Who Will Bury The Dead?
What Shall We Do With These Bodies
Caught in the web of a pandemic, many continue to question their existence in the face of thousands of dead bodies
You get a call that your auntie is dying in the ICU and you could not be by her side in her last moment. You have a wife who is nursing a newborn and you could barely hug them wholly for fear of contagion because you are a healthcare worker. You have a patient you attend to every day as a nursing assistant but you can’t get any closer to her because she has a greater chance of survival if she ever contracts the virus. You have a daughter in ICU yet cannot be by her side to comfort her.
Yes, we have lost and are going to lose more people to the COVID-19 pandemic, but more importantly — what happens to us the survivors.
In the United States alone, more than 150,000 deaths have been reported from causes related to COVID-19. Each and every one of these bodies finding a final resting place, whether 6 feet below or dispersed as ashes are connected one way or another to those of us alive.
In some countries, urns were stacked in store until the lockdown was eased to allow families to give their loved one's rite of passage.
At 13-year-old Ismail’s lonely funeral, relatives kept a safe distance of two meters apart as his mother and six other siblings watch Britain’s youngest Coronavirus victim on Livestream.
Death by Coronavirus doesn’t allow most survivors the little mercy of saying goodbye to their loved ones. It is saddening that the last interaction those left to grieve the loss is usually of one of anxiety, fear that finally calcifies into grief and a glimmer of hope about their own survival.
It should go without saying that the scar left on those of us who have managed to evade the death would carry on through years.
The toll on our mental health will be more unbearable than we think. Burying the suppressed grief and moving on as if nothing happened will tear apart more people who have lost partners, folks, coworkers, colleagues, and so on in the coming years.
But what shall we do with these bodies falling all around us?
In Italy where the death toll was so high, close associates were not able to access the bodies of their loved ones for fear of the virus spreading to survivors. The military became engaged in taking care of the bodies when health workers and funeral homes were overwhelmed.
Mass graves in places where close family members may not be able to identify the resting places of loved ones and cremation became the order of the day.
Surely; surviving, existing, functioning, breathing, and coping through the pressures of surrounding death in a global pandemic is a new competence.
Are We Ever Going to Properly Mourn Those Who Passed?
The other day, a young man shared the story about losing his two grandparents to Coronavirus.
Another individual buried their mother without pomp or the luxury of other family members accompanying them to bid farewell to the once-beloved mother.
And when all of the storms goes down, and people return reluctantly to their daily till there will be those seats which will remain empty from those who have died until new hands are culled.
The eventuality of too many corpses to bury may finally push us to zone out, bottle grief, and carry the weight of trauma deep into the future. For the survivors who have had or will have close associates as victims of COVID-19, the mental toll will be greater.
Who died and left you in charge?
Of course, the shoes once occupied by some that have been claimed by this pandemic will also become very hard to fill.
The heavy burden of having to think of a loved one who wasn’t given their ideal last rites — especially for the religious and ceremonious crop— will also haunt so many of us.
For those who would have lost their breadwinner, benefactor, and their co-dependents; this event takes a double toll on their mental health.
Again, what shall we do with these bodies — yes, even the bodies of we the living?
Consolation for the dead and the living
The only consolation here would be that the deceased have no say in how we grief or bury them in times such as this.
The dead will have to rest in peace knowing that we tried to give them befitting rites while also trying to protect the fate of those of us who have survived this tempest.
For us who are left to survive the randomness of death, we will be fine.
