TEMPORARY GRIEF IN A TIME OF FEAR? - Life and Loss in the midst of Covid-19

I have often talked about the fact that we have many more Losses that cause Grief than just the big Losses that usually come to mind.  But, what of Temporary Losses?  Can we experience Temporary Grief?  How can Fear influence our sense of Loss?  Can you actually grieve what we hope we will eventually get back? 

I would answer “Yes, but…” If we are certain that what we are currently missing will return than the Grief we feel is not the same as the Grief that consumes us over a permanent Loss.  Many of us are more than missing what has always been our lives.  We miss going to work, the library, shopping, going out to eat.  We miss having the freedom to move about as we want or need.  We miss how things have always been and what we took for granted.  We feel worried and trapped and frightened.   We are both impatient and terrified of getting or giving something so deadly.  In the midst of this we long being with those we love, taking care of family members and sharing our lives with close friends.  We are a jumble of feelings and needs and questions.

I ache to hold my grandsons right now and to touch my elderly mother’s hand.  I want to hug my adult sons and daughter and kiss their cheeks and feel their warmth and love as I hope they would feel mine.  I know that love does not require presence but being together deepens relationships and sustains some of us.  Yet, I know that to do so would be selfish and risky for them as well as for me.  I worry that one of them will become ill, or that I will, and that we will not be able to be present with the each other.  What I feel is nowhere near the Grief I would feel if they died.  It is, however, a powerful sense of Loss and longing.  It hurts and it can be overwhelming.  I comfort myself with video chats, texts, calls as many of us do but we all know it is not the same.  

Then I stop thinking selfishly.  My heart hurts for those of us who have lost our income and ability to work.  How terrifying it is  to worry about not just our rent and mortgage but being able to feed our families and ourselves.  I can only imagine the terror of those who own small businesses - stores, restaurants, bars, etc. and who know that the loss of customers for too long will mean the loss of their business and their employee’s livelihoods .  More than our way of life is at stake.  Our lives are at stake.  And, we are trying to deal with all of this while being cooped up in our apartments and homes, getting on each other’s nerves no matter how hard we try and listen daily to how much worse things are and will be.   

We hope it is temporary.  This is the major issue today and why we are so unsure if what we feel is simply a missing of aspects of our lives or if we are beginning to grieve what was our lives.  The truth is that we do not know.  Fear of the future and of the pandemic’s current grasp of our lives heightens our longing and can cause some of us to move toward Grief.  

We HOPE these limitations and the current smallness of our lives is temporary but we cannot be completely sure.  We also know this virus and its aggressive climb have changed more than our current lives.  It will change our future.  How could it not?  We now know how vulnerable our culture and country were, are and can be.  We know there are no quick fixes and no certainty about the future.

We wonder about a time when the social limitations shift.  Now that many businesses know that working from home and video conferences work how will that change the work environment of the future.  Will Social Distancing become a common part of our future?  Will our country and world become less tribal in response or will blame and anger rule?  Will life ever be the same?

We are also dealing with the realization that our country and world were not prepared for this pandemic in spite of repeated warnings from scientists.  After well publicized calls for Social Distancing and Staying At Home orders many, many ignored them and gathered in huge groups and raised the number of infections.  We are tired of the politicizing of blame and solutions.  So, add anger and frustration to everything else we are feeling.

How do we sort out longing and fear from the start of real Grief?  Let us allow for all of it.  And, while we do, let us hold onto uncertainty.  Perhaps we should now admit to a real feeling of “Temporary Grief.”  If we look back on the temporary losses in our lives most of us will recognize the difference between missing someone and aching for someone, between missing a part of our lives and longing for its return.  Is the ache and longing the exact same as the Grief we experience with a permanent Loss?  Not exactly the same but there are moments when the power of Temporary Grief can feel as powerful and as life-limiting as permanent Grief.

So, let us be patient with each other.  Recognize that who and what we miss may be the most essential pieces of our lives.  Treat yourself and each other with gentleness and the freedom to feel what we feel.  If it feels like Grief it may well be, even if it is Temporary Grief.  Our fear is that today’s Temporary Grief may become tomorrows permanency.  That does not mean that we now should commit to permanently grieving.  Only that fear strengthens our temporary feelings.  

