The pandemic has created many pockets of grief across the world, and in this country especially. Grief is a consequence of the global health crisis that often occurs behind closed doors, in private spaces, in the dark of night. There are no statistics about how many people right now are grieving loved ones lost to the Covid-19 virus, and how many are coping vs. not coping. All we know is that these people are everywhere.
Having now lost my father to the virus, I have chosen to grieve very publicly. Part of that is because I’m a writer, and my “brand” revolves around being vulnerable in an accessible way — a fact that annoyed my father immensely when he was alive (see, dad? At least you don’t have to put up with my bullshit on that front anymore).
Yet on a very basic, human level, I have found being candid about my feelings to be very helpful. Twisted up in exquisite knots of pain, I find relief in holding this feeling up to the light and naming it for what it is. It is a relief, also, to explain to people just why my father is so dearly missed — how funny he was, how loving, what a fantastic, novel-worthy life he led, and just how proud I am to be his daughter.
I have not found anger to be useful, however. Which is funny, because I have found rage to be helpful before, propelling me ever forward
A lot of people have asked me if I am angry. My dad died after rushing to the aid of a beloved cousin’s family after the latter was killed by the virus. Essentially, my dad died because he was extremely compassionate and couldn’t stay away. He also died because the vaccine roll-out in his native Ukraine has been a disaster so far. Finally, he died because the virus was allowed to run rampant in the first place.
I have not found anger to be useful, however. Which is funny, because I have found rage to be helpful before, propelling me ever forward. My father, however, was an upbeat man who didn’t believe in staying angry for too long. He would’ve hated to see me exploding in righteous fury over something I couldn’t change.
More importantly, I have come to believe — mostly by reading about physics, but also by observing the world, all of its weird comings and goings, its scientific experiments, and its spiritual traditions — that everything that will happen has already happened. Time does not exist. Years ago, when my father first held the small bundle that was me outside a Soviet hospital, our parting was already written.
And having hung on to that belief through the bitter fog of grief, I have also been reminded of the fact that death is not what we think it is anyway. We are not finite. This is not the end. There is more to the universe than what the fragile orbs of our eyes are able to see. A lot of people will scoff at that, but I find those people to be boring anyway.
In his final days, my father was proud of me. Just 48 hours before he was hospitalized, I called him up to happily inform him that I had ridden on the back of a proper motorbike for the first time in my life.
“It was such a rush!” I yelled into the phone (we are, to put it mildly, a loud family). “Oh my God! The wind! The speed!”
My father laughed happily, and then got very serious, and told me how happy he is that I am living life on my own terms and getting rides from cool guys on their motorbikes (this wasn’t always the case; I used to be a very different person, devoted not to my goals and pleasures, but to the goals and pleasures of the men in my life, something that deeply saddened my father).
It was such a small detail, one of those tiny, final stitches in the rich tapestry of our parent-child relationship, but it will stick with me always. I had become the woman my dad wanted me to be, and he had acknowledged this, before the end — among many of the other good things that were said by us, before he left this strange world.
My memories of my father, and the persistent feeling that he is still with me, but in a very different way now, crowd out my impulse to be angry. Not everyone is likely to relate to this, but I have found a lot of comfort in hearing similar narratives from my fellow bereaved.
And here is the other helpful thing — if you’re grieving, know that you are not alone. Many other people on this planet are doing it, in whatever clumsy or noble ways.
“My dad just died,” I managed to croak after someone decided that I was not, in fact, day drunk, and something else was going on
My way is the clumsy one. I am an out and proud clown when it comes to most endeavours, and learning to live without my father is no different. While rushing to get the rapid Covid test that would enable me to get on the plane to go bury him, for example, I ended up collapsing and throwing up on the sidewalk, right on the little grassy bit where dogs normally go to poop.
It was broad daylight in our nation’s capital. There were many witnesses to this debacle.
“My dad just died,” I managed to croak after someone decided that I was not, in fact, day drunk, and something else was going on. People murmured and respectfully looked away.
In my head, my father cheerfully said, “Imagine the stuff you can get away with while mourning me! You are welcome!”
And so I went on down that sidewalk to get the rest of my tasks done. Maybe I wasn’t holding my head very high, but who cares, honestly? The strange gift of grieving a parent is finding more hidden reserves of strength — or your hidden reserves of bad jokes, or whatever.
I have found such an enormous reserve, that I found myself cheering up his sobbing friends at the funeral. One of them, whom I had never met before, told me that he knew right away that I was his daughter — because I had the ability to make people laugh by an open grave. The love that flooded me then was enormous; I felt as if I was made entirely of light.
And that’s just the thing. No amount of stupid cliches or bad faith can cheapen the fact that in the end, the only thing that matters is love. Love too is not finite. If you’ve had it once, you’ll have it forever. I know that when I think about my father.
Covid took so much from so many of us. But there is also a part of us that no virus can ever touch.
Image credit: Karim Manjra