Afterword
None of us could have imagined that in 2020 we would be in the midst of a global pandemic. Grief, the subject of this book, is usually a topic that no one wants to talk about, but as the pandemic picked up steam, I was suddenly being asked about it constantly. In March 2020, I was interviewed by the Harvard Business Review, where the writer, Scott Berinato, asked about the discomfort that everyone seemed to be feeling. I told him that the heaviness was a form of grief. It was not the grief from a death of a loved one, though for some of us that would be coming. It was the grief of losing our normal way of life.
The Harvard Business Review piece became the most-read article in their history, and within a week, every major network was calling me to discuss grief. In interviews, I explained that there were macro and micro forms of grief; in other words, big and little losses, plus everything in between.
The first losses we were grappling with were things like canceled weddings and high school graduations and, following that, the loss of jobs. It’s important to name the feelings of sadness, disappointment, and anger. Understanding that all those losses involve grief also shows us the limitations of using the term “grief” to explain every kind of loss.
People always wanted to know how the sixth stage of grief applied to this experience. What does finding meaning look like in a pandemic? How can there be meaning in a virus that sickens and kills those we love? There is no meaning in the virus or the pandemic; meaning comes from what we do in response to it. It’s possible to grow though this tragedy rather than just go through it.
We must look for meaningful moments, like nurses holding up phones so loved ones can say goodbye or family members waving through nursing home windows. I saw little moments of meaning in my life, too. I didn’t know many of my neighbors on my block until we began sheltering in place. We built a text chain. “I’m going to the grocery store,” someone would text. “Does the elderly man at the end of the block need anything?” That’s meaningful. Children who had to give up their playdates are playing with their parents in the front yard. Those moments are meaningful.
The COVID-19 pandemic is heartbreaking and horrific, but we have to find the light that exists in the darkness. Every storm we ever endured has passed. Every night has given way to a better day. Wars end, terrorist attacks end, and so do pandemics. This tragic time has reaffirmed what this book is about and shown me how much meaning matters, in both personal and societal loss.
Here are four kinds of meaning that we can look for at this time:
1. Speaking openly about grief
This pandemic has given us permission to talk about grief. People struggling with loss, discouraged that no one wanted to talk about it, may now be more easily able to share their feelings.
2. Meaning in end-of-life care
In my first book, The Needs of the Dying, I discussed the need to not die alone. It was written at a time when we valued medical technology. But now, decades later, the barriers to dying with family are not just related to end-of-life procedures; our heroic doctors and nurses are seeing this firsthand, as so many are dying and often no one, for safety and health reasons, can say goodbye. I hope that, as a result of the pandemic, those needs can be taken more seriously and automatically built into end-of-life care.
3. Meaning in rituals
In this book, I’ve written about the importance of rituals and how they shape, hold, and facilitate our grief. Not being able to have funerals to help to process a family’s grief will impact our losses in the long term. Perhaps this will help us to find deeper meaning in rituals in the future.
4. Grieving online
Countless people who were grieving reached out to me when their grief groups were canceled because of the government's “stay-at-home” order. People struggling with a recent or historical loss had no support, though grief groups and peer support are crucial to help us understand the magnitude of our losses. Hearing their unmet needs, I wondered, Could this work online?
When I started a free online bereavement group, more than a thousand people showed up on the first day. We now have more than twenty thousand attendees, and we're still growing.
Our lives are always changed by loss, and loss continues. Even as I write this, we have been met with the tragic news of George Floyd’s death. The pandemic will show us the consequences of grief being unwitnessed in the future, and the continued racial injustices are showing us the consequences of death and grief not being witnessed in the past. We are all going through collective loss, and we want to come back with a better world. One with posttraumatic growth, not posttraumatic stress. We want all our losses, big and small—job losses, postponed milestones, and cancelled funerals—to be marked and noted. We don't want our grief to be lost to time. We want to find meaning.
