Journey of loss, grief and finding healing

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in everyone losing something, be it a person they loved, the freedom to move about, loss of routine and a lot of other things.

I want to take you on my personal journey of loss and grief. As soon as the virus was detected in South Africa, we were immediately put on a lockdown similar to that of most countries. I had to move home from my university residence. Now this was the longest period of time that I had been home as I spent two years at university and 5 years in a weekly boarding high school. I had, in an instant, lost my sense of free will, the ability to connect with my friends and family like I was used to and a sense of routine. I would often find myself bored and slowly losing interest in things I once called hobbies. Along the way I lost some friendships too.

I don’t really think I went through any grieving process for these losses. I mainly wrote in my diary about how I was feeling. Tried new recipes and I tried to get back into the hobbies I liked, which I kinda lost again. Within those first two waves my closest friends and I really put in a lot of effort to video call each other once a month and catch up, see how each of us were doing and what we would like to do together after the lockdown levels were eased. These calls kept going on for a while and were quite helpful.

My large family managed to get through the first two waves without a single person contracting the virus. Then the third wave came, and it came with a bang. Within a few weeks, a few aunts and uncles had gotten it but were relatively fine. My youngest uncle then contracted it and unfortunately passed away from it while getting up from his couch to go to the hospital. A week before that, my father, cousin, and myself had paid him a visit. This was under the impression that it was just the flu and later found out it was not. The day my uncle passed away was also the day we found out that my father tested positive and thus I was unable to mourn with my family in any way. My brother, mother and I tested negative for covid and after our isolation period, could attend the intimate mourning procedures that were being held by the family.

On the 8th day of my father’s isolation/ sickness he became much worse and had to be rushed to hospital. I was not scared in the moment or even afterwards, which might have been an absent or delayed response to the sudden events that had occurred. When it was time to attend my uncle’s funeral, I was quite stressed as I was leaving my mother at home, alone during a time when her mind was not exactly here on Earth. This was expected especially after losing her younger brother and having her husband in hospital. I was also hesitant to leave as anything could happen to my father while in hospital. The thought ringing through my head was that if he were to pass it would be horrible for me to be so far away from home as I was in another province.

After arriving home from the funeral, it was almost back to regular programming as my mother, and I had to go back to work, and my brother started physically going to school. He was studying for his exams at the time and almost didn’t have the time to grieve. I still worry about him to this day as he seemed to be almost void of the grief that everyone in my family was and still is feeling. Personally, during that time I too was almost void of emotions until the funeral, and I felt like it might have been because of the mess happening around me. I felt kind of numb to it all. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I cried during that period.

However, once it started slowly dawning on me (I still haven’t fully comprehended the loss of my uncle and my father’s hospitalization) there would be random times at very random places where I would have the strong urge to cry but because I was either working or among people I would keep the tears away. There were times when it was almost impossible to do so. When I would go to my room, and I would be alone, the tears would not want to come. Mind you this would be the most ‘appropriate’ and convenient time.

My father was in ICU for 7 weeks and for two of those weeks, he was in a forced coma. The loss of my father within the home for that period was a huge shock to the system but as the eldest child of the home and the only one who seemed most present on Earth, I took over his responsibilities and some. This meant that I almost didn’t have time to acknowledge the major events occurring in my life. My friends, bless them, really tried to take care of me or suss out how I was from wherever they were in SA. Another event that happened while my father was in hospital was another uncle and his sons all contracted the virus and one of them being very close to me almost made me panic as I couldn’t afford to lose another family member because I was and am not as strong as I appear to be. Thankfully they all recovered.

My father is currently back home and almost fully recovered. I know there is something about himself that he lost, something he will never get back. The whole family lost a part of themselves that we will never get back. We can all feel and see it, but it is so intangible and without a name that one cannot pinpoint what it is. It breaks my heart to know that my dad will never be the man he once was because of the long-term effects of COVID-19 on his body.

I got asked about what I have lost in the death of my uncle and in my father not being the same man. I lost an amazing father figure in my life that cheered me on the loudest. A person who wanted the whole world to know how proud he was of his nieces and nephews. I also lost a bit of the child in me as I was forced to grow up a little faster than what most would call normal. I'm sure there are other things that I might have lost that I am not aware of and this could just be how grief is showing up in me.

Looking back at the losses I experienced there is more than one loss present that happened almost at the same time: cumulative loss. Several griefs that I experienced and still are experiencing such as delayed, absent and cumulative grief are all very real and normal for one to experience.

Now more than ever there is a need for healing, therapy and self-help groups like Solve For X as everyone’s lives have been turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown and they may never return to the normal we once knew. During this difficult period and further on, let us practice empathy as we really do not know what each of us is going through. Let’s make sure that the world goes back to when it went round because of love and not money.

Lolo