By Kalpana Thiyagarajan
I recently lost a close relative to COVID. I little knew the person personally but knew well the ones who loved and cared for the person. Their loss was my loss - their grief was inconsolable and that grief was my grief too. The pain of separation due to death is a lot to comprehend even in non COVID times; this pain was magnified in COVID times all because of the ground reality of a lack of real funeral procedures - which are paramount, to come to terms with grief of losing a loved one.
I happened to be in India and managed to be a part of the procedures remotely. Being in the same place and time gave me a feeling of actually doing something even if it was through the phone as opposed to being in a different time zone and struggling with the feeling of not being ‘there’. Somehow the closeness of time and space made a huge inexplicable difference. Additionally, in hindsight, I felt, this nearness and intense pain was instrumental in helping me recognize some deep seated emotions.
I underwent one intense week of trying to be brave before my family - to avoid disturbing them further. I had my moments of breakdown but every time, it was rushed, in order to help be that ‘mental pillar of support’. Within the same week, we managed to secure our tickets out of India back to the US, reducing the duration of our intended trip. With a heavy heart, my children and I started our flight journey back. As they slept, I opted to watch a movie ‘Collateral Beauty’ starring Will Smith among others. A wonderfully played out movie which centered around a dad who was trying, with immense difficulty, to come to terms with the death of his 6 year old daughter.
Halfway through the movie, the vicarious feelings generated hit me as my real feelings reared its head up and I completely broke down, wrenching my heart out. Unchecked and in my free space, I was able to finally bare my self to Myself. A week of gut wrenching intense pain finally found expression and closure. It was as if my tears had cleansed my troubled mind. What was it that was exactly troubling me?
I have always schooled myself to accept COVID as an extension of nature and to respect its ferocity. I have never undermined its fatality and yet I have worked to try to respect it instead of fear it. Was it the fear of COVID that was the source of my pain?
Seeing another human being’s pain can work up our compassionate self. Seeing a loved ones’ pain makes it more intense. Was my pain because I was closely experiencing a loved one’s loss?
Am I reliving the losses that I have had through my lifespan? I recalled my father’s words - the older women (in Indian homes) who would cry in funeral homes of distant relatives, would do so to relive their losses as they grieve and console the affected ones. It’s a natural human tendency and a way for them to let out their feelings thus unburdening themselves.
Fear of death is very real. Death can come in any form - Cancer, Accidents, other illnesses, to name a few. Was it this recognition of my own mortality that was the cause of my grief?
A more profound thought took over me sometimes, wherein I felt the entire human consciousness was suffering. Although it just seemed that our greed and selfishness brought this on us, it didn’t bring down the enormity of the suffering. Was this suffering weighing me down?
As I scanned myself, I could recognize the above emotions in varying degrees. However one thought prevailed above all others - the recognition of the mortality of my loved ones. Somehow, all the vedanta of the soul passing off and shrugging off its body as an outer cloth was fine where I was concerned. All my intelligence took a back seat when I think of my near and dear ones. Not that I have conquered fear of death where self is in question but it is topped by the fear of death of people around me.
I was reminded of how Gautama Buddha would have felt when he first saw death, illness and aging and the question on my mind was the same as what was in his mind then - How can I overcome this? Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the feeling of misery and fear, even though it is simply natural to feel it. That flight journey, I was able to come to a certain level of clarity as I accepted this fear deep down within me. And in acknowledging this fear, I felt I made the tiniest of the first step forward. Paradoxically, this also helped make me feel more grateful for the family I have, which is something I have always cultivated, but I could sense a deeper degree of gratitude. I was also grateful for the lessons that Death, the greatest and grandest teacher there is, teaches- merciless, soul searching and yet the stark truth.
The last evening of my stay in India, I was sitting on the terrace accompanied by my sister, trying to enjoy the light sea breeze on that hot mid-May Day. As we chatted, our eyes strayed over to the black smoke that was dominating a part of the sky. ‘Did you know that it’s coming from the local crematorium?’, I told her. Our eyes met as we shared this information. ‘Ultimately we are just that cup of ashes, right?’, she remarked seriously. For some reason, we laughed at this, probably to break the moment’s tension (COVID’s second wave was at its peak then). Emotions aside, isn’t that the final reality of life?