The invisible shadow of Grief

Circa August 2020.?

It was a normal Saturday evening. After a busy week and after putting kids to bed, me and my wife had just slumped into the couch with our gin & tonic to watch something on TV and finally relax.?

Then the proverbial call came.?It was from my mom’s caregiver from my hometown Titlagarh in Orissa.??‘your Maa is not breathing’. ‘Nani’ ( as we call elder sisters in Odia) said in a terrified voice.??I couldn’t fathom if this was for real. Incredulously, I asked her again. And she repeated the same sentence. “ your Maa is not breathing”.?

?My mother had had a massive heart attack and had passed away in minutes.

?In the midst of the first Covid wave, after changing multiple flights, road trips, I reached home to say my final good bye to my mom, performed the last rites pretty much by myself, given people were not allowed to congregate.?

?2 years earlier, I had lost my father to a prolonged battle with Parkinson’s and was just about regaining my bearings from that loss. Processing my mom’s death was the hardest journey I have had to undertake in my life. She has pretty much shaped who I have turned out to be in my life. And now the anchor of my life was gone.

?I came back to work after a few days.

?There were the usual ' I am sorry'. 'How are you doing' 'My condolences' from my colleagues, which I really appreciated. But not many people realized that I was not even 25% of the person they knew. I felt like I was cut into a small piece of my previous version when I returned to work. I felt there were wounds all over my body, which not many noticed. I had a hard time even completing a sentence without it being under the weight of my mom's loss. I felt I was lifting 3 or 4 times my weight as I went through the day. Each conversation, each meeting, each day was a mountain to climb. And as I would climb the mountain, i expected someone to acknowledge, but in vain. Now, I know, it's hard for others to physically or emotionally notice the 'wounds' or the burden of the weight I was carrying. I felt spent and I thought i had lost my voice, my identity and my previous self.

?Days, weeks, months went by. I learnt to pick myself up and merged myself back to the tracks of the demands of life, as a train would do to get to its destination. But I had changed who I was...Grief became my companion from then on.. I took her wherever i went. Just that not everyone noticed my companion. Some did. Most didnt. I let her nag me, pull me, tug at me, i consoled her, I asked her to wait until I finished a meeting, a call, a day out, and promised, I would be with her when I was done. and that's what I did. after every engagement, I would take a deep breath, gather myself back and then put on my shield to go back to the battle field, so I could protect my broken heart.

?The year 2020 was spent in surviving. As I bid good bye to 2020,?I hoped for 2021 to usher in a new dawn, where I would leave the aftermath of 2020 behind and embrace a new future with my still wounded self.

?And then came the fatal Delta wave of 2021. We all hunkered down, shut ourselves out from the world, praying to escape unscathed. As news of the deadly virus was casting its deadly spell in families across the country, we tightened our controls, told family members to hold tight, maintain water tight discipline in following the guidelines.

But the universe had other plans.

Just as I celebrated my birthday in mid May 2021, we got a call from Bhubaneswar that both my inlaws were sick with covid like symptoms. And things changed fast dramatically. While my father in law escaped without much impact, my mother in law couldn’t. ?From having a minor cough to being admitted to the hospital, then being rushed to the ICU for severe symptoms of lung infection, things turned pretty dark ?for her in 72 hours.

And there I was, again, in the frontlines again, face to face with the deadly virus, inside a suffocating PPE kit caring for my mother in law. She fought a valiant fight for 2 weeks in the ICU, but succumbed in the end.

?The dark shadow of Death was paying a visit to our family again in less than a year.

?From combing the corridors of the ICU ward in the hospital, to performing her funeral amongst throngs of other bereaved families, to consoling our unsuspecting children about why both ther grandmas had gone to 'Heaven' within 9 months, we were thrown into the deep abyss of grief and sorrow again.

?Like a war veteran, even before the wounds of my mom's passing had shown any signs of healing, I was painted with a whole new series of wounds.

?After a few days break, I returned to work again.

?My own team had rallied like troopers in my absence and in my support. But I did have to get back to the demands of work. From business reviews to team meetings to candidate interviews, I had to 'show up'. I put on my fake shield again and showed up, hoping to protect my double broken heart. But in vain.

