The health restrictions during confinement of the spring of 2020 have generated situations described by those who have experienced them asinhuman
. People have died at their homes or in retirement homes or even in hospitals, alone, without support. The families were unable to come and perform the rites which structure the links between the living and the one who is going to die. Never since the dawn of time and throughout the world, a political and health decision had hitherto prevented these mortuary rites from being performed.
Guilt prevents you from living
The psychological consequences for families, for caregivers who witness unspeakable distress, confronted with measures that put them in total contradiction with their values, are immense. We stole their deaths from the dying, we stole an essential experience from loved ones, who today are experiencing complicated or even impossible mourning. The offices of psychologists are always full. How to live normally when you let a parent die alone, a few meters from you, because access to his room was prohibited? When we have not been able to hold his hand, say goodbye, meditate one last time in front of his face, gather around the coffin and pay homage to him during a funeral worthy of the name? We suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress, we have nightmares every night. Guilt prevents life and generates behaviors of failure.
In the cry of the heart I just posted to make sure it never happens again: the forbidden farewell (1), I am writing a letter to the bereaved of the Covid. Many blame themselves for having abandoned
an elderly parent, for having left him to die alone, unaccompanied. I invite them to give free rein to their emotions, to express their anger, their sorrow in order to free themselves from them. This time of emotional turbulence must be respected. Saving them runs the risk of causing serious depression. Finally, it is important to forgive oneself for what has not been possible in order to avoid the deadly guilt and the self-punishing behaviors that are almost always associated with it.
Perform mourning rites deferred in time
One can also – and the period of All Saints’ Day encourages it – to carry out alone or in family mourning rites deferred in time. The bereaved taught me that the presence of a deceased loved one is often there, close to you, in your heart. As an old American professor who died of Charcot’s disease said death ends life but not the relationship
(2). You can always write to someone, talk to them, pay homage to them as if they were there. Each family can build its rite, meet in a place that makes sense, around the photo of the deceased, involve the children. Experience shows that these rites are calming.
Because nothing is heavier to bear than all these words that we would have liked to say and that we did not say. Among them, so often, these words of gratitude for what the deceased has brought us in terms of experience, wisdom and love.
With hindsight, this ordeal, like all trials once passed, does not leave only scars. There is almost always a benefit that appears over time, and that is the benefit of maturity. The ordeal revealed to us inner resources that we never suspected. It brings us closer to ourselves, to what really matters.
1. The forbidden farewell – Plon editions
2. Mitch Albom – the last lesson – Robert laffont
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