Life is nothing but time and energy. Time is transitory and we can do nothing about the past. It is our energy that we can use to our benefit while we live, where grief can be transferred to one’s positive energy.
by Ruwantissa Abeyratne in Montreal
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When we are done with 2020, there will be no room for doubt that all of humankind, from Australia to Zimbabwe, will consider 2020 as the year of Covid-19. What started in the beginning of the year as a manageable localized epidemic, became a full-blown global pandemic from the second quarter of the year affecting all corners of the world. The world as we knew it was upended: megacities emptied, and people shunned each other. Educational institutions closed and hospitals overflowed with people dying of a mysterious virus which attacked the respiratory system and transgressed the nooks and crannies of the human body, which, according to the World Health Organization resulted in complications leading to death by “respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis and septic shock, thromboembolism, and/or multiorgan failure, including injury of the heart, liver or kidneys”. Even those who recovered (43 million up to late November)still experience fatigue, respiratory and neurological symptoms that seriously hamper their well being.
At the time of writing, the virus had claimed 1.45 million lives while infecting 62.3 million people. The numbers are growing. Those left behind by loved ones suffer overwhelming grief and others are hoping that the promising results of vaccination tests would result in some control over the spread of the virus in the coming year. Grief is very subjective, and it is only a person who suffers a loss of a loved one feels its intensity. In other words, it cannot be quantified objectively. There is no panacea for grief. However, one my alleviate grief by positive thinking. Dr. Edith Eger, a 92-year-old survivor of the Holocaust who was rescued from Auschwitz and is now an eminent psychologist says in her book The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life “ Let the dead be dead. Grief changes, but it doesn’t go away. Denying your grief won’t help you heal. Nor will it help to spend more time with the dead than you do with the living. If someone you love has died, give yourself thirty minutes every day to honour the person and the loss. Take an imaginary key, unlock your heart, and free your grief. Cry, yell, listen to music that reminds you of your loved one. Look at pictures, read old letters. Express and be with our grief, 100 per cent. When the thirty minutes have passed, tuck your loved one safely inside your heart and get back to living…Talk to the loved one who has passed. Say what you are thankful for: the memories you cherish ; the skills he or she taught you; the gifts you carry with you because that person touched your life. Then ask, “what do you wish for me”?
Life is nothing but time and energy. Time is transitory and we can do nothing about the past. It is our energy that we can use to our benefit while we live, where grief can be transferred to one’s positive energy. This is the fundamental philosophy of Dr. Eger, which comports with what Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: “But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!”
We come into this world with a purpose: to enliven others; to enrich others; and to be a part of their life until they need us. Our task is completed when that purpose is accomplished. True, in the process we form endearing relationships which cannot endure forever in a physical sense because of the evanescence of time, but relationships could be kept alive with memory and purpose and the joy of fulfillment which the loved one who is no more left in the bereaved.
Grief should eventually lead to hope, which Dr. Eger calls an investment in one’s curiosity. The message of grief is the cyclical journey through life where we realize that, in the sphere of pure social reality, we live as humans neither as abstract interiorities nor as isolated and unique social beings, but as a social whole where we imbibe each other through our personalities. Those who are lost to us have already left their indelible imprints on us and those who are left behind become our whole being and that is how we keep surviving. That is how the problems of the world are solved and how we are able to move on. Now, a whole year of grief is passing us by, giving way to new beginnings, of scientific discoveries that may protect us and our children from the virulence of future contagious disease.
We need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams and a bond that will not break. The fundamental message in these dark times is well reflected by President Barack Obama in his book The Audacity of Hope – that it was not just the struggles of the men and women we meet in life that move us and leave an indelible mark but their determination, self reliance and optimism in the face of hardship to circumvent the grave problems that we face. The many scientists who tirelessly work to produce a vaccine; the multitude of health workers who put their lives at risk everyday so that we may live; the law enforcement officers and armed forces who keep guard over us, by whose sacrifices we could restore a sense of community to a world torn by global disease and misery and conflict, and that despite all personal tragedy, we have a sense of control over our own destiny.
The dead never really leave us. It is their legacy that gives us the strength to hope and carry on.
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