This pandemic is robbing us of the opportunity to grieve together

Claire Wretham

Spiritual Care Coordinator, The Marie Curie Hospice, Cardiff and the Vale

This is such a difficult time for people who are grieving. However, we have no choice but to look to the future and think about the plans we’ll make to celebrate that person together, once all this is over.

I think looking to the future is going to lead to a few more creative expressions of grieving as we come out of lockdown. We might see a wider variety of locations and approaches to celebrating people who’ve died – having had the extra time to think about it and make it personal to them.

On hold, not forgotten

Time is no boundary to our ability to make peace with our losses. I’m reminded of this story of a visitor we had at the Marie Curie Hospice, Cardiff:

One morning, a gentleman came to the front desk and asked to be shown around, because his mother had died there 30 years earlier. Born in Wales, he’d emigrated to Canada and hadn’t returned since, not even for his mother’s funeral. He was in London on business and he’d added an extra day to his trip to come to Cardiff, to see where she died all those years before.

He spent some time at the hospice, he went down to the beach, he wrote a eulogy in our visitors book. He was only in Cardiff for two hours, but for him that was huge on his journey of grief. He felt that finally he was at peace about it. 

However distressing things are right now, we must all have faith that, in time, we’ll have the chance to find that peace too.