LONDON (AP) – For nine months, Gordon Bonner has been in the “backwoods of despair and desolation” after losing his 63-year-old wife to the coronavirus pandemic that has now killed more than 100,000 people in the UK.
Only recently did Bonner think he might be able to move on – after feeling the ghost of his wife, Muriel, with him on what would have been her 84th birthday.
“I suddenly understood that I had to change my attitude, that memories are not chains, they are garlands and that you should wear them around your shoulders like garlands and use them to communicate between the living and the dead,” said the retired major. of the military in an interview from his home in the northern city of Leeds. “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
Bonner, 86, is just one of many hundreds of thousands of Britons grappling with grief over the pandemic. With more than 2 million deaths worldwide, people around the world mourn loved ones, but the British toll is particularly heavy: it is the smallest country to cross the 100,000 mark.
While Wuhan, Bergamo or New York City may be more associated with the pandemic, the UK has one of the highest death tolls relative to its population. In comparison, the United States, with five times the British population, has four times the deaths. Experts say virus numbers are generally under-graded due to limited testing and missed cases, especially in the early stages of the pandemic.
In addition to excessive deaths, there is also excessive grief, made even more acute by the social distance measures in place to slow the spread of the virus.
“There will be a tsunami of grief and mental health problems going on this year, next year, because of the complications, because obviously people have not been able to undergo the usual rituals,” said Linda Magistris, founder of The Good Grief Trust, which brings grief counseling in the UK together under one umbrella.
Bonner understands the need for restrictions, but that hasn’t made things any easier.
Six weeks after being unable to go to Muriel’s nursing home due to lockdown restrictions and ten days after she was diagnosed with COVID-19, Bonner was called to hospital and “ dressed like a spaceman ” testified to the last painful moments .
“She worked so hard to breathe, her lips were pursed as if she were sucking on a straw,” he said. “I can see her face now with her lips in that position and it was awful and it knocked me aside.”
That was the last time he saw Muriel, and that image haunts him. And in what he called a ‘bad turn in the story’, Bonner was not given a chance to replace that memory as his wife’s body was considered a ‘reservoir of active coronavirus’. He couldn’t even make her dress like he wanted for her cremation. Hugs with friends and family – well, they are not advised.
Those rituals help people cope, a task now getting more difficult as the UK cannot escape the magnitude of death – above the annual average of about 600,000 – from the regular sound of ambulance sirens to the alarming headlines in news bulletins.
“The background of death, of grief, creates a rather biting context,” said Andy Langford, clinical director at Cruse, a leading bereaved charity.
Many who are left are unsure where to turn for help, in part because they are navigating the grieving process at a time when local health services are not functioning normally.
Grief counseling charities have stepped in and tailored online support groups, which might appeal to those who might otherwise have been reluctant to seek help in the pre-COVID-19 world.
But resources are exhausted, especially when the country regularly records more than 1,000 deaths per day. The government is urged to provide additional funding to strengthen helplines, counseling services and other community support programs.
“It’s really important that we don’t pathologize grief as an indication of mental health problems, but just as much of the people will need support,” says Dr. Charley Baker, Associate Professor of Mental Health at the University of Nottingham.
Many need no or only minimal outside support. But there is concern that some of the grief is being bottled up: that people are unwittingly protecting themselves from its full impact, and that they could eventually be hit hard if the pandemic comes under control.
“I think it will be strange because it will be very positive if things can hopefully regain some degree of normalcy, but I think that would also be a very difficult moment because we’ve all been a little frozen in the time, ”said Jo Goodman, who lost her 72-year-old father Stuart last April, just days after he tested positive for the virus.
A few months after her father died, 32-year-old Goodman co-founded the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group to put pressure on the government to support a public inquiry into how the pandemic last spring. was addressed.
“We cannot normalize the fact that hundreds and hundreds of people die every day and know what their families are going through,” Goodman said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said an investigation will take place – but only after the crisis is over. But critics are already claiming that the government has repeated the mistakes it made in the spring in the current resurgence, such as closing the country too late. The UK is also facing a new, more contagious variety that carries a higher risk of death than the original strain.
Bonner, meanwhile, hopes the country will take time to grieve properly and is considering sending a letter to Johnson, who has not yet supported a national memorial service for virus victims, to propose a “ simultaneous memorial service to those of us who have people lost to COVID can go somewhere to seek some comfort. “
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