While
the vaccines have changed our outlook on both what we have gone through and the
future trajectory of
COVID-19, it remains that the virus has claimed more than
3.7 million lives since the outbreak early last year, and disrupted the lives
of almost everyone on earth. It has left more than 2 billion people on earth
today who have lost at least one person they know (estimating that on average a
person knows 600 people throughout their lifetime).
اضافة اعلان
I
do not know of another time in history where every third person on earth was
mourning the death of someone they know. Studies also show that the grief
people feel after a
COVID-19 death, for several reasons, is more pervasive and
acute than the grief they feel after a death that’s due to natural
causes.
And
while this is important, and the full effects of which will be untangled in the
coming years, there is another kind of grief that may go unnoticed. A type that
was named in the 80s as “disenfranchised grief.”
We
all have missed something in the last year. Some of us have missed a loved
one’s wedding, a planned vacation, the first steps of a grandchild, or even
routine time we have spent with family and friends.
In
the grand scheme of things, even the author of this article has been guilty of
using phrases like “I am one of the lucky ones,” “cannot complaint when others
are going through such and such,” etc and similar other phrases that stem from
the guilt of complaining about a lost vacation to someone who may have just
lost a loved one.
But
disenfranchised grief is real. And while it might not have as big of an impact
on our lives as bigger events, it is still real and there is still no support
system for it.
And
now, at this time in history, we have an event that has literally affected
everybody who inhabits this earth. People have lost opportunities, have been
diagnosed with terminal illness with a social support system, people have had
to fall ill and recover on their own, and have been purely lonely.
While
there is not a lot we can do about this right now, and it will continue to
happen until the impact of COVID-19 on the world is meaningfully minimized, we
should always remember that everyone we are dealing with, almost everyone in
our lives, is a little bit more sad than usual. That maybe, considering what we
are all going through, it is a good time to be a little bit kinder towards each
other.
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