Lockdown Letters: Dealing with grief during a global pandemic

After the death of his beloved mother just before coronavirus became a global pandemic, Rob Le Mare reflects on how these strange times are somehow helping him feel less alone in his grief

Rob with his mother on holiday in Mallorca (Rob Le Mare)

Rob Le Mare

13 May 2020

At 1.38pm on December 31 2019, a ‘pneumonia of unknown cause’ was reported on a Chinese government website.

At roughly 8pm that night, outside a Co-op in Bermondsey, my brother called to tell me “things are moving fast with Mum”. My hands gripped tight on a plastic bag full of booze and crisps, cutting into my fingers. The cold night around me suddenly seemed to zoom and shift away from me and I was acutely aware of my breathing and quickening heart rate. I breathed in deeply and held it; I didn’t want to arrive at New Year’s Eve red-faced and teary. My surroundings snapped back into place. I gathered myself, and set off with my girlfriend to a party.

My mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer in October 2019. She was given a prognosis of four to eight months. By January 1, we were looking at a matter of weeks. On January 17 she died; we had her funeral on January 27. I couldn’t say for sure if I’d even heard of coronavirus until February.

I don’t know how long it takes to come to terms with losing a parent, if you ever do. What I do know is that it doesn’t make much sense at all yet. When I imagined losing Mum, I mostly imagined sadness. What I didn’t imagine was strangeness. The intense feeling of surreality has been overwhelming at times. Your identity and perspective on the world is so often tied to your upbringing, your roots and relationships. When such a key figure dies, you lose an anchor to reality and everything becomes disorientating. How, then, does it feel when the whole world takes a headlong plunge into the bizarre? Lots of people say it’s a strange feeling to return to normal after bereavement. They are haunted by thoughts of: “Look at all these people going around their daily lives as if nothing has happened”. Well, I can’t really say that now as ‘normal life’ currently doesn’t really exist. Nothing is normal now - personally and globally.

We’ve all been forced to think about “home” a lot, since we’re stuck there. Losing someone close forever changes the environment you associated them with. Many of my friends have headed back to their family homes during lockdown. It makes sense – when the sh*t hits the fan, go back to the nest. But my dad, brother and I decided to spend lockdown in London. They moved to my brother and his girlfriend’s flat in Wandsworth before lockdown, I went back to my place with my girlfriend in Balham. It was right that Dad wasn’t stuck in our family home on his own, and I think we all wanted a break from a place associated with so much recent trauma.

My family home then, just outside Bristol, sits empty. The kettle is dormant, the TV sleeps, beds are still made, the Mum and Dad sized dents in the armchairs remain. The garden, caught in the wind, sways. Everything else is completely still. As much as your family makes your home a home, surely it is also the familiarity of the things? The environment, the smells. So, my dad, brother and I aren’t in the nest, we’ve stuck it out in London. For us that’s only temporary, so we’re lucky in that sense – many won’t have a safe, happy family home to return to regardless of lockdown. In tough times, focussing on what you can be grateful for, however big or small, helps. I am locked down with my girlfriend who has supported me through all of this. My brother, his girlfriend and my dad all have each other. We’re lucky.

How do you cope with grief in lockdown? How can I indulge myself by focussing on how I’m feeling amidst all this global tragedy? How must it feel for those poor people who have lost loved ones to Covid-19? Personal grief, inextricably linked to global disaster. Surely a feeling that can only really be compared to casualties of war or terror attacks. I can only imagine.

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions. But I do know there are ways you can utilise a simpler life to feel better. We can’t all be returning to baking because we need bread. Surely, it’s because the therapeutic, creative process comforts us? Our exercise routines shouldn’t manifest as pressure to emerge from lockdown looking like a god, but our way of using the time to focus on ourselves. The resurgence of hobbies can tangibly help with grief. It makes us feel good; we could all do with remembering how important that is when all this is over.

We all have a moan about signal issues on Zoom calls, and the internet in general can be a drain, but where would we be without it now? Reaching out to family and friends always helps. Music, TV, film, books, these are great too. I used to listen to Laura Marling with Mum in the car. Being in lockdown has afforded me the time to listen to her new album at my leisure. It’s (loosely) a concept album from the perspective of a mother. Talk about poignant. But you have to let yourself be sad sometimes, and wallowing in sad songs and sobbing like a baby is a human right and we should all claim it.

I also know that this horrendous pandemic can offer some perspective. Perspective helps cure disorientation. You are never alone in any suffering. Perhaps, as I have found, that sense of being in it together at the moment can offer some solace. Grief can be so lonely, but all our lives now, to varying degrees, have changed. That shared experience doesn’t change the tragic facts. However, in terms of the grip of isolation that grief brings, it helps.

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Lockdown Letters: Dealing with grief during a global pandemic

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