Grieving during a Global Pandemic II: One Year Later

Lockdown restrictions have started to ease over the past week or so, and I've had a lot of weird feelings about it. Mostly because it's been so long since I've experienced the 'old' normal things like going out shopping or for a meal in a restaurant or drinks at the pub with my friends. When the pandemic first happened, and the first lockdown was announced last March, I spent weeks mourning the 'old normal' whilst struggling to adjust to this new way of life that we were suddenly thrust into. It's weird now to think that something I've mourned will come back.

But mostly, this week I've struggled because whilst going out again is allowed and shopping and trips to the pub are coming back, some things in my life aren't. Because whilst the world tentatively starts to step towards how life used to be before the covid pandemic (though it looks very different naturally), that doesn't change the fact my grandma is gone. Everything I mourned in the first lockdown is coming back in some shape or form. Everything, except my grandma.

Today, it has been an entire year since she died. And the truth is, I'm no closer to accepting that she's gone than I was a year ago. Over the past year, I've done a lot of mourning. I've mourned little things I used to take for granted, like nights out with my friends, hugs with loved ones, walking through a supermarket and not having to remember a mask wherever I go. I've mourned bigger things too, like my final undergrad lecture with my course mates, that photo I would have taken with my finished dissertation, my graduation day that never was. I've had to accept that some of those things won't happen now, no matter how much I'd like them too. But even today, 365 days later, I struggle to accept that she's gone too. Mourning her means accepting that I won't see her again. And even though it's been a year since she died, most days I struggle to accept a world where she isn't here.

I talk about her a lot on this blog, but in reality, I hardly talk about her at all, despite thinking about her almost every day. We're taught not to talk about our grief, about our loved ones who are gone because it hurts to talk about it and because it makes other people who do not know what to say to you uncomfortable. They'd rather you didn't talk about it. They'd rather you just move on already. And for a while, I tried too. I saw her photograph on my notice board in my room everyday, I played the scarce videos I have of her on my phone just to hear her voice again in the privacy of my room. Outside those four walls, I stuffed my grief deep down inside and damn near choked on it. I got up early three times a week and tried to outrun my grief, until the stitches in my sides failed to hurt more than the ache in my chest. I waited until I was safely ensconced under my duvet in a locked bedroom to let the tears come, and for god knows how many nights my sleep deprived brain brought my grandma back to life in my dreams. 

I've come back to my childhood home for Easter, and I drove back with my head full of memories of Easter last year when I was locked down in my student house in Bristol. This Easter, there was no video call with my grandma to make the miles between me and my loved ones seem less. But she wasn't here to greet me either. Instead, there was a headstone and a handful of daffodils, and if it hadn't been for the freshly moved earth beneath the stone no one would have been able to guess how long she'd been gone. I still look to her old bungalow whenever I arrive back home at Hatton, because in all the years I was in Bristol at university, the first thing I did when coming home was get out the car and run across the lawn to my grandma's bungalow and say hello. I've always thought of my village as being synonymous with my grandma, because it didn't matter where in the world I went, when I came back, it was to that little sleepy village, and a grandparent I adored. 

My grief isn't something inside me, that I can fight and conquer and overcome; it's external. It's like a shadow that follows me everywhere I go, even when there's no sun. It doesn't get any smaller. Sometimes, it acts like a physical shadow, and when I'm in the shade of a building, I cannot see that it's there, and it's manageable. But sometimes, when I step back into the sun, the shadow of my grief follows every step, reasserting it's presence in my life. And you have to accept that it's there; that it will always be there. 

My grandma died a year ago today. And I didn't know whether to cry because she isn't here or to smile because she was. She had been here, and she had loved me. And I suddenly realized, I can do both. I'm allowed to be sad and cry because she's no longer here but smile and be happy because for 99 years she was.

And I'm allowed to talk about her, even if it makes me cry and people don't know what to say. And more importantly, I want to talk about her, even though it hurts. Because it won't ever fully stop hurting. It'll get easier to live with, and I'll get better at navigating my grief, but I will always miss her. And that's okay too. I don't have to choose between moving on and grieving. I choose both. 

A year ago, my world changed. It will never be the same. But she made my world lovely. And I am so, so lucky to have been a part of her world too.