The importance of releasing sorrow

Some years back, my father who we had always known as the world’s most positive and enthusiastic person started falling quiet and slipping into visible depression, worrying incessantly and irrationally about everything, a far cry from the earlier confident disposition we were familiar with. For it was my father who stood up for anyone who needed help and for what he felt was right even if defied convention & tradition, and inspired everyone across generations, including several friends and strangers too to think independently and without fear.

We learned to reluctantly accept his new normal as a condition he couldn’t help, and attributed the marked change in his disposition to old age and mental health issues that may have been aggravated by a combination of post-surgery electrolyte imbalance, gut health, heart-pumping & kidney ejection challenges and Covid-time restrictions that prevented him from his favourite activity of taking walks. While all these are likely to have been critical contributors to his altered state of disposition, and the occasional psychiatric medications and change in scenery have helped, we started observing a deeper layer of problems from his sense of loss of relevance and isolation.

The loss of relevance seemed to grow from an anxiety over no longer being seen as a productive contributor to any household responsibilities or decisions, where the expectation is that he spends his time relaxing and not worrying, which may be particularly difficult given his natural inclination all his life was to throw himself at problems, even if it meant sometimes just fixing small imperfections at home - including painting, carpentry, electrical or plumbing. And even knowing this, a lot us us, particularly I, struggled to help share any domestic duties or questions with him as we were quickly worn out from how stressful & overwhelming so called small-problems-for-us appeared to him. And compounding this was a gradual isolation that crept up through his reducing physical strength and subsequently lowered confidence even to walk short distances without assistance, which left him desolate from the a realization of a loss of his treasured mobility.

However, what we may not have realized earlier was a further layer of grief, given how some of the signals started manifesting some years back around when he lost many near ones including siblings and close friends, most of whom he couldn’t even meet or talk to in their final months; given how much he cared for relationships, it’s unfathomable how broken it could have left him. Especially given he never cried. Either from conditioning as the strong male family-head, or by suppressing his sorrow as he had never ever expressed it before.

In the last year, I too lost four good friends, all young, fit and cheerful people who were so full of life. And despite a sensation resembling trauma, I found myself crying just once. Maybe because I didn’t want to accept the harsh truth; or was it because I had inherited some of my father’s trait of suppressing emotions? For my father’s always been quite a role model. But just as much as we hope to be there for him through everything, witnessing what he’s been enduring, I hope we can learn to understand & cope with inevitable mental health variations that most humans are bound to pass through.

If you’ve been through anything similar and have advice to lend, I’d be glad to listen. Let’s also watch out for our emotional needs and that of those around us, and encourage the expression of natural feelings like sorrow & anger if they have tp be released. We may not always be able to help, but maybe we can make a stronger effort to understand ourselves and others.