Unresolved Grief: COVID deaths are a painful trigger

I keep looking at the picture I posted and I recognise the emotional pain I was in then. Can you also see the depression in my eyes? My heart was in tatters, yet I wore a smile each day.

I’ve been thinking of my late father a lot lately; I guess it’s because his birthday is coming up soon.

Eleven years on and I still wish he was here. It took three years after his passing for me to acknowledge that I had sunk into a deep depression. Eight years since that moment, and many other traumas and losses later, COVID anxiety is threatening to destabilise me.

I genuinely miss Papa. In this period of unpredictability, uncertainty, instability — he would speak softly and quell the raging fires of doubt and fear in me. He didn’t always have the answers, sometimes he would just ask the right questions, but he was the voice of reason and just an incredible listener.

Of course he loved and nurtured me, he was my Dad and I would not have expected less. What mattered most though was that he made me feel seen, heard, felt and understood. I miss that ol’man and his weirdness.

I miss my Dad.

We are warned not to ‘display’ our ‘weaknesses’ on public platforms such as this one. But, I feel this is precisely why so many of us drown in our own sorrow.

Right now, this is the closest thing we have to a support group; a worldwide network of people who are experiencing/have experienced grief and those who feel the walls are closing in on them.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been repeatedly triggered by death announcements. The daily figures are not just numbers — they are representative of broken hearts, wounded families, shattered dreams and a sense of hopelessness. In this period, I’ve remembered my own hurt and I begin to fear I may experience it again. I feel paralysed, helpless.

I am human…just like you and them in the home next door or other parts of the world…I am a daughter who misses her father’s wisdom and hugs through adversity.

It is possible to feel alone in a world full of people. We usually numb that feeling by preoccupying ourselves with activities that require us to exert our bodies and our minds…even our spirits. We would socialise and laugh heartily, mall cruise until our feet and wallet hurt; or run crazy trails in Clarens and push the body through half marathons in blistering Soweto weather.

I miss Saturday gatherings with my aunts, uncles and cousins at my Gran’s house in the village.

I miss work…I mean the real work of telling human stories; not regurgitating statements or chasing politicians.

COVID has limited the human experience and exposed the scars of unresolved traumas that would otherwise be swallowed by living wholly.

To my Dad…

“Until we meet again Pa. You and Ipe keep a cosy spot for me in the warm covers of the after life. I will continue to seek you both in the sunrise and in the sunset. I will open my heart’s eyes to the gentle messages you send from where you rest.

I will speak of you to those who carry memories of you in their blood even though they never got to meet you in the flesh. I will love me as I love you, because I am a tiny remnant of the bold life you led, and a reminder to myself and the world that you LIVE(D).“