The Grief Crisis
Two years ago in April with the country still in the grips of COVID-19, an editorial titled “The Grief Crisis Is Coming” appeared in The New York Times.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/opinion/covid-death-grief.html).
The author, Allison Gilbert, cited a research finding that on average, nine people are newly bereaved for every person who dies of COVID. ‘Grief should be investigated the same way we examine other public health indicators like obesity, smoking, and drinking,’ she quotes one expert as saying.
There are advantages to this approach, including funding that could come from declaration of grief as a public health crisis. But I think we should be wary of proclaiming as a health crisis a fact of life that almost all of us will experience. True, grief can be a health condition for some.As Ms. Gilbert explains, it can lead to health problems such as high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety.
But not for most. The analogy may be a stretch, but if a pedestrian get hits by a car outside your house, you don’t call the mayor to complain that pedestrians are walking on the streets because the sidewalks are in such terrible condition. You call an ambulance, shout for the neighbors, talk to the person, set up a makeshift traffic block . . . This is an emergency. But getting hit by a car is a health crisis for anyone. Grief is not.
Now, after the pedestrian has been taken to the hospital, calling the mayor and lobbying for new sidewalks does make sense and may have other benefits, such as more casual encounters with neighbors or strangers, close enough, maybe, that you notice someone looks troubled, could be harboring a hidden grief that a friendly word may breach the dense cloud of, making an opening for hope to enter.
Grief is a personal matter. But grief is a social challenge, too, because as a society we tend to avoid dealing with it, or deal with it clumsily. Grief presents you with the possible loss of yourself, and paradoxically may suggest you can keep what’s left of yourself only by living your grief, with the help of friends and others and other social supports. And the availability of a therapist if needed, along with training in identifying grief for doctors and other health professionals.
In another time and culture grief would have a different shape for the grieving and different aids for recognizing its presence by others. The shape of grief in our time is fashioned in our time, in the breach as well as the observance. How can we think and act more fundamentally about grief as a social as well as personal fact, building communities that honor its place in our lives and support those who live with it?