?I showed up a pale shadow of my previous self. I am sure some folks noticed it, most didn’t. In the melee of millions of things on any given day, when death was every day news from everywhere, who would pause to wander what was wrong with me and why I wasn’t the same me.

Today we complete 1 year of my mother in law's passing. Next month it will be the 4th anniversary of my father's death and in 3 months it will be 2nd anniversary of my mother's leaving this world. Even my otherwise alert brain is having a hard time keeping up with the death anniversaries that are piled up one after the other.

?The whole purpose of sharing all the tragedies with you is not to garner sympathy, but to shine a light on the invisible marks of 'Grief' on all of us who have gone through loss of loved ones and a few thoughts on how we can learn to support our fellow colleagues and friends in more humane and thoughtful ways.

?In the 'busyness' of demanding jobs, in the attempt to 'problem solve' things quickly like we do for our business problems, a lot of us (including me) try to fix grief fast. We ask our colleagues to 'do everything they need to do' to take care of themselves, which is well intentioned but is rarely helpful Employers have generous 'Grief' leave policy, 'Employee Assistance' support, Resource groups which are really helpful. But that’s not enough. And that doesn’t replace the need for more empathy we can show to our fellow colleagues when they experience loss.

?I have had to be on the other side of consoling many many friends and colleagues who have experienced deep loss particularly in the last 2 years and even having gone through loss myself, I struggle to express myself in the correct way to friends and colleagues at times.

??Here are a few things I will share with you about supporting well being of fellow colleagues and team members at work, who are experiencing loss of loved ones.

?-First thing we must understand is Grief never goes away. We will grieve the loss of our loved ones as long as we live and love them. As in the aptly described words from the grief counseling expert David Kessler ' We will grieve the loss of our loved ones as long as they are going to be dead'. Hence, we shouldn’t expect anyone to ‘get over’ their grief.

- Acknowledge their pain and suffering. Most grieving people don't share their pain in the attempt to 'blend in' at work, That doesn't mean they are not hurting.

- Don’t decide how much time is good enough for them to 'get over' their loss. No one 'gets over' their loss. We all learn to live with our losses, it just becomes a part of the new' us'. And everyone’s grieving journey is different. So it’s important to pay attention to the particular individual and how they are processing the loss.

- Words matter. More so during the first weeks, months after the loss. Because emotions are raw and to grieving humans, even a few words of empathy is a huge source of support and hope.

- Please don’t say, ‘Are you better now ?’ after a few days of someone’s loss. While this sentence is aimed to convey empathy, it just doesn’t. Instead just ask, ‘ how are you feeling this morning or how are you today ?’

- Be empathetic to their inability to be fully 'switched on'. I have felt this. As I mentioned, I just wanted to hide somewhere in meetings fresh after my loss. I didnt want to show up. I was afraid that I will end up breaking down or showing my broken soul to others. Be respectful, if they don’t want to come on 'Video' in meetings. They are working hard to just be there in those meetings.

- Check-in with them frequently (while being respectful of their space for privacy), and offer to help in specific ways - 'Can I assign this work to someone else' ? 'Can I take on some of your workload', 'Are you comfortable if I reduced your workload for the next few weeks while you process this grave loss', ‘ If you want to chat about your loved one, I am here to listen’. Specific offers of help shows we truly are there for our colleagues and not just saying platitudes.

?The aftermath of losing a loved one is profound and is hard to describe. Survivors go through the roller coaster emotional journey of various phases of grief in unique ways. The journey to come to some semblance of normalcy is a long one. And they deserve our empathy and care. If they feel supported during the most vulnerable stage of their lives, they will forever remember this humanity and the gesture we have shown to them as colleagues, managers, leaders and coworkers. And that’s what will make the culture of our workplace that much more strong. As we celebrate the mental health awareness month of May, a lot of folks around us are still grieving from their losses and if we can truly offer our authentic human selves to them beyond our 'work' selves, it will go a long way in making this journey a little less painful for them.