On the evening of her 94th birthday, Amanda Ward’s grandmother Patricia broke her hip for a second time. She found herself in the hospital, where she has spent most of 2020. After the pandemic was declared, she was transferred back into her long-term-care residence, but has since returned to the hospital due to a septic kidney infection and a subsequent heart attack. She is now in palliative care.
“She was tested for COVID-19 countless times, and all her tests have come back negative,” says Ward who, along with her family, isn’t allowed to visit Patricia. “Maybe this should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. There is an added weight now. My grandmother is everything to me. I’m on edge and I’m grieving for the loss of someone who isn’t even gone yet. I am grieving for a goodbye that I will not get to say.”
The Wards are not alone. Those with family or friends in a hospital are unable to visit loved ones due to restrictions to minimize COVID-19 spread.
Even funeral proceedings have changed. In what the Bereavement Authority of Ontario is calling an “expedited death response plan,” funeral homes now have a one-hour period to pick up a body from the hospital in order to quickly free up space. Families must have a home chosen in case of death, with arrangements made virtually. In Ontario, funerals are now limited to a maximum of 10 guests, who must be seated two metres apart, unable to hug or even lean on each other when they need to most. For those unable to attend, services can be livestreamed.
Many customary religious practices are on hold, particularly when the body is part of the ritual. For example, Muslims traditionally wash corpses before burial. Jewish shivas have gone virtual. In cases when ritual can’t be avoided, all those involved must wear full-body personal protective equipment.
The most intimate rites of passage have now become drastically impersonal. Without being able to say goodbye or touch a loved one for the last time, a sense of closure is replaced with seemingly endless despair.
“Mourning is vital because it is an outward expression of the grief that is felt inside,” says Krista Roesler, a Toronto-based psychotherapist. “It allows you to express the loss you are feeling in order to heal. But because we are now forced to grieve alone, mourning has been disrupted. Grieving in self-isolation lacks the necessary social support systems required to help individuals process their feelings through words and expression.
“When we are heartbroken and hurting together, the silver lining is a sense of connection we find, when our pain is heard and soothed by someone else,” she adds.
Our collective grief isn’t just for those who have passed. Health-care workers facing death on a daily basis are undergoing high stress levels due to little rest and recuperation.
“It’s hard to emotionally process while still experiencing a sense of danger in the middle of a crisis,” says Roesler, who adds workers might also run a gamut of trying emotions, from irritability to meltdowns to personality changes.
Those indirectly affected are grieving, too – for a loss of normalcy, social connection and, most importantly, a sense of control and certainty. It may seem small in comparison to death, but as human beings our mental health is predicated on our day-to-day.
Without the usual mourning process, many have found themselves emotionally dissociating or disconnecting. As concerning as that might seem, it’s actually the first in the five stages of grief: denial/dissociation, anger/scapegoating, bargaining, despair/depression and acceptance.
“We have to go through these stages in order to reach the end,” says Roesler, who emphasizes the need to feel it all, no matter how loud or ugly. “Reach out and talk to others. A lot of people are bottling up their emotions for their jobs and families, but it’s okay to not be okay and to admit that to yourself and others. Whatever you’re feeling is normal. Give yourself permission to feel it because that’s how to get through this and heal.”
If you’ve lost someone or can’t see them, visualize that they are with you so that you can say or even write your goodbye and tell them what they mean to you.
“Imagine how they would respond,” says Roesler. “What would they say back to you?”
Then, focus on what you can control. Find a virtual therapist to help you build new coping skills. And remember that this is temporary.
Still, at a time when many are collectively grieving, the individual process has become especially clouded. For Ward, that means feelings of selfishness.
“It seems wrong to mourn the loss of one life under what are relatively normal circumstances while the whole world mourns the loss of 200,000 people and counting,” she says. “I am constantly engaged in an internal argument, battling back and forth between ‘This is a huge loss, of course you’re heartbroken’ and ‘This is nothing in comparison with the pain of others.’ This will be a blip during the pandemic, and my grandmother will not be remembered for who she was. Her loss will not result in the funeral she deserves, and my family will not have the opportunity to be with her. You wish for one more call, one more visit, to hold their hand one more time. If this were any other day, she’d only be a short trip away. Now it feels like a light-year, and I am earthbound without a way into space.”
There’s no denying our relationship to death is already changing. We can no longer avoid the concept of mortality like we once did.
David Kessler, who co-wrote On Grief And Grieving and introduced the five stages with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, recently added a sixth stage to the process: meaning. At this point, he theorized, a greater depth and connection can be found in what is left after loss, and by focusing on what really matters – the people we love. Which means there is value in having faith that tomorrow could be far better than today.
@_sadafahsan
