How are you?
I am fine!
How are you holding up?
I am fine really!
I am having similar conversations with my friends and family for the past month. But the reality is I am not. How can I be fine? I just lost a parent who happened to be my best friend in this whole wide world. So to answer everyone’s question — NO I AM NOT FINE. MAYBE I WON’T BE FOR A LONG TIME. AND MAYBE THAT IS EXACTLY HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.
My dad was 55 years old, he was a diabetic. He was my biggest cheerleader, my ultimate supporter, my superman. I think that’s what happens when you are a single child. It might be because of a lack of choices or just uneven distribution of emotions. But all you got is each other. And he did get me, in all possible ways.
My dad had type-II diabetes for the past 30 years. That disease really does sneak up on you, it is not as quick as Cancer or as deadly as heart disease. It gradually empties you, takes a bit at a time until all that has left is a shell of a person that used to be. My father never smoked or drank in his entire life, he never abandoned me or my mother, he was a religious man who worked extremely hard to support his family.
As a “woman of reason” I always like to attach actions to reactions. I like to make things make sense. That helps me guide through the impossible, helps me rationalize the situation in the best possible way. So when something like this happened to me my entire functioning mechanism collapsed. My well-reasoned self couldn’t understand why this happened to my father who was a good man, a good husband, and a good father. But it did happen and now we are here.
He had been sick since January, and we thought this shall too pass. My mom and he had been battling this treacherous disease for years so we were not blindsided. We as a family had a course of action, we had a plan. And we knew it will be FINE.
But if anything, 2020 is unpredictable. Covid-19 hit all our lives like a trainwreck. And suddenly we didn’t have a plan anymore. Because the medicines are not easily available neither are doctors or hospitals. The whole medical infrastructure which was at our beck and call disappeared.
* * *
The things I wish I knew then-
“You can’t love somebody and then lose them and not feel sorrow, feel grief. So it’s normal, it’s cross-cultural, it’s universal, it’s timeless. It won’t destroy you.”-Professor Allan Kellehear
To say I felt angry, frustrated, depressed would be an understatement because I felt all of the above on that June day. To lose someone you love is already a burden enough and if in such a situation you are isolated from your support networks it becomes unbearable. Losing someone during the coronavirus pandemic, whether to COVID-19 or to other causes, bought on additional challenges. I believe I was fortunate that I got a chance to say goodbye, to have those last moments. As I know now (from being part of many support groups online) that many people didn’t get that chance, due to social distancing guidelines or just due to hospital policies.
* * *
The best advice I received-
On the day my dad passed away, a friend called in the evening. A friend who suffered something similar many years ago. She didn’t ask me how I was doing or how my family was, she just asked if she could give me an advice.
I replied affirmatively, and what she said next stayed with me ever since-
“Try to maximize the gaps, it comes back to you, revisits you, the grief, the memories. Initially, it will be every second of every moment, but try to convert the seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, and hours to days. Maybe in a year, you will react differently to it, maybe it will get bearable.”
* * *
What I know now-
I do believe that if not for this pandemic I would be having dinner with my father right now, we would have played board games in this quarantine. I would have gifted him his dream watch (which he kept on hinting at)on this father’s day. Instead, here I am writing this to let someone (who might need to hear this) know that —
“IT WILL GET BETTER!”
Because there is no other way. You have already handled the worse. Seen it, lived it, mourned it. So you have to buckle up for the next part. It is impossible to be normal after such a loss. But the point is you don’t have to be normal. You take this painful incident, you deal with it, take your time, process it. And say-
I can do this, not because I don’t have an option, or because my family depends on me. But I can survive this because I want to. I can think of new thoughts. I can completely recreate myself. Nothing is set in stone, I am not stuck. All I have to do is start living today.
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Previously published on “Hello, Love”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: Iuliia Boiun on Unsplash