I am not entirely sure why, but I felt moved by the Coronavirus Pandemic and its death toll, particularly stories of young people facing the reality of unexpected deaths of loved ones, especially parents, to write this long piece on Medium about death, loss, and grief.
I am, usually, quite a guarded person on life, generally, and family, in particular. I realise that I periodically appear on radio and television, and in news media, in respect of matters of public controversy. However, whatever we each may do with our lives, I still believe that all of us should have a private sphere of our own, known only unto God. For my part, I would never have believed in November 2019 that I would be writing an essay on grief in November 2020 concerning my beloved and deeply missed mother and father. Spared the anxiety of worrying about vulnerable parents during the pandemic in 2020, I thought I would try to help anyone now finding themselves in the position that I was in a decade-plus earlier.
I found writing a reflection on losing my beloved parents to have been the hardest thing that I have ever written. In a sense, yes, of course, this is how it should be. Yet, even so, it was extraordinarily hard. There is nothing I would change about the piece. It is the writing that I would have liked to have read long ago.
In writing the Medium piece, I learned a good deal about myself, as well as the process of writing. I have always realised that few people will like all of the writing that you do. I sent my piece to some close friends for their comment, who told me they found it very hard to read and finish, which was understandable to me, particularly as they all had their parents still in good health. A very helpful suggestion, that I acted upon, was to digitally record my reading it, so people could treat it like a podcast and listen in stages.
As I tried to get across in my writing, there is nothing particularly special about my story. I am not any sort of victim - other people have lost both parents at even earlier ages, while many others have living parents that they do not get on with. The only reason my story matters to me is that it happened to me – and that it concerns my own parents, who I love and miss, every day. I was the much youngest child in our family, I was very close to my parents, I looked after them until their passings, and, thus, I feel, whatever else I may know about, I know what it is like to see your beloved parents leave this life. Our parents teach us everything except how to live without them.
As a Catholic, in common with many people of differing faiths, I do not believe that this life is our end but rather only the beginning of our journey. I suspect some, or, indeed, all, of this comes through in my writing. Losing our parents is so very hard, but those who we lose, we will see, again. I certainly believe that about my late mother and my late father. I have also felt the presence of my mother and my father in my life, at various times since each passed, as a sign from a merciful and loving God that nothing, especially death, can separate us.
A particular benefit to me in writing this piece, which I did not expect, was the surprisingly large number of people who read it, and who have since made contact with me. I was touched to find people who went through similar losses, and who said how closely they related to my own particular experience, even as we had never met. I also heard from people who never really had anyone to listen to them, or who was thought by their friends to be doing alright in all the circumstances, who was, instead, still in so precarious a state. I was thankful, also, to those who had been spared such pain as yet but who had passed my Medium piece onto a friend or relative who was navigating their own way through the gloomy wilderness of grief and loss. If, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote in his poem Ulysses, we are all a part of those we have met, then, so, too, do our writings form an arch through which we go to meet countless others and learn of their experiences, even when separated by places and times.
For my part, I was glad, so very glad, to have had the opportunity to write of loving parents, of how I learned to live with losing them from this life, and, for me anyway, to reminisce, even if at times with sadness.
None of us knows what someone else is going through, or what heavy crosses they bear. We, in particular, do not know who is coping and, more importantly, who is not coping. All that we can do, especially those of us who have already been through the very worst, is to lend to the grieving a strong, if prematurely hardened, shoulder, and a most sympathetic and kind ear–and to show them that there is a way forward, however monstrously difficult it may seem to them, as, indeed, it seemed to us.
We are all but pilgrims here, and we must do our best, we must persevere, and we must run our race until its end, knowing that those we love and miss, so much, are watching us, hopefully always proudly, and willing us on. We may only see through a glass, darkly - but then we will see, again, face to face.
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