GUEST POST: The importance of tiny moments of control

The pandemic has become small talk fodder. But from many, it's anything but casual. Sam* shares her story...

“Go on… does anyone have any stories from lockdown?” The instructor spoke with a smile. 

A woman on the adjacent table raised her hand and said, “well, I was in the Swiss mountains. With cows all around me. No people. Very peaceful.” Our instructor beamed approvingly as everyone laughed. Another girl raised her hand and said “I was in Florida, and we had a pool. It was pretty nice.”

My throat closed up. I had to get out of the room. I tried to picture her backyard pool, shards of sunshine bouncing off that Florida postcard blue. But it was being blotted out and replaced by my father’s face, eyes closed, muscles slack, an incubation tube running by his cheek. Beside him, my brain now projecting the image so sharply, the intensive care nurse is calmly wetting his lips with a sponge. She does this knowing that, in just half an hour, she will be turning off his ventilator. 

One of my brothers is holding my mother upright. My other brother can’t be there, his country’s borders are closed. We’re all sobbing, snot and tears mingling behind masks,  awkwardly constrained by gowns that we’d yanked on too quickly. All bar one of the other patients on the ward are unconscious and ventilated. We had walked past them to my father’s bay, their heads lolled back, the machines humming in the background. 

I couldn’t stay. In this ‘wellbeing’ workshop, where this casual conversation prompt had tornadoed me right back onto that ward. I stood up and turned away from the instructor, my eyes darted to the floor, they were glassy, I didn’t want anyone to see.  I walked slowly (I’ll admit that I was oddly pleased with myself for that). I heard the instructor continue, in an up-beat voice, that of course, lockdown had brought challenges, and been hard for many, yadda yadda, but for some it was an opportunity to reset…

The image of my father was fading, replaced by that of my grandmother. She had a catastrophic stroke a month after his death, and, for weeks, lay in hospital alone. No visitors allowed. She was then transferred to a nursing home, where she died last winter. Suddenly I could see her blank expression on my iPad screen, her mouth hanging open in a way that she would have hated. (I only managed one of those calls. She didn’t recognise me and I couldn’t cope with the pain.)

I had left the room before I had a chance to betray myself; I felt myself unravelling in the corridor, which thankfully was empty. I went to the toilets and stood in a cubicle and let some tears fall. Then, I began to perform the classic ‘in grief’ ritual of examining my face for any telltale signs. Was I red? Had I smudged my make-up? I wanted to leave, but I also didn’t want my absence to be noticed. If anyone noticed I’d been crying there was the risk they’d ask what was wrong. If they did that I’d begin to cry and, as anyone who has swallowed down tears knows, we often have to hide the pain to go about our lives in a semi-normal way.

Over the past 18 months I have cried puddles, ponds, lakes. On at least one occasion I have sat down on the kitchen floor and roared like an overtired toddler, probably deeply alarming my unfailingly stoic partner. I have internally flinched when people bemoaned their COVID-cancelled holidays. I have felt stung when someone asked me why I was sad and said “oh, I forgot” (I am absolutely able to forgive, but forgetting is harder). I have skipped events I no longer felt like attending and made myself go to others that were a good distraction.

I had not, until yesterday, been in a situation where a stranger musingly asked a crowd about their ‘stories of lockdown’. I hadn’t been in a situation in which people ‘looked back’ in a quasi-nostalgic way. It turns out that I really don’t like that. (I also don’t like it when people make jokes about COVID or use fatuous phases like ‘panny-d’, in case anyone wants to join me in a game of ‘sense of humour removal’ bingo.) It felt like I’d had some skin ripped off in public and been winded at the same time. 

Perhaps perversely, I felt proud that I was able to go back into the room and sit down again: it felt (oddly) like I’d got away with something, as no one had noticed anything untoward. It felt like I had made the right choice to leave a situation that was ‘unsafe’ – one that threatened me with the bloody awful prospect of losing control in public, in a professional setting. 

As anyone who has lost someone prematurely knows, death is the ultimate loss of control. (I have never felt as powerless as when I begged the consultant to give my dad more time on the ventilator. He shook his head and said, “his lungs have turned to stone”.)

By leaving and choosing to come back, it felt like I had exerted some control, albeit on a minute scale. Losing two people in succession, was like being dropped onto a foggy path - one where I have no idea what’s coming, and every now and then, something or someone jumps out grabbing and pulling me into a new, entirely unexpected place. Grieving just after a time when millions of others are also grieving (yet it seems many seem to forget that death was the overarching theme of 2020, not lockdown) is also new territory. There are going to be more moments like the one in that workshop, but I’ve learned a lesson in it - just because people are talking, it doesn’t mean that I have to listen. 

What a moving, beautifully written guest post. First, I want to thank Sam* (who is using her initials) who reached out to me after my call out for stories. She’s an incredible person who has gone through so much, I really admire her and feel this post will help a lot of people.

I’d also love to reach a point where I can pay writers for their work - if you upgrade to a paid subscriber this is something I will be able to do soon!

I’d also love to know if you can relate, can you remember a time you managed to grapple back the tiniest bit of control after losing someone?

I also want to write about 2020 and that time more, as I worry we’re trying to pretend it didn’t happen… perhaps as a form of protection. But I don’t think we can just ignore its impact. Get in touch if there’s something you’d like to write about - I find writing can be such a good outlet. Maybe you lost someone like Sam, or you found a relationship broke down or you lost your job. I’m here to listen. Leave a comment below, or you can reply to this email - I’ll hand on any messages to Sam too.