Y’all… Right now is hard. Like sucker-punched-by-your-BFF hard. Like gut-dropping-during-a-car-wreck hard. And, yes, like global-pandemic hard.
We are saying nice things, like “stay safe” and “take care of yourself” and “new normal” – whatever that is. In reality, though, I don’t think any of us are fully aware of the toll that this pandemic has taken on us emotionally and spiritually.
In a world that has become entirely focused on connection – on staying connected and on being connected every second of every day – we have now been dealt a hard blow. We’ve been forced to isolate, to hide even our facial expressions and physical affection, and to redesign who we are as people.
That is hard.
And none of us signed up for it.
What we’ve ended up with is a world full of people who are grieving; we are lamenting the disappearing patterns of our old lives, the relationships that we’ve lost, the freedom to navigate our world on our own terms, and even the safety of being able to grocery shop without becoming mortally diseased. Suddenly, our entire lives have turned into a gamble; nothing is sure – not our jobs, not our economy, not our health, and not our future.
It’s all just a crapshoot. There is no way we can stay completely safe. We are not fine. And nothing about any of it is normal, new or otherwise.
Even the typical, social greeting of “How are you?” has taken on a new, pointed quality that seems to suggest not just general concern but also a should-I-be-around-you-because-I-don’t-know-how-careful-you’ve-been anxiety. Every interaction is laced with a trace of suspicion and doubt, and, suddenly, the safest, least viral of us all are the smallest of children. Who thought that would ever happen?
On top of all that doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety, we get to add in a heavy dose of folks who are angry because they are being asked to wear masks and a heaping measure of people who are skeptical of the experts and the science.
Considering this big ball of yuck led me, of course, to the Internet. I’ve been reading up on grief, specifically “COVID grief” because that’s a thing now. And what I’ve discovered is this: We are heartbroken. Individually and collectively, we are in mourning. Just like someone would mourn a death, we are missing valuable and beloved parts of our lives.
We are, as the experts say, on the rollercoaster of grief – grief that’s the same regardless of whether it’s for a loved one or anything else. We find ourselves shifting endlessly through the five parts of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, despair (or depression), and acceptance.
When we think about that – those five parts – it makes sense. It explains why we’re all in these unidentifiable funks, why we’re tired, and why we’re just feeling off. And it allows all the people who are so angry at mask-wearing seem a bit more human and shows us that the folks who are in denial about the science are only beginning their COVID grief journeys.
(By the way, since realizing this about the angry ones and the deniers, I feel so much empathy and compassion toward them. I know they’re right there beside me in the COVID-grief boat; we’re all in it together, paddling like fools.)
Okay, so now that we know we’re grieving, what do we do about it?
LOL! That’s the funny part – the part that reminds me of that preschool classic, “Going on a Bear Hunt.” This grief is like any other grief; we can’t go over it, and we can’t go under it. The only option is to go through it and to sit with the grievousness of it – to go through the anger, the denial, the bargaining, the despair, and the acceptance.
And then, go through it all again and again until, in time, it doesn’t sting quite so much.
We’re here for the long haul, friends. This rollercoaster isn’t a ride of a few seconds; this ride may last a huge chunk of our lives, and the truth is that, when that lock bar of COVID grief is lifted, we will never be the same again.
We need to accept that and maybe even embrace the idea that, in spite of all the broken heartedness we see and feel and just know right now, good things will come from the darkness of this pandemic. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark,
“As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. Sitting deep in the heart of [a cave]… let this sink in: new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
And just like other darknesses, we too will start something new and amazing as we sit in this COVID grief. We will sit here, surrounded by isolation and dark, never meaning to begin a new, good thing, but we will. That’s how it works. “New life starts in the dark.”
And right now, we are in the darkest of places – the saddest and hardest of places.
But just you wait… Hold on. Buckle up. And feel all the rollercoaster-y things. Because eventually new life will come. It will start. It has to.
Y’all stay safe out there…
P. S. If you’d like to read more, here’s a list of resources I read:
· On Grief and Grieving. A old-fashioned, printed book by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
“…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Psalm 30:5b