Lauren LIBBERT
When her dad died in the middle of the pandemic Lauren Libbert felt lockdown left her desperately alone and unable to properly grieve
I’ll be reaching for a box of cereal when my eyes drift to his face. He’s in a chair, all silver hair and square glasses, flanked by my two young sons, the three of them beaming into the camera. My throat feels squeezed of air. My father. He’s dead. Gone. Snuffed out in the middle of the pandemic, the extraordinary circumstances of which have made his passing all the more surreal, like it never really happened. Until I lay eyes on that photograph and remember.
Compared with many, we were lucky. His was a non-covid death and my three sisters, brother and I were able to form a tight bubble of support in his final weeks, nursing him at home, until he died relatively peacefully, aged 92, on May 19.
After an intimate family funeral, we remained in our bubble to sit “shiva” – the seven days of Jewish mourning where friends and relatives flood in to share memories and pay respects. But of course, with lockdown still in full force, none of that happened.
Then all five of us left my father’s bungalow in Manchester and went our separate ways; me, 200 miles down the motorway to London, where my sons and I went into isolation, plunged back into the “new normal” of home schooling, working, walking the dog, doing laundry, cooking endless meals and falling, exhausted, every night into bed.
As for grieving, it just didn’t happen.
It couldn’t. Where was the space?
There were phone calls, texts and visits from friends outside my front gate, but no one, apart from my partner, could step inside my house, put the kettle on or give me a hug.
When my mother died five years ago, a circle of hands caught me and shielded me from the edge of despair. There were trays of food, offers of childcare, long, restorative hugs, as well as hours of talking and tears with available, empathetic friends.
But lockdown and this virus has upended all our lives, sucking friends into their own preoccupied vortex and my grief feels lost, forgotten, squashed down somewhere, only emerging fleetingly when I catch sight of that picture and his face.
And this terrifies me. With over 45,000 Covid-19 deaths since March and who knows how many more associated deaths in that same time frame, where will all this grief go?
“What we are facing right now is a mental health tsunami of grief,” says Andy Langford, clinical director at Cruse Bereavement Care, the largest bereavement charity in the UK, which has received 54 per cent more calls to its helpline this June than in April and has seen a huge spike in traffic to its website as the number of bereaved and their desperation escalates.
“Covid deaths are often more likely to be sudden, which adds so many layers to grief. There’s sadness and fear, but also guilt because they often couldn’t be there in those final moments. Just like a death
‘Covid deaths are more likely to be sudden which adds so many layers to grief ’
‘You can’t receive the usual support and you are left feeling chronically alone’
through homicide, suicide or a road traffic accident, these are traumatic bereavements, which can lead to increased levels of anxiety, chronic depression and a sense of disbelief.”
The situation is made even worse after the death, with limitations on funerals and social distancing guidelines.
“You can’t even have a funeral in the way you want it or observe your loved one’s wishes,” says Langford. “And when you go home, you can’t receive the usual support from people and you’re left feeling chronically alone.”
Jade Foster-jerrett, 37, a social media trainer from Romford in Essex understands this well. Her father, Larry Foster, 65, died of Covid-19 on April 1, just two days after he was admitted to hospital.
“He and my mum had been ill for over a week and they’d called paramedics on March 24, but they thought it was a chest infection and didn’t take them in,” says Jade.
Her parents’ symptoms worsened and a week later, an ambulance was called again. This time, the paramedics took them to Basildon Hospital, where her father went into the intensive care unit and was put on a ventilator, and her mum was taken to a ward.
Two days later, she received a call on her mother’s phone from a nurse. “She told me she was so sorry but my dad had passed. She then gave the phone to my mum, who was still ill and confused. ‘Where is he? What’s going on?’ she kept saying as I tried to tell her what had happened. After the call, I went to the toilet and threw up.”
Three months on, Jade’s mother is back at home recovering, but Jade is still in shock.
“He went into the hospital and two days later he was dead,” she says. “That gets to me more than the fact that I’ve lost my dad. He was alone, too, with Mum in a separate part of the hospital and it kills me to think of
it. They were married 38 years and did everything together. In normal circumstances, we would have jumped in the car and gone to be with him, but we couldn’t.”
The family were able to have a small outdoors funeral, with eight people present, but it was totally surreal.
“My dad was a DJ and loved in the music industry and there should have been over 100 people there, but I just said a handful of words and then it was over,” says Jade. “Even now, I’m still not able to grieve. I haven’t broken down or cried properly.
“I seem to have just blocked it out and I’m on automatic pilot, working and looking after my two children. My husband has been supportive, and there have been calls from friends but in the main, people are preoccupied with their own lives. It’s like I’m living with a black cloud over me and I’m nowhere dealing with my grief.”
Lianna Champ, a grief and bereavement expert, funeral director and author of a practical guide, How
to Grieve Like a Champ, explains the pandemic has made grief even more bewildering than usual.
“If you’ve been robbed of the chance to say goodbye, it leaves the death open-ended and you’re left with a huge ball of pain inside with nowhere for it to go,” says Champ.
She believes that friends and relatives have to find different ways of reaching out to the bereaved during this period of “temporary insanity”.
“Pick the phone up, send a letter or an email, create a Whatsapp group with friends to rally around with a meal rota or to help that person with shopping,” she says.
“Friends need to be there and just listen. If you’ve left it too long or feel you’ve neglected someone, just say you’re sorry, but don’t shy away. Even saying ‘I don’t know what to say’ is enough to show your support when you can’t hug.”
As for the bereaved, Champ believes space has to be purposefully created for the grief, now more than ever. “Give the grief your attention or it will just fester,” she says. “We need to wallow in our emotional pain and give it expression. Tell everyone in your household you’re feeling sad and need to go up to your bedroom for a quiet 15 minutes. Show everyone it’s OK to feel sad and to respect it. Try also to have one person you can talk to as a release valve so your grief won’t be delayed and build to toxic levels.”
As for me, the unlocking of my grief began last week with the reopening of my synagogue.
Beneath my mask, with a prayer book in hand, I finally sobbed the cries of a daughter without a father, without parents, longing to bask once again in their sea of unconditional love but knowing that time was now over. And it helped. It really did.