What's in a name?
My mum instilled in me a love of language. From a young age, she insisted we speak properly and as a result my sisters and I - never drop a ‘g’, avoid the sound – ‘ummmm’ and have quite robust vocabularies. I love to read and to write. So to me, words and their meanings are important. I recently read an article published online by Harvard Business Review that put my head in a bit of a spin. It was espousing that people were feeling grief in response to the coronavirus. Not specifically to loving and grieving someone who had died from the virus but to it’s general impact on society.
Comments in the thread showed that most people agreed with the statements and claims in the article. To say ‘my eyes widened in disbelief’ would be an understatement. This started me on a mission, to get that word back from its frivolous rebranding and reinstate its true meaning.
Now, as a bereaved mum perhaps I acknowledge that I am fairly protective of the word ‘grief’. To me, grief is about losing someone and knowing that you will never get them back. I looked through a number of esteemed dictionaries and found the definitions to be fairly similar: intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death’. Whether the definition listed synonyms such as extreme sadness, pain, agony, misery or distress - the meaning was in line with my understanding of the word. The informal definition of the word was ‘trouble or annoyance’ with the example given… “we were too tired to cause any grief’. Synonyms provided included: bother, irritation, vexation. This article was using the formal context of this word and its application to the emotions surrounding Covid-19 impacts.
David S Slawson says “Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists recognize naming as 'one of the chief methods for imposing order on perception.” In consideration of these understanding and assertions, I don’t believe the word: grief to be an appropriate ‘name’ for the emotional effects of dealing with the social restrictions and fear around Covid-19. Maybe this is controversial. It depends on your perspective.
The article deferred to statements made by a famous grief expert. He matched the stages of grief to the reactions people were having to the pandemic. He used lots of words in his explanation, such as: “loss of safety, normalcy, connection”, “fear of economic toll”, “uncertain”, “the world has changed” and” things will be different”. I completely agree with the use of these words when talking about this scary new pandemic and its effect on our everyday lives. Loss, fear, uncertainty, change and difference are all truly applicable to what is happening. Another important word that I think is relevant to this story, is ‘temporary’. You could even add uncomfortable, inconvenient, difficult, frustrating, stressful, challenging … a plethora of other words to this list.
As I said before, I understand that my perspective is not that of every person and perhaps it is controversial to suggest this, but I don’t agree with the expert
that feels that “There is something powerful about naming this as grief”.
a) Your 18-year old daughter can’t have her party, due to social distancing. My son will never turn 18, he didn’t even get to turn 8.
b) My yoga classes have gone virtual and it’s just not the same. Your yoga classes will come back but my son will not.
c) My kids are driving me mental in our learning from home classroom. My son’s ashes are in an urn by my bed.
d) The good times are on hold, so we grieve our lifestyle pre-Covid and are desperate for its return. I am desperate too but there is no return for me since Tom died. No press conference in the future setting me free.
That is confronting, that is powerful and that, to me, is grief.
One might say that this is an extreme lens to be looking through. That I am projecting my issues into this. Absolutely I am, but not to make anyone feel worse. Only to bring an element of perspective to the table – my perspective - to show that ‘there are worse things’. This is the mantra that I now live by: ‘there are worse things’. This phrase is an absolute truth to me in day-to-day life because there are very few things that could ever compare to Tom’s death.
Perhaps there are people that have never known the depth of emotion that grieving a death can inflict. Perhaps the coronavirus crisis and isolation are the hardest things some people have suffered through. The perspectives through which this virus is viewed is individualised and they are built that way from not only our own background of pain and fear and loss but also our current situation in terms of health, finances, family and every other aspect of life.
I just feel that when the word grief is used to cry ‘poor me’ in response to restrictions, it diminishes the gravity of the word. It is trivialised and becomes a
catch-all when life gets a bit hard. As the significance of the word is weakened, it feels as though my grief is therefore also somehow reduced.
I went searching for other people to help me understand. Was I the only person enraged by this superficial use of the word grief? This sacred term that is all I have to encapsulate the agony I feel. After a few failed attempts I found some answers that started to lower the heat in my throat and release the tension in my jaw. A friend spoke to me about an author he had read who outlined a ‘hierarchy of grief’. Even before I had learned anything more about that concept, I immediately started to feel better. Just that phrase was enough to shift my thinking. Losing a pet is different to losing out on a weekly beer at the pub. Losing a limb is different to losing a job. Losing a parent is different to losing a child.
It occurred to me that I could place myself on that hierarchy where I knew that I belonged and I could, in my mind, assign a different hierarchical level to those people ‘grieving’ the lifestyle impacts of Covid-19. The people who have lost family members during the coronavirus pandemic are most definitely on that hierarchy with us. The people that are facing financial ruin are on that pain-filled pyramid as well.
There is a poem that has been across social media asking people to find perspective. It suggests that ‘We are not all in the same boat, we are in the same storm’. It’s a good read and an important perspective to bring to the table. The title and the content is so accurate and encompassing and so now, armed with these ways to adjust my lens, I can feel a little more peace around this.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet there are two feuding parties. In essence, the line: ‘What’s in a name?’ asks the question - is a name more important than love? Perhaps the semantics of someone using a word in a way I wouldn’t isn’t worthy of my rage? If strangers want to name this ‘grief’, they can.
My rage hasn’t morphed into apathy in that sense though, I have just decided to consider my individual understanding and usage of the word grief and choose not project that on to others. I might disagree and it is difficult to accept but if everyone has their place on the hierarchy, and everyone has their own perspective, then everyone gets to name their own emotional fallout in the world of Covid.
But the names or the words that I personally use, will be different. The term grief does not apply here, for me. Yes, we are asked to consider others, to isolation,
change our habits and social distance which is saving lives. Perhaps we can consider our sacrifices as empathetic and evidence of a strong social conscience. These are words too, but they are only brought forward with a different mindset.
My perspective is clearly shaped by the loss of my seven-year old son. My grief is real and constant and something I will live with forever. I do not wish this perspective on anyone. That particular perspective however, does allow me to view this coronavirus crisis with a more positive outlook, if you can believe it.
I could not work in 2018 – I was caring for my son who was battling brain cancer. We became used to isolating. We became used to constantly watching for the spectre of life-threatening infections. We became used to washing our hands. We were sometimes bored, we were most often anxious, but we were together. It was stressful and scary but necessary.
Restrictions are keeping my mum safe. Restrictions are giving me time to enjoy simple and beautiful moments with my surviving son Cameron in our home. Restrictions are asking us all to be creative with our time, our resources and our families. Restrictions are bringing forward reflections such as this which can help me grow and learn and maybe heal a little if I let them. Covid sucks in so many ways, but it is giving me these opportunities.
So in the mess that is the 2020 coronavirus, consider how it is impacting you and your individual perspective. Now decide on the name you give it. You can frame it in fear and despair, or you can frame it in resilience and opportunity.
What’s in a name? A whole bloody lot!
Quoted sources:
1 Berinato, S., That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief, (March 23, 2020), https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief, Harvard Business Review (online)
2 Unknown Author, Poem: ‘We Are Not in the Same Boat’ (April, 2020) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-times-of-lockdown-a-poem-asks-us-to-be-non-judgmental/articleshow/75245008.cms