Beyond the stigma

Recently I read that Prolonged Grief Disorder is the newest disorder to be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The information left me uncomfortable yet assured. Uncomfortable, for we still view mental health concerns as an aberration, a hiccup on a fairly smooth life, something best left unattended and pushed under the carpet. Assured, for having gone through grief recently (and still going through it, for I feel grief is a flow, not a stock variable), I hoped this would make it easier for all of us as a community to acknowledge how grief impacts us.

Loss, it is sure to pierce all of us, at different points in life, and differently. Sometimes, it’ll just scrape past you, only surface deep, lasting while it pains, the scab gently merging into its erstwhile colours, not a trace of the trauma. Many times, it’ll pain till it lasts, the scabs metamorphosing into scars, scars that serve as reminders, pain sometimes forgotten, lessons sometimes carried in our pockets, rosy in retrospect. Other times, it digs deeper, deep enough to carve an abyss into your being, the scab conspicuous by its absence, because the scars scoop out what cannot be regained.

It is these ‘other times’ scars that compete subconsciously to become our namesake. They break us, they mould us, they torment us, they haunt us, finally they define us. I went through this loss recently, so recently that I can look back and touch the moment immediately before this loss, so far ago that I realise that moment is a mirage now, the moment that was a watershed for life before and after the loss. Isn’t this much like moments of triumph? Life changes there too, but the moments you look back are few and far between, slowly they fade away like your favourite clothes that hold that special place in your wardrobe, but are replaceable like us, they lapse into anonymity in the humdrum of a brighter life.

But what about life after loss? It is not just a new chapter, but a new book you author, you gather your inkpot which never dries, it has an endless supply of salted water which we call teardrops in common parlance. Just that the pen doesn’t budge. Is it the inertia of life before loss, that the pen slants, breaks but refuses to write? Or is it that the fingers that hold the pen now tremble, weakened by the loss, they’ll regain their strength but someday.

I wonder what is the anatomy of this loss (title of a book I read, but today the sub-heading of a phase of my life)? I felt loss is amorphous, abstract. Somedays it speaks of the song of love, other days it mourns the loss of love. Somedays it speaks of the invincibility of the soul, other days it mourns the lack of physical presence. Somedays it gathers strength from its vulnerability, other days it crumbles like a pack of cards, calling it its weakest link. Somedays it wears it’s scars like its DNA, other days it scrapes its scars, complicit in compounding the pain. But most days…most days it just tries to flow, for they say flow is what we must aim for, flow is what we ultimately want our DNA to mutate to, flow is the toughest to flow to. Loss metamorphoses to grief.

But I learnt, this grief too is body shamed (for lack of a better term). How much grief is grief, how much grief is too much grief, is this the barometer of loss? Can you lend the Richter Scale to measure how grief is eroding someone? How does grief look like, why does it look so normal from the sidelines? Does moving forward in life mean moving away from grief? Does smiling mean the curve of grief has reversed? Does laughing drown out the silent din of grief? Does the sparkle in your eyes take away the blurriness of eyes that well up, every now and then, ever so often?

You carry grief within you, you become grief. Grief is not a visitor, it’s a companion. A friend, a foe. A friend because only grief can take you to that intimacy of your loved one, only grief is the bridge which you cross to encounter your loveliest and saddest moments, only grief builds the bridge which makes that sadness bearable, only grief is the rope you take support of to make that heaviness feel lighter, only grief is the hope. It will look like a foe most days, because it is an unwanted intruder, one you never wanted, but one which you now carefully preserve, because it is your umbilical connect with what you were before grief became you, before you became grief. And one day, you’ll walk hand-in-hand with the grief, and you’ll sense its presence, but it’ll be a bearable presence, where every time you won’t ask grief to lend you a tissue…somedays it’ll lend you a shoulder, and you’ll feel you’re flowing. Just don’t look at grief, the way the world will look at it. Let it be body-shamed and tear-shamed and laugh-shamed, but it will be by your side when none other will be. And it is here I pray this recognition of grief as a disorder will help us all, it will make us all realise that someone who is going through grief needs understanding, not pity, not disdain. And yes, like all other illnesses, someone going through grief is not weak.

The writer is Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax. Views expressed are personal