By Aruna Sankaranarayanan,
As the second wave of COVID-19 engulfs the nation, anxiousness and unease suffuse the air. Instead of doom-scrolling the Net and providing in to hopelessness, I turn to books for succour. What lessons can we glean from lives that catapulted from ‘normal’ to ‘catastrophic’ in an immediate? As lots of people today are becoming bereaved, how can we assistance these grieving the sudden loss of a loved one? Two outstanding females model resilience and tenacity as they describe their harrowing journeys via grief. Through their touching and sensitive memoirs, each Nandini Murali and Joan Didion convey that having said that dark the tunnel of grief might be, flecks of light do penetrate and progressively morph into a beam.
Incidentally, each females use the metaphor of ‘waves’ to portray the paroxysms of discomfort that inundate them viscerally and psychologically. Indigestion, nausea, headaches, sleeplessness—grief leaves an imprint on the body and thoughts, according to Murali and Didion. In Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss, Murali specifics her practical experience of becoming bereaved by her husband’s suicide. To her, her husband’s act of self-harm killed each of them. Likewise, in The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion describes how she felt bereft soon after the unexpected death of her husband. One moment, the two of them have been getting dinner with each other, and the next, he was slumped more than the table.
Both females endure grief that is difficult. Murali has to contend with the shame and blame that accompany suicide, even though Didion has an adult daughter intubated in ICU, unaware that her father has died. In the instant aftermath of her husband’s death, Didion has to care for her comatose daughter, who is in and out of hospitals, for the next 5 months.
For days soon after the tragic occasion, Murali is overcome by a smorgasbord of feelings that actually ‘ambush’ her. Murali, becoming a scholar who operates on gender and diversity, is sensitized to the idea of stigma for marginalized groups. Knowing all also effectively that she also, as a survivor of suicide loss, would face barbs and brickbats, she nevertheless resolves to speak the truth about her husband’s death rather than perpetuate the stigma, stealth and ignominy generally related with suicide.
While Didion does not have to deal with the stigma of suicide, she also is plagued by niggling queries. Was her husband breathing when the paramedics arrived? Had she failed to notice any symptoms? Did he have a premonition that he was going to die? Though she has been married to her husband for close to forty years, she feels that there is so significantly more she desires to know about him. Like Murali, she also shares the belief that it is not possible to know one more individual inside-out. As she wrestles with her thoughts, a element of her fantasizes that her husband will return, and therefore, starts her year of “magical thinking.” While Didion is completely functional and rational to other people, she alone is witness to her wishful considering that tries to rewind and rewrite life’s script.
Didion claims that no matter how calm a grieving individual seems on the surface, their inner balance, each mental and physical, is most likely to be disturbed. No one can fathom grief and the bottomless void that follows unless you have knowledgeable it firsthand. A not too long ago bereaved individual might exhibit strange behaviors like shunning these whom they are typically close to. Grieving people today deserve space, and we really should take our cues from them and stay distant if that is what they want. Additionally, higher-strung people today, who are most likely to jar the tender nerves of the bereaved, really should be kept away.
A suicide, as opposed to other people deaths, also evokes the very best and worst in other people today. Though some people today are compassionate, other people objectify and vilify Murali via a voyeuristic prism. Besides insensitive statements and queries, conversations are also punctuated by awkward pauses and cold stares. People’s lack of empathy exacerbates Murali’s desolation.
But alternatively of wallowing in self-pity, Murali tries to comprehend her changed predicament by reading avidly on suicide loss, grief and resilience. Her new-discovered expertise is empowering as it broadens her viewpoint. Rather than perceived vulnerability as a weakness, Murali starts to view it as a strength. While she can’t alter her fate, Murali has a option on how she responds to it. This requires relearning how to navigate the crests and troughs of life.
Didion also turns to books to make sense of the twin tragedies in her life– the loss of her husband and her daughter’s life-threatening illness. Like Murali, Didion believes that information and facts can give us a sense of handle. Despite becoming a writer, Didion realizes that some points take more than just words to plumb their which means.
A month soon after her husband’s death, Murali speaks at a book launch of a health-related textbook about her experiences with spinal surgery and the current loss of her husband, who incidentally had been scheduled to speak at that occasion. Moved by her fortitude, the audience provides her a standing ovation. She is subsequently motivated to begin SPEAK, an organization that supports survivors of suicide loss to cultivate resilience in a compassionate and non-judgmental space. Another aim of SPEAK is to eradicate the shame and stigma surrounding suicide in the public sphere.
Didion realizes that when we mourn the death of a loved one, we also mourn the passing of our former self, as the death of a dear one irrevocably transforms us. However, she also resolves not to succumb to helplessness wherein she can’t function with out her companion. Rather than give into fantastical considering, she has to let go of her husband if she has to continue to live.
(The author’s forthcoming book, Zero Limits: Things Every 20 Something Should Know will be released by Rupa Publications.)