Healing from a total eclipse of the heart: With Love by Simran Mangharam

The death of a partner is one of the greatest losses a person can experience. My father died quite suddenly, at 33. My mother was 26 at the time and, 48 years later, still seems to be coping with that loss.

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I’ve seen her grief at close quarters, and I have seen the phases of it ease, morph, and arrive in waves. There have been periods of numbness, and others of extreme sadness. She has spoken with intensity of missing my father; and spoken with intensity of his flaws (a defence mechanism, as I understand it).

Through nearly half a century, she has carefully preserved some of his key belongings, like his uniform badges (he was in the Air Force), Ray-Ban sunglasses, beer mugs and his favourite fountain pen.

She has been talking about him more often, over the past decade (she is now 74). She shares interesting anecdotes with fondness, and tells her grandchildren stories about him. There was clearly so much love and happiness in their brief five years together.

I take comfort in the fact that, amid the loss, the ache of her grief has eased, and what she has retained really are the fond memories of the life and love they shared.

This has been my message to a client named Rouhaan, who approached me earlier this year, after losing his wife to a prolonged illness of seven years. They had known that the end was coming, long before it did. But you can never be really prepared, he said to me, in one of our early sessions.

When all else is failing, you hope for a miracle. As the end nears, denial kicks in. It is hard to believe that this person whom one’s life hinges on will simply be gone, is how he put it.

After she was gone, Rouhaan found that it hurt too much to live with her possessions all around him, in the home they had built together. He has moved houses, and put many of his wife’s belongings in storage. He can’t give them away, he says. That feels too final. I know that sounds absurd, he added. I told him there was nothing absurd about it.

This early stage of grief is often the most difficult to get through. I have recommended that he approach a grief counsellor who can guide him through his current state, and the emotional states to come.

Meanwhile, I am writing this column to say that there is no wrong way to grieve. Give yourself room. Be kind to yourself. Do what helps you to cope and heal.

I have an aunt who lost her husband to Covid two years ago, for instance, and ever