to expel all of their negativity so that they can feel better. The Green Mile was never a Christian concept. I don’t blame them, but I have to be careful because I too am a human in need.
Yesterday, I began reading about disenfranchised grief. If you look it up on Wikipedia, it will say that it is not a term that is accepted by society. This is grief that people feel when they experience a loss that is not generally acknowledged by society: loss of a pet, loss of a job, loss of someone who is not close to you or a celebrity, or perhaps a miscarriage. I think that miscarriages have crossed over into being accepted by society to mourn the loss of, and I would even argue that you don’t need society to acknowledge or validate personal grief. But I do know people who would love to use that pain as some kind of emotional collateral to get from others what they think they need.
Let me hold your hand for a moment and talk to you. Friends, if you have lost someone or something that gave you comfort and eased your life in this tumultuous world, I encourage you to grieve so that you can let go of that toxic emotion. In most cases, you can’t get back what you lost and this will never change. No one will give you time off from work, a parade, a blitz of honking car horns in support of you. And if that’s what you’re looking for to be ready to let go, then you have bigger problems than just grief.
So what does letting go and grieving look like? Well, pre-quarantine, humans clung to the traditions of loss, the rites that over time have helped our human brains and bodies realize that someone that was here is no longer present. We had memorial places where people would take flowers, light candles, place photos of the one who has departed. We attended wakes and viewings, to support the family who remain and get used to looking at the lifeless, to help our brains accept the fact that this person is not coming back. We went to funerals where an account of life was read, sometimes people sang or shared stories, and then we watched as the body was lowered into the ground. These are the North American traditions, and you may have some or none of those in your own culture, but all civilizations find processes to help the body understand death. Some animals mourn and acknowledge the loss of their peers, elders and babies.
Part of the problem with this current crisis we face is that we cannot even bury our dead as we used to. I remember reading horrible stories coming out of Italy where the country had to make a decision to save everyone under 80. Imagine being 81 or knowing your loved one was marked to not be resuscitated. The amount of deaths cannot be dismissed in our grieving process… all over the world, tragedy has struck.
Grief has been truncated. We are unable to experience the fullness of what we have taught our bodies and minds to accept as grief. As such, we can go through certain motions, but they do not bring us the emotional satisfaction that we are waiting for, so we can move on. I am experiencing this in my own life. Going to zoom funerals make me sick. I understand that we can’t be there to witness the body and burial, and this gives us an opportunity to at least do what we have always deemed necessary. But viewing it through the screen creates a distance that leave me wondering, is this real, or is this television? Then, what we do afterwards no longer involves seeing each other, hugging, holding hands and revelling in feeling alive and still able to breathe. Now, we close the window, dry our tears and then get ready to use the same platform for work.
When I am grieving, my appetite burns. I can eat, but it’s like I am never full, and at the same time, I don’t want to eat but I’m stuffing my face, trying to get comfort from familiar tastes. Lots of people have been saying that they are gaining weight from this season, mostly because we are discouraged from going outside. Our bodies are housing energy with no place to put it. It just stays active and eventually starts to manifest itself in destructive ways. We are prone to listening now to negative thoughts. We feel antsy and don’t know what to do with ourselves. We are not satisfied.
Here are ways to remedy grief in a time of Covid. Please feel free to send me your own either in the comments or at secretsfromursister@gmail.com .
1) Write. You need to write down what you’re thinking and feeling in order to expel it. This yields the best results. It is easier said than done. You have to fight here and push through. Your body is fighting you not to do this because it will hurt and make you cry. Do it anyway! You will be better for it.
2) If you are crying, or want to cry, set a timer on your phone or in the kitchen. Setting a timer provides an interruption that wards of uncontrollable crying, which can be destructive instead of cathartic. I like to give 20 minutes for a good cry and when the timer goes off, I ask myself three questions. A) Why am I crying? B) Do I feel better? C) Do I need to cry more? By the time I get to C, I am usually calm and able to self-regulate again. However, there are times when I am stubborn and determined to milk a thing for all it’s worth, so I would set the timer again, and go back to crying. I promise you, if you really need to cry still, it will come. The interruption is to give your body a chance to switch modes.
3) If you can’t cry and you think you should, I think one of the easiest ways to engage in that emotional symbiosis is to watch animal grieving videos on Youtube. When you see elephants circle the one who didn’t make it and begin to wail, something in you will click, and you will find yourself identifying with what you see. Don’t do this with sad movies or books… in that case, you are engaging with someone else’s story, and that might complicate your feelings. It would be best to keep it neutral.
4) Set up an empty chair in front of you and put the person who has died, or the thing that you are mourning, to sit there, figuratively. Say everything you want to say. This can be hard too, but when people struggle with writing, this is my next best go to.
5) Know when to reach out for help. There are many professionals available, online, to help you process your feelings. I want to say that many people give up on this because they want to stay on level 1, which is giving voice to your feelings (and that in turn, feels good to the speaker), but the counsellor wants to move you to level 2, looking at strategies to process and plan for the next emotional situation. If you stay in a level 1 place with grief for too long, you run the risk of losing more time, which of course is your choice. As your sister in Christ, I am reminding you that there are people in this world who need you too, to be available to them and this helps lessen the load for any one person. The longer you stay in a dark place, the harder it gets to move. Once recovered, you realize that you missed opportunities in life that can’t be re-lived.
May God bless you with His peace in this strange, disorienting time. I don’t know what you’re listening to, but whatever it, be careful that you are balancing it out with reading the Word and personal prayer. If it’s hard to pray, you are welcome to sit before God and just be. He understands, I promise.