BENGALURU: Last week, a friend called in severe distress. A loved one had died, and yet for them, the grief was not just about the loss itself but that when they heard the news, their first response was one of anxiety and panic for themselves - they had been together and without much distance.
Did that mean they too were infected and should be getting ready for their own hospitalization or even possibly, death? After the first response, they connected to the loss of this person and wailed in their grief and were inconsolable for a while, and then, they wailed again - this time in revulsion at themselves for thinking about their own exposure first before connecting with the loss.
"Am I an awful person?" They cried, "Who thinks of themselves at a time like this? Does this mean I really didn’t love them as much as they deserved? I am horrible, aren’t I?"
They went on, "What sort of love was mine? How come I wasn’t like those people one hears about - the one who carried a spouse to cremation when nobody would come for fear of the disease, or the one who hugged their beloved and refused to move? What a horrible selfish person I am!"
I have heard echoes of that sentiment too many times recently - people struck with their own judgment and feelings of guilt at instinctively thinking of their own health and safety when they have heard such terrible news about their dearly beloved.
We tend to romanticize a certain kind of love that ignores oneself, and loses one's identity in the other, especially in death - the tragic scene of lovers in death together has become some sort of ultimate prize in a game of Best Love Ever that we never knew we were even playing.
Do we need that judgment? We talk about self-love and self-care all the time, and tell people that it is okay to love oneself and that a self-sacrificing love may not really be love at all but a kind of co-dependent bonding, and could be toxic.
Then, why do we punish ourselves for thinking of our own safety for a little while when we live in these dreadful times?
In a world where we see truly awful scenes of families abandoning their relatives and running away from a hospital because they died of this disease, is it so terrible that we spend a minute to check in on our own exposure before we let these feelings of lost love and grief wash over us?
To this friend, I only asked, "For your beloved, would it be more important that you are healthy and well, or that you are immediately crying for them? What would be their priority?"
These last few weeks have been an unmitigated disaster. Every person succumbing to the virus or the lack of adequate infrastructure or preparedness, is somebody’s loved one. For those surviving, there is fear, pain, anger, disbelief. Grief is lonely as it is. May we not make it worse by adding guilt to it.
(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)