Notes On Grieving In A Pandemic -Are We Mastering Grief?

Lesego Nswahu Nchunga | Tuesday August 31, 2021 11:01

We often think of the period when we are living through a pandemic, that a new normal is being created for us to step into and live differently ever after. The truth though, is that the new normal we are often anticipating is not without context, and the period of the pandemic is often a period of looking into a magnifying glass for really long time, which the ills in our society become more amplified, and the inherent socio-cultural problems become entrenched.

Grieving is such an intimate act. It is a lot of work, and lot of letting go, all at once. Of course, it evokes emotion. It is an important part of healing from the loss of someone or some-thing, where its absence leaves a gaping hole in the heart where their physical presence or their emotional presence could have occupied. Grief can be cold, lonely and completely distabilising – well, more debilitating than distabilising. Other times, I suppose, the gentleness of the memories makes it light.

Yes, there is lots of weeping (sometimes), brokenness in a place where once, only love lived, no matter how complex it may be. If there is one thing we have learnt and perhaps learnt to live with in the recent past, it is grieving. We have grieved our loved ones, who have left us, we are grieving a normal we were once completely acquainted to, and we are grieving the hopes we had when all of this started – the hope that we would get out of this together. So we are, many of us, grieving a future without the stain of the pandemic on it.

I am finding that we have become so accustomed to grief that it is arguably the new normal. We are in a constant state of pain. For many people, the grief has become way more than anybody could handle. In an almost natural way, we are, many of us, numb. The copious amounts of grief this third wave has dealt us, has incapacitated us almost completely, and we are unable to even process it. Daily, we have a choice to either close out the pain, or look it in the eye, in a time where facing it feels like you’ll turn to salt.

On the other side, there are ways in which we, in our different cultures, communities and families grieve, and stand together in a challenging season. Traditionally, there is the chief griever, who is often the person perceived to be the closest to the deceased and therefore most bereaved. The process of mourning the departed is usually built around this chief mourner, to support them, comfort them, console them and...well, I’ll say it, and to burden them. The strange dynamic in many of our traditions is that the people who accompany the chief griever for the duration of the period of mourning, the funeral process and the season shortly thereafter, have insurmountable questions for the griever to answer immediately, demanding her strength in such a time. The family and relatives of the deceased are rendered to the role of a catering committee, ensuring that the strangers who have come to bid farewell to the deceased, are well fed. Baeng become the most important people in the picture, completely sidelining the people most affected by the death and passing of the deceased. That is how we have come to know funerals in our society.

Yet, with COVID, the dynamic has shifted in the most drastic sense, to the extent that the funeral, by government’s protocol, can be attended by very few. In the thinking therefore that goes into making the arrangements for a funeral, there is no more space to think about baeng. We must think about ourselves and the passing of our loved one. Of course there are a lot of other funeral rites which have had to be abandoned, and the length of time people are given to prepare themselves and other such; but the one very great thing that grieving a pandemic is teaching us, is family boundaries, and prioritization.

In funerals, people are often comfortable inserting themselves into the processes which should be reserved only for those known to the deceased. I think, like grief, that funerals should be intimate.

They are the final earthside goodbye to someone who people have grown to know and love very deeply. They do not, no matter how well loved they are by many, they do not belong to the public. So it is important, in my view to allow the family the chance to fall apart immediately, and to get to the ends of themselves, before learning to navigate a world where the deceased no longer exists.

I know that this is a very unpopular opinion. If you think about it though, the over-extension we have made ourselves accustomed to, in order to accommodate people who are unable to hold us while we fall apart is an injustice for us.

The reality is that we are going to get out of this season with a lot of trauma, and with a lot of gaps in our families where our people used to be. I think there is an important opportunity, this time, to make it count and make it different.