On the last day of the world,
I would want to plant a tree.
—W. S. MERWIN
We wrote this book at a simpler time. At least it seemed that way. When 2020 began, our routines felt familiar, well within what we thought of as “normal.” And we felt a relative sense of security.
Then the pandemic struck like a storm out of the Bible, a plague beyond what we could have imagined. We were working with our editor at Red Wheel/Weiser, to finalize this book about grief, describing Claire's life work with the bereaved. We wrote for people grieving personal losses, for example, the death of a loved one, such as a child or spouse or beloved pet, or the loss of a job, or the onset of a life-threatening illness. And then the world turned on a dime, and suddenly governments worldwide were mandating lockdowns, and we were all sheltering in place.
Where we live in Boston, April and May brought a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths. An email Marnie received during the shutdown began: “I am writing with a heavy heart to tell you. . . .” It was about a friend from her meditation group who had been hospitalized and then died a few days later from the virus. That week, there were almost no non-COVID-19 stories in the news, as the U.S. pandemic death toll surpassed 100,000.
In a column in the New York Times, David Brooks asked readers how they were holding up during challenging times. In the first few days, he received 5,000 replies. “I think I . . . expected a lot of cheerful coming-together stories,” Brooks told NPR. “But what I got shocked me. It was heart rending and gutting frankly. People are crying a lot . . . It tends to be the young who feel hopeless, who feel their plans for the future have suffered this devastating setback, a loss of purpose, a loss of hope. Then the old, especially widows and widowers, talk about the precariousness of it, the loneliness of it. They just feel vulnerable, extremely vulnerable. While a lot of people are doing pretty well, there's just this river of woe out there that really has shocked me and humbled me.”
Now we see that aspects and qualities of grief and grieving are universal, whether you have suffered an individual loss, or are experiencing losses on a global scale. Individually and collectively, we are grieving. We're experiencing large, difficult feelings, even if we don't recognize them as grief: sorrow, fear, anger, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, or disorientation. These troubling emotions, sensations, and mind states are the ways we humans respond to loss.
We feel the loss of family members, friends, and neighbors we loved, celebrities and public figures we followed. We're missing the person we were and the way we lived not long ago. In the midst of this invisible, highly contagious virus, we grieve the loss of a kind of innocence. As we don our masks and gloves, we fear being infected or infecting others, and wonder what impact these changes will have on our worldview and our emotional well-being.
We grieve the loss of our work and economic stability, the familiarity of seeing our kids go off to school, and the ease of chatting with friends and even strangers. We grieve for shuttered offices, factories, and gathering places. We grieve for elders in nursing homes, family members who cannot visit one another.
In the midst of national protests over police brutality and systemic racism, we bear witness to the deep grief of the African-American community and other communities of color who also suffer a disproportionate share of deaths and infection in the pandemic. We grieve and are heartsick for families who have lost loved ones to violence. We grieve for the houseless and under-resourced, for children who are hungry, for all whose lives are sorely affected in these times.
We grieve graduations cancelled and weddings postponed. We're grateful for online memorials, friends and family get-togethers, and virtual religious services. Yet, we miss human touch.
We now know that the unimaginable can and does happen. And we've learned how deeply reliant we are on each other—how radically interconnected we are. We breathe the same air and suffer the same diseases. We're all in this together. We have witnessed the “helpers,” as Fred Rogers called them, acting with selflessness and courage. We've seen the generosity and kindness of medical professionals, grocery workers, mail carriers, and delivery folks, the millions of essential workers who have kept us fed and alive.
We've seen how grief and love are intertwined. We grieve because we love. And we transform suffering and get through adversity by loving and helping each other. As we find ways to stay present, do what is right, persist against odds, we become like the poet W. S. Merwin and choose to “plant a tree” no matter what.
—May 2020