The word “loss” is purposefully vague because it is used to describe many things. Loss can be a break-up, the death of your pet or the absence of your usual way of life. Grief is the response to loss, and while it is a complicated, arduous process, loss itself is usually specific. COVID-19 has changed this.
The effects of a pandemic on a young person’s life are immeasurable, and by that, I mean truly impossible to quantify or qualify. Because of COVID-19, young adults are being torn away from the things they know and love: their comforts, the experiences they were just discovering and the future they were creating for themselves. Most millennials and Gen Zers have never known certainty as a result of years of economic instability and a rapidly changing cultural landscape, but few of us could have predicted loss on this scale.
Since the beginning of the lockdown, I have contemplated how grief has affected me personally. I have been navigating the process of grief since the sudden passing of my father six years ago. The following period of my life was a blur of pain and desperate reckoning with the world, but the people around me made living bearable.
So what does the grieving process look like when isolation from others is the current truth of our world?
Marc Zola of Oregon Counseling said that the grieving process has become more complicated since the pandemic began.
“All loss brings emotional pain and grief, but there’s a different quality of uncertainty to what’s happening now,” Zola said. “I think the fact that we’re all physically separated exacerbates the sense of uncertainty. The result is a different kind of loss, sometimes called ambiguous loss.”
Of course, COVID-19 has caused plenty of very specific loss through the deaths of over 200,000 Americans in the last seven months. I personally do not know someone who has died from COVID-19, but I can still feel the weight of the absence of these people and the pain of their loved ones. Whether we are dealing with the death of a loved one or something more vague, the pandemic has also changed how we grieve.
Zola said that the path to recovery is not as straightforward as a typical loss, because we are still in the middle of the trauma. Instead of going through the standard cycle of grief, he said we are more likely to bounce around between denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Zola also noted that throughout the lockdown his clientele has increased. However, the feelings his clients express have become more homogenous. People are describing similar feelings of loneliness and uncertainty. He said that he has used this as a tool to help clients, by appropriately disclosing that it isn’t just them feeling this way.
“I hope that in a strange way we can find community by remembering that everyone else is in the same boat and that we’re all in this together,” Zola said.
Despite physical limitations, it seems that the answer still lies in supporting one another. Part of “acceptance” means that we must collectively recognize that our current trauma will likely affect us for the rest of our lives. In the most pragmatic sense, Zola recommends regularly scheduling time with friends or planning distanced hang-outs.
As we navigate how to deal with grief in our daily lives, it is important to remember that it is not a simple process. I have found that the most contradictory part of grief is being angry with the loss, but thankful for the person the resulting grief has made you become. After losing so many opportunities and so many lives, I am hopeful that our collective recovery will lead us to be a more accepting and equitable society, one in which we support each other through our worst moments.