Dirge

This being the period for remembering the dead, allow me to dwell on grief over the dearly departed.

In December last year, I received from a friend what I thought was the best message in the pandemic: “We isolate now, so when we gather again, no one is missing.”

This December, unfortunately, many people will be missing as people gather for an attempt at celebration in the time of COVID.

Many may not be in the mood for celebration for a long time. Many, like myself, have yet to recover from the abrupt, shocking loss of loved ones and friends.

Last Saturday I went to a mall near my home. For the first time, Christmas carols were in the air. For many people in this year’s approaching season of cheer, unfortunately, what is playing is a dirge.

Several of those I lost this year succumbed to COVID. Others died of complications after recovery. Still others died of non-COVID illnesses.

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COVID has the cruelest way of showing how truly fleeting life is. One moment a person is so energetic, so full of laughter; the next he’s roughly bundled up and trundled off to a hospital exit, to be rushed to a crematorium for incineration.

With global COVID deaths topping five million (423 in the Philippines last Saturday – the highest in a single day since the start of the pandemic), so many people are suffering serious emotional distress.

As a consequence of COVID trauma, the American Psychiatric Association recently added a new affliction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s called PGD – prolonged grief disorder – defined as an intense, disabling and life-altering grief that persists beyond a year after the loss of a loved one.

Critics of this development say those who see grief related to the loss of a loved one as a mental disorder should have their heads examined. People heal at their own pace and mourning cannot be “pathologized.”

On the other hand, mental health advocates say there are cases wherein grief cannot seem to end and becomes debilitating, leading to problems such as substance abuse or worse. The advocates argue that those suffering from “complicated grief” may benefit from some form of support or intervention.

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COVID hates the elderly, and anyone with infirmities. It has brought us closer to intimations of our mortality.

Recently, when I learned that yet another person from my reporting days had died of COVID, I was doubly saddened to realize that I couldn’t even find anyone in his age group still alive and who would remember him enough to care that he was gone.

Those of my parents’ generation like to say that they are now in life’s pre-departure area. COVID has hastened the departure for many of them. That places their children’s generation – my generation of martial law babies – next in line.

This year, I’ve drawn up detailed instructions on how I want my assets and my remains to be dealt with, just in case. My aim is to cause as little bother to those I am leaving behind.

Surrounded by death, my belief in strange premonitions has intensified. Before my worst loss, for example, I heard a loud, unearthly scream in the dead of night, scaring even the dog that hid under the car, tail between his legs. In hindsight, I tell myself it must have been the Grim Reaper, arriving to escort those at the departure area to the other side.

Two decades ago at the ICU, my father, fighting for his life, also pointed to an entity at the foot of his bed, gender and identity unknown, invisible to us. A colleague who battled cancer some years ago told his sister the same thing, about a stranger in their midst, waiting for him but invisible to everyone else in the hospital room.

Also, a black cat actually darted across my car before my worst loss this year – something that also happened shortly before I lost my father.

Belief in the afterlife gives comfort to the bereaved. The idea that death is in fact a new beginning lessens the pain of loss. I keep looking into mirrors, into the dark, into a switched-off TV screen, hoping to find loved ones reaching out from another realm.

Instead they seem to talk with a baby in the household; she babbles constantly while staring at empty space, gurgling and giving a wide grin, like my kid brother used to do from his crib when he was a baby and my maternal grandmother had just died.

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I had a lot of support from family and friends when my father died. In the time of COVID, mourning together is not possible, especially if you yourself are infected.

This year many people grieved for the departed while in isolation, with words of comfort sent only by SMS or email. Loved ones and friends were buried so quickly the shock still hadn’t worn off; the flood of tears came later.

Isolated in grief, one realizes the importance of a hug, of a shoulder to cry on. It’s not just the human warmth, but the seeming containment of grief within the embrace.

With COVID, you advise everyone to stay away; you can’t even hug your dog.

The Filipino language has a comforting way of describing death: binawian ng buhay. Life was taken away. The phrase surely has roots in religion: God gives, God takes away. The other term is “sumakabilang buhay.” The person has moved on to the next life. Belief in the afterlife, or the continuation of existence after the body gives up, comforts the bereaved.

As you grope for solace, the loss of a life partner makes you understand the things that matter most in life. It’s unbelievable how much you can miss having someone ask you, “How was your day?”

When you enter your home at the end of a long day and that familiar question is missing, it’s as if the air is being sucked out of your lungs. You feel like drowning, with no rescue in sight. It’s like the mortifying drop in oxygen in a bout with COVID, only so much worse.

We console ourselves with the thought that our dearly departed are in a better place, reunited in joy with those who have gone on ahead, in the presence of their Maker.

There’s comfort in the belief that we will meet our departed loved ones again, one day soon, in a place full of light, without illness and grief.