It is permanent reality that brings a Loss that does not change and a Grief that is like no other.  Yet, our present reality and the fear that exists inside of it can make us experience a sense of Temporary Grief.  There are no real stages to our present reality.  Like a strong ocean current our current situation moves daily and flows as it will.  Such is the way of Grief.  We only have where it take us and our response to it.  

As for Temporary Grief, may we respond with focusing on the the word Temporary and allow it to  ground us and make room for some strength to get through this time.  In the moments when it does not, be gentle with yourself and others.  The future is unknown and our guesses about it temporary.  Our ability to support each other through whatever the future holds is permanent.

Don't Let Go

Many of us imagine, and some are told outright, that the process, the Goal, of grieving is to “get over” the feelings of Loss and Pain, that initially fill our hearts.  I could not disagree more.

Our feelings are messy things.  Like some kids separate the peas from the carrots on their dinner plates, some of us believe that we can separate the Grief from Loss, or even more - separate the Pain of Grief from our Memory of the person or thing we have lost.  We are told this is required so that Love and Happiness become pure untarnished memories.  I cannot imagine that is ever possible.  

If we did not Love we would not experience the pain of Grief for our Losses.  In fact, as I have said before, often the power and size of our Grief is equal to the Love we felt for these persons and things when they were in our lives.  In very simple but accurate terms, I love my dog a lot so when my dog dies I grieve a lot.  Had I merely liked my dog my Grief would not be very powerful nor would it hurt so much.

Trying to separate the Love we feel from the Grief we feel is a daunting task.  Instead, I suggest that as we move forward we continue to do both:  Love and Grieve together.  I am not suggesting that every time we smile at a memory of warmth or love that we are immediately brought down into the depths of our Grief.  However, I do believe that it is an inhuman task to try to totally separate our Grief from our memory and feelings of  Love.  Poets and authors often speak of the exquisite pain of Loss due to the deep and exquisite feeling of Love we once felt for someone or something.  I believe they go hand in hand.

For years I have journeyed with people who have lost children, spouses, best friends, lovers, and others whom they deeply loved and who loved them deeply.  I have also attended those who lost things of great importance; their houses, jobs, retirement income, etc.  These individuals lost “things” for which they either felt deep Love or that made their lives what they were.  I remember standing with one man whose house had just burned to the ground.  He kept saying, “I didn’t just lose my furniture, but since much of my furniture was handed down from family, I have lost my connection to my grandparents and parents.  I will never again look around my house remembering from whom things came and feel the love I shared with each person.”  Our “things” and the attachments we have to them come from either the associations we had with those who previously owned them or from the importance they gave to our lives. If you lose your retirement income you have now lost both the money you carefully and intentionally saved for years but you have also lost the future for which you planned and worked.

Just like looking at family heirlooms can make us feel both the love of family and the pain of their loss, we can feel both without this combination of feelings being a negative or limiting thing.  In fact, when we lose people with whom our lives were built and lived, it may be that when we think of them we feel both equally or unevenly, but over time Grief becomes the lesser feeling and Love prevails. 

Years ago, I facilitated a Support Group for Parents whose children died.  One mother returned every year on the anniversary of her son’s death.  this night was the 12th anniversary.  A heartbroken and grieving young mother, who recently lost her eight-week-old first child, asked this other mother how she survived the devastating pain from the death of her child.  The mother attending on the anniversary of her son’s death said, “A day will come when you will remember the good times and it won’t hurt too much.”  “…and it won’t hurt too much.”  That evening she taught us all that there are some losses from which you never fully recover.  Some Losses are too important to ever lose at least an awareness of the pain of Grief.  

However, there will come a time when Grief is not the lead feeling.  It remains.  It is present with every memory of laughter and joy, but…it is not the primary feeling.  That becomes and remains, we hope, - Love.  Grief and Love forever intertwined, as they should be, but Love fills the larger space.  We pray for the day when the Love and warmth of memory come first and Grief remains attached but no longer wields power over Love.  

In This Hour of Holy Stillness

In this hour of holy stillness
we gather
to honor the life and the person we love.

In this hour of Holy Stillness
we remind ourselves that flames of life and love
are never fully extinguished.

In this hour of Holy Stillness
we offer ourselves
for sharing the weight of each other’s grief.

In this hour of Holy Stillness
we offer the strength of our love
to help others survive their pain and grief.

In tis hour of Holy Stillness
we call forth from each of us
the power we offer out of life, out of loss,
out of Love.

 by Patricia Shelden

photo: Anne Hoskins