Photo by Jennifer Griffin on Unsplash
I have returned to my working desk after a long hiatus. It’s the raging grief within me which has pushed me to share it. I know that there will be no closure unless I speak out what I feel at this moment.
Covid has brought about extreme tragedies all around us. Family, friends, office, neighbourhoods, stories of death have been coming in from all sides and making me weary of life and living. I am coping with three deaths in the family over a span of four days. Two of my cousins who lost their spouses to this deadly virus had to grieve for their loss all alone. There were no comforting hugs for them or shoulders to cry on. Both had also tested positive and so had to remain in isolation. But the rudest of all shocks that left me devastated was the passing of a young daughter-in-law in my extended family. She has left behind an inconsolable husband and daughters aged 2 and 5yrs who are too young to even fathom the tragedy that has befallen them. Once again it was over video calls that we tried to console each other. The news of two of my dear colleagues also being claimed by Corona was equally saddening.
This dance of death that has been rocking the planet for the past one year suddenly became something more than mere statistics of how many tested positive and how many succumbed. Suddenly there were people close to us who too were part of this data.
Deaths in the family have never been easy. But a houseful of relatives, the constant stream of visitors and the huddle in which the immediate family goes into, provides a cushion that absorbs much of the grief. There is the comfort of rites and rituals that leaves the dear ones feeling that in some way they are helping the departed soul to attain that much sort after moksh.
Corona has deprived the dead and those left behind even that solace. The long wait first to get the bodies and then to fall into a never ending queue to cremate them takes away the last vestige of dignity in death. Curfews and sealed borders restrict entry to other states so the holy rivers so essential for immersions are not reachable for those coming from other parts of the country.
That there is comfort in numbers is also a phrase blown away in these times. The reassurance provided by the circle of family members and friends who accompany the bereaved as they go about performing the last rites is also denied as the family itself suggests that others stay away for the fear of getting infected. In fact, there is an eerie sense of loneliness as one grapples with grief.
Under normal circumstances, children, spouse and parents draw some satisfaction from the fact that they had been able to provide the best of medical care and attention to their loved ones in the days preceding the death. Corona denies one even this satisfaction. What happened in the hospital wards? Was the patient even given timely and proper treatment? Was somebody nearby when the end came?, are all questions which will be tools of life long torment.
I know there are doctors and medical staff who are trying their best to alleviate the pain of patients and their relatives. Society today has no words to thank them. I don’t wish to dwell upon thoughts like who failed us. I asked an astrologer friend of mine whether these people would be around if it had not been for Corona. He rebuffed me with a gruff, “They would have died of something else.”
Had that been so, at least the family would have got a fair chance to say good bye.
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