Five years ago this month, the COVID-19 pandemic began. It’s hard to calculate the scale of loss. Almost 7 million people died worldwide, more than 1 million in the United States alone.
Multiply that by the number of people who knew and loved them and it’s an astounding measure of grief. Beyond that are all the other intangible losses — work lives changed, offices shuttered, school years missed, relationships broken.
Anne Strainchamps from “To The Best of Our Knowledge” reached out to one of the world’s foremost grief experts, David Kessler, to talk about how we feel now. He argues that Americans are dealing with a heavy amount of unacknowledged post-pandemic grief.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Anne Strainchamps: I see so little reporting, so little public conversation about the ways in which we changed post-COVID or about what that means, how we feel about it, what we miss. We don’t talk about it. That seems incomprehensible to me. What do you think is going on?
David Kessler: I think we have a tendency to want to put things behind us. We want to believe that the bad is over. And somehow people think remembering is dwelling.
I run 26 different grief groups, and in these grief groups, there are a number of people who have had a [close person’s] death from COVID and they live in a world where they say, “We’re done with that.”
No, you’re not done with your father who died, your spouse who died. And it actually really is important to where we are today with the tragedies in the world right now. The fires, the airplane crashes.
I remind people we’re not coming to this moment full and many people are coming to this moment still empty. So many people now, with the fires in Los Angeles are saying, “Oh my gosh, I think I have PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
And I’m like, it’s not post. We’re in it now. And I think for a lot of people, we are in complicated grief right now reacting to this new world and everything that’s happening from some of the pains of our old world.
AS: I’m listening to you. And I’m thinking, wow, I think it’s possible that I never did really come to terms with the fact that I don’t go into an office anymore. A whole collective life that I had with my coworkers is gone and it’s not coming back.
And maybe that’s part of the depth and rawness of my response to a lot of the events I see in the news. Maybe that’s part of my weird inability to get out and see more people. Maybe that’s why I’m, like, hiding indoors. Half the time I hadn’t ever thought about that. I don’t know what to do with that.
DK: Right. Let’s start there. Our work isn’t to do anything big or artificial. Our work is to be present with what is. This isn’t self-help. This is self-acceptance.
And what that means is at some point you’re going to go, “I should get out more.” Instead of judging it, get curious about it. Where does it come from? “Oh, I think it comes from the pandemic. I’m not going into an office anymore with people.”
Then you suddenly feel a little wave of sadness, and then say, “OK, don’t feel sad. Let me think about the good things. Let me think about how good it is. I get to work from home” — and you sort of bright side yourself and use toxic positivity — but you didn’t let that moment of sadness have its due.
So, what if instead you went, “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t realize how sad I am that I’m not going back into work.” And just let yourself be sad.
AS: I miss … I miss people.
DK: I miss people. Get curious about the part of you that’s longing for interaction. Now, how can you soothe that part of yourself?
Well, later today or tomorrow, you’re going to get an invite or someone’s going to say, “Do you want to do it remote, or do you want to come in?” And you might have the opportunity to say, “No, I’ll actually come in for this. No, I’m not going to have that delivered. I’m going to run to the store and get that.”
And we begin to listen to the voice in us. It says, from the pandemic, “I’m sad. I’m not getting out more. Let me go pick up the pizza.” Even if it’s driving in the car. Walking into the pizza place. Saying hello. There’s something inside of you that’s saying, “I need to be sad, and I need to listen to that.”
AS: I also think, though, that we have, post-COVID, a lot more fear of each other and a lot more anger. There’s been so much political anger. The tone of our political conversations so often is filled with rage and contempt, and I’m wondering if we can trace that back in any way to unresolved, ambiguous grief around all that we lost because of COVID.
DK: Well, COVID was this one big moment that we collectively went into. Then we all really became divided. There was certainly a moment that for those who were deeply affected, your grief didn’t get witnessed.
I remember one story of someone who was literally coming back from the funeral and ran into someone, and they said, “How are you?”
And they said, “I’m just coming back from my mother’s funeral.”
“Oh, how’d she die?”
“COVID.”
And they went, “I don’t believe in that.”
Can you imagine? You just go to your mom’s funeral, and someone says, “I don’t believe in what just happened to your mom.” So, we come to it collectively with this divide. We come out of it into our new world with all of this for some, unseen, maybe unhealed, pain. And we’re trying to find our way in this new world.
I also see another segment of the population — the people who are saying, “My inner peace is so important. Nothing can disturb my inner peace. I’m not going to watch the news. I’m not going to look at what’s going on in the world because I don’t want my inner peace upset.”
Well, I don’t know how well that’s going to work as a long-term strategy. It goes back to what we resist persists. I mean, if you deny things or don’t look at them, the knock on your door just gets louder.
AS: Does collective grief differ from individual grief? Do you think it has the same stages or is there something unique in collective grief?
DK: Well, I think in collective grief, many people become hypervigilant, and others become hypovigilant.
You know, I’ll tell you a moment that I think sort of showed this very clearly in Los Angeles. There was the Northridge earthquake back in the ’90s, and it was this horrible earthquake, and it had huge aftershocks that went on for weeks.
And I remember a week or two later being in a movie theater of all places, and all of a sudden there was an aftershock and half the theater got up and went to find the exits. And the other half was like, shut up, calm down, sit down. Watch the movie.
And I think that’s a little bit who we are.
AS: An anniversary of a death is a hard time. And this is the fifth anniversary of the beginning of COVID. Do you think this is going to hit us collectively?
DK: If it hit you personally before, it’s going to hit you collectively. If it didn’t hit you, it’s going to be just another day. That’s not only our COVID response, but the response that people feel around grief every day.
When it’s the anniversary of my son’s death, my younger son’s death, my mother’s death, my father’s death, for me, it rocks my world. For the world around me, it’s Thursday.
Even the word “bereavement” comes from an old Latin word that means to be robbed. And COVID robbed us of so many things, from our safety in the world to people we love and everything in between.
Anniversary dates are a return to the scene of the crime. If you were affected, you are going to have a lot of feelings that come up.
