Here Comes the Sun, COVID-19, and Grief.

I was listening to Here Comes the Sun the other day, and I thought of how it relates not just to the dawning of a new day, but to rebirth, to recovery, to relief from depression – and perhaps more so than ever as we feel drained by this pandemic.

For those of us who daily grieve the loss of a loved one, especially if the loss is new and the pain raw, the added intensity of the never-ending news cycle may be particularly draining. Not only are we facing this, we are facing it without our regular support – and we face it with guilt.

I look at this pandemic, and think of those I’ve lost. In my husband’s last years, he suffered from ulcerative colitis. I can’t imagine him adding worrying about a toilet paper shortage in addition to the everyday issues of the delicate balance of his life and his illness. I can’t imagine the month he spent in the hospital, or the months he spent in hospice care, if the nurses, doctors, and other health care workers had been not just overworked, but also worried about staying healthy amid the virus. He was over 80 and dying, and I wonder what kind of healthcare he would have received if he had been faced with the rationing of healthcare.

And then I feel relieved that he never had to face this, never had to know that a choice was made to take care of someone younger and stronger, and to just let him fade away.

And then the guilt hits, as though be being relieved that he did not have to live through this somehow means I’m not mourning him, or that I don’t miss him, or that I wouldn’t give the world to have had just one more day together.

It doesn’t matter if you lost your spouse, your parent, your child; it doesn’t matter if your lose is fresh or not. Times like this, when we keep hearing statistics of how many ill, how many dead, how many recovering, put us back in that particular hell that we lived on that day we lost a chunk of our heart.

We loved them, and we miss them. It’s okay that we are relieved they never had to face this; it doesn’t mean we love them less – maybe it even means we loved them more. But just as our love never truly dies, neither does our grief ever truly leave us. We may cry now with both tears and laughter; our pain may be dull instead of knife-sharp; but we still hurt, we still grieve. And we ought to grieve without guilt, for there is no guilt in being happy someone is now with God; there is no guilt in being happy someone feels no more pain; there is no guilt in knowing the one we love are safe from something we ourselves could not protect them from.

So let the sun come, and let it warm our hearts, and remember the days we had with those we’ve lost. Be happy for them, and stay safe yourself.