Deaths, Trauma and Epiphanies
The pandemic has shaken everyone’s life. While a lucky few have managed to escape unhurt, for most of us there is no going back to a pre-pandemic life. Almost everyone has had to endure some form of loss. Talk to anyone, and they will tell you that they have lost at least one person they know — a colleague, an acquaintance, or a relative. For some people, there have been multiple losses. My life has been no different. While I know that many people have had it worse than me, there is no denying that I, too, have had more than my fair share of grief and bereavement.
The first time I got the news of a death in my family, I was shaken to the core. It was so unexpected, so sudden, that it took a while to register what had happened. I remember the feeling of sickness in my stomach, the fluttering of my heart, and my trembling body. I remember lying in bed the entire day, the next day, and the day after that. Before I knew it, weeks had passed. Faced with an existential crisis, I had too many questions and no answer.
What’s the point of life? What’s the point of anything?
What happens after death? Is there an afterlife? Is there a God? With your life being cut short before you are ready, is there any possibility of finding meaning?
The futility of life, the illusion of control, the failure to arrive at any meaning was sending me down a hole of despair. The awareness that there were people whose pain I couldn’t even fathom made it all the more difficult for me. What do you say to someone who has lost a parent? How do you console someone who has lost a spouse? Words, I knew, meant nothing. But I had to say something. And that I did, not knowing if it made any difference. This period of crisis taught me that life is uncertain, that there are no guarantees in life, and that we do not have as much control over our lives as we think we do. I tried to accept this, but this also caused me a lot of anxiety. Every time the phone rang, I would start preparing myself to weather another storm. And the storms kept coming uninvited, unannounced.
Six months later, another death. This time I had two hours to prepare myself.
Ten days later, another death. Sudden, unexpected, no time to prepare.
Dealing with the loss of a loved one is painful enough, but dealing with multiple unexpected losses is nothing short of traumatic. Yet, what choice do we have? Had I not accepted that death doesn’t make an appointment before showing up? My mind had accepted this. But when death knocks on your door, the mind cannot think straight. Fear and grief blur your vision.
With so many losses, fear was now taking over grief. Anxious thoughts kept cropping up: What was happening? Was this some sort of a curse? How many people were in line? Whose turn was next? When would this come to an end?
The only thing that kept me sane was having people who knew how to support me through this crisis. They could not undo what had happened, but they certainly helped me deal with the losses. They also ensured I didn’t let fear overtake my life. I realised how much of a difference the right people can make in your life. Having a strong support system that you can lean on is like coming back to a warm and cosy home after a long, tiring day.
More phone calls, more hospitalisations, more deaths. Life became a furnace of anxiety and fear.
Five months later, another huge loss.
By this time, I had realised the impossibility of averting death. In the face of this truth, what else was there to do but surrender? Death is so formidable that it’s impossible to predict its next move, let alone win over it. I wished, I really wished, that my loved ones were still alive. I wished they hadn’t left this world before their time. But I also knew that I didn’t get to decide that. Tolkien had it right when he said, “all we get to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
And what did I want to do in the time that was given to me? The answer was clear when I received a phone call from a friend facing a life-altering loss. He wanted to draw on my experience of loss to make sense of and navigate his loss. I listened to him patiently as he poured his heart out, held space for him as he cried, and shared my thoughts on life and death. Half an hour into the call, we were joking about how I thought it was still too early for my deceased father to have been reborn. After we disconnected the call, I was wondering if I managed to make him feel at least a little better when I received a text from him thanking me for the conversation.
Suddenly a sense of clarity washed over me. I had an epiphany about what I wanted to do with my time. I wanted to use the lessons I have learned from my experiences to help others. I wanted to be a source of strength to others. I wanted to comfort others and ease some of their pain. When I was able to do that, even for just one person, I felt like it justified my entire existence. This was the purpose of my life: to make a positive difference, no matter how small, in the world around me.
For me, this was not a purely altruistic, selfless act. Being able to extend support to someone helped me cope with my own grief. Everyone processes grief differently. Talking about my grief and listening to others talk about theirs was essential for me to come to terms with it. I believe we cannot heal grief by denying it. Only by looking grief in the eye and expressing it can we begin the process of healing.
Strange how it was ‘death’ that taught me so much about ‘life’.
