The virus finally came to my family after fourteen months of our pandemic living. All the social distancing, mask wearing, hand sanitizing, avoidance of gatherings, all of it, turned out to have no power to protect and keep us all safe until this plague comes to its inevitable end.
The dreaded virus, whose scientific name I refuse to write down here, fooling myself that I can give it less power by not naming it, took away one of my family members, only after a few weeks of ICU and all the attempts of hospital staff to save his life.
The cruelest part of this pandemic is not only the lives it has, and continues to take, but it’s also how it’s taken away our human social life: it’s destroyed all our rituals around grief and our ability to come together as family and friends to be with each other at the most vulnerable time of loss.
We said our goodbyes on Zoom; we visited the funeral home in carefully selected small numbers, unable to offer an embrace to our dear cousin who lost her husband, as she and her son sat roped-off, and we, her cousins and friends, could only gesture our grief from afar; we watched the funeral Mass on live stream and couldn’t be there for the interment. We live in the same city but we might as well have been living across an ocean.
All of this is a sadness that will forever have changed us.
We all die. This I do accept and am at peace with. It’s our human condition: we are born and we eventually die.
But dying because of this virus, or even just dying during this time, is a wretched thing because we have also had our collective humanity taken away. We must grieve alone. Grief is ultimately a private experience and we can’t take away the pain of loss felt by those who grieve, but our normal attempts to offer comfort and support to the bereaved have also been taken away and we grieve in ways that don’t offer healing to the wounded heart.
I know that we must not give in to despair and remain forever devastated by grief and loss. After a time of feeling that your world has ended and changed forever, human experience shows us that we do go on, that we rebuild a life for ourselves without our loved one, but right now it’s a time of grief for my family, and we need to be with our loss.
There’s an absence now of someone loved, whose time perhaps came at the wrong time, and whose smile we won’t see again except in memory.
I hope this pandemic ends soon but the damage it has done will always stay with us, with all of us around the world who, in one way or another, are touched by it.
Emanuel Melo torontonian azorean writer 
Well said Emanuel, a surreal and unimaginable experience. 😦
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It was comforting to go through this family sadness with you.
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The night is darkest before the dawn – first put in print by English Theologian Thomas Fuller around 1650 would appear to apply to our family right now. Losing our dear loved one – who is indeed the most kind and gentle of souls – just at the moment it appears we may start to move out of this horrible pandemic, is indeed heartbreaking!
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Thank you for being there with me throughout this heartbreak.
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I am so sorry for your loss Emanuel. The pandemic does make life and death much more complicated. Wishing peace to you and your family at this most difficult time.
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Thank you, Valerie.
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Dear Emanuel, My heart aches with sorrow for you and your family. It is such a sadness to lose a loved one, but, as you point out, in these times and under these circumstances, it is a cruel thing. Both Bill and I are thinking of you and are sending our love.
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Thank you, Carol.
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I have so much anger over this pandemic that here’s little I can say that you wouldn’t (rightly) censor.
I trust that you and the family will help one another get through the difficult weeks, months, years ahead.
Abraços e beijinhos.
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Thank you, Kathie.
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Emanuel, minhas condolências.
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Obrigado, Alex.
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De nada, Emanuel.
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My deepest sympathies to you and your family… Wishing you lots of strength and love.
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Thank you so much for your kind words. They are much appreciated.
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My condolences, dear Emanuel. Grieving a human loss alone is the saddest thing, I agree.
Um abraço.
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Thank you, Ilda.
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Um abraço sentido, Emanuel.
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Obrigado, Miguel, pelo seu carinho.
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