Coping with Death and Loss: A Useful but Untaught Lesson

By Alexia Chacon

Something that this current Covid-19 pandemic has taught us is that life can change in a blink. We all know that death is inevitable, however, this pandemic has emphasized the idea that we can lose someone when we least expect it. Before the pandemic, we knew this was true, but coronavirus has become a constant reminder of it.

The death of a loved one, either a friend, a cousin, a grandmother, a parent, a neighbor, or anyone you know, hits hard. Coping with the death of someone is incredibly difficult and often unbearable, and is something that nobody truly talks about. I, for one, never thought that death would strike my family. I sometimes heard of the passing of someone in another family, and all I thought was “wow, I’m so sorry for them” but that thought only lasted a couple of minutes, and then I resumed with my life and remained grateful that I was never in that position. However, last year I lost my father. It has taught me so much about life and about myself and has made me realize the unexpected difficulties of losing someone that no one really teaches you how to overcome.

From the moment we are born, we are taught what is right and what is wrong. We learn what we like and what we don’t. Sadly, we are never taught how to cope with death and how to properly mourn the loss of someone, especially when that person was very close to us and meant a great deal in our lives.

I never actually understood what others felt when mourning the loss of someone, nor what they really went through. The process of receiving the news of the person’s passing is something utterly unexpected that at first seems unreal. I didn’t process and actually realize my father was gone till days later because it was just a reality I was not ready to acknowledge. It seemed surreal; like a dream that I was begging to wake up from.

The funeral: the decision of whether to bury the body or to cremate it and then bury the ashes. Having to say goodbye to a body, knowing that you will never be able to speak to the person again. Then, receiving all the condolences and messages and hugs, even from people you didn’t even know until now. The mixed feelings catch up to you, starting with nostalgia, sadness, love, and ending with anger and guilt. All the memories come back to your mind, and all the guilt trips of “I wish I would’ve done this with him” or “I wish I would’ve spent more time with him” come around more often than one would like.

The first months are definitely the worst; realizing that this is your new reality and there is nothing you can do to change it is genuinely frustrating. Before I experienced this, I just thought that people went through emotional pain, when truthfully, you experience physical symptoms and much more. Everybody has different coping mechanisms, binge-eating or starving yourself, sleeping all day or remaining awake most of the time, crying and really wanting to feel everything all at once, or trying hard to evade yourself in anything you find to try to forget that you lost that person. You experience so much all at once, emotionally and physically. Your eating patterns, your metabolism, your energy levels, everything changes.

The feelings of coping with death and loss are so intense that your mind sometimes makes you forget certain parts to feel better. For example, I remember having a couple of minutes alone with the coffin and talking and saying goodbye. My mother later told me that what I felt was a couple of minutes, was in fact, over half an hour. What I remembered to be a small farewell conversation actually included yelling, shrieking, and crying my eyes out.

The loss of someone leaves a permanent hole in your heart and space in your life that no one will ever be able to fill. Every now and then, you will cry out of nowhere. You will live with constant small reminders of the person, like a song you just heard which you used to sing in the car with them, or a cup of coffee you saw that reminded you of the cup they used to drink from every morning. Or the smell of a cigarette that reminded you of the terrible habit they had of smoking red Marlboros everywhere they went.

It indeed gets better with time, as you get used to it and learn to cope in any way possible. However, it causes permanent changes in your daily life and defines you even more as a person, and from personal experience, you are never the same person you were before.

When searching for words to explain my feelings of grief, I turned to the words of others. One sentiment that stood out to me is the words of the novelist Sarah Dessen who once said “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”