IT is often said that the only certainties in life are death, taxes, and people being nasty in the comments sections of newspaper articles.

I’m still trying to emotionally process doing my taxes from last year, and I covered rude comments in my previous article, so I think it’s time we talked about death.

Bereavement is one of those things that highlight the intrinsic unfairness of the universe: the most loved are the hardest lost. Grieving someone during the pandemic piled on additional pressures to an already devastating event. The unquantifiable scale of loss experienced on a global scale is not something which is easily processed, and the pain associated with such a tragic and traumatic period inevitably has had far-reaching consequences for the entire community.

When it came to bereavement, we saw a shift in the way we approached end of life care and the dying process: the inability to hold hands, then funerals, in the manner to which we were accustomed, served to accentuate and intensify feelings of separation and loss. Having to say goodbye through a phone added a layer of dystopian distance to the end of life; a robotic interpolation into something so visceral, so deeply human.

As a society we often try to ignore death, to disguise and distract from the end as if death will forget us just as readily. The ever-rising cost of human life the pandemic continues to leave in its wake has created a societal grief that hangs heavy.

The guilt – the would-have, could-have and should-have – became compounded by directions to stay apart, and many people have been left with the bittersweet feeling that steps which were necessary to preserve and protect the lives of the community prevented us from being present in the lives we cared the most about.

Experiencing bereavement during a period of societal mourning while the lives of everyone in the community are in some way impacted by grief, creates a dichotomy of solidarity and solitude: you are not alone, and yet we all are.

The isolation of loss was eclipsed by enforced physical separation, a collective withdrawal of the contact we often rely on to provide comfort in times of uncertainty.

It felt almost self-indulgent to grieve, to talk and think about my own bereavement when so many had lost so much.

I was working in a public-facing job and had to live alone so as to minimise the risk to vulnerable family members, and I reached a point where I had to open up to the people around me, as trying to handle the pain alone was overwhelming.

Instead of minimising the trauma and pain of losing someone, I found that people who had experienced something similar were understanding and empathetic, willing to reach out and extend whatever comfort and connection they could.

Death is indiscriminate, and in that it has the power to unify otherwise disparate groups.

Everyone has their own personal journey with loss, and yet there is still something comforting about knowing that someone has been able to heal from grief, a calming influence emanating from the wisdom of experience.

When I was newly acquainted with what it means to grieve, I heard a lot of people offering their opinions on what happens after someone dies, and I know that unfortunately everyone reading this will have their own personal thoughts about death and what comes next.

As far as I’m concerned, where people I’ve lost have gone never feels like the most important part, because they’re not here, and they should be. They should always be here, to witness every birthday, holiday, every new addition to the family, every passed exam and new job.

Knowing that someone should be with you somehow feels more unfair than the fact that they can’t be; it’s a twisted obsession with what should have been, a cruel inversion of hope.

Human desire is meant to be resolved. We are supposed to have the catharsis of achievement, the realisation of what it is that we’re longing for. When someone dies, it is a want without resolution, an infinite yearning without hope of a positive outcome.

The mundane becomes surreal, actions taken a million times before are now confusing: how can you make breakfast, brush your hair, open the curtains, knowing that someone who went through those exact motions did so for the last time?

Things they put down will never be picked up again: a mug, a toothbrush, a life. You begin to question the point of your own existence – something fragile, finite, certain to end.

Your brain bursts with facts and knowledge which, once essential, now feel wholly unnecessary. How they took their tea, their opinions on sports, politics, and religion, a hundred thousand inside jokes and micro-expressions feel obsolete in one cruel instant and it can take time to learn how to remember them without pain.

Tenses pass alongside them, ‘is’ turns to ‘was’, and rings false every time you find yourself forgetting, just for a moment, that they are no longer present.

Perhaps the cruellest thing about grief is that life doesn’t stop when you lose someone. Despite the unimaginable pain, a broken heart continues to beat. Two fixed points: you and the person you love, suddenly diverge and all in an instant the infinite space between these points creates a vacuum threatening to suck you in.

I like to think of love as just another form of energy, something neither created nor destroyed but which shifts from one state to another.

Just because someone is no longer alive does not mean you have to ignore or remove the part of yourself which connects them to you. You will smile again, you will laugh and think of times when loss was little more than an abstract concept, and you will remember what it’s like to be fine, to be healthy, to be whole.

The intrinsic qualities that make up the person you love don’t pass on with that person; they stay with you, and live on in the little things that make you smile, and the ways in which you are reminded of them. As mortal as humans are, our love for each other most certainly is not: love is an action which cannot be undone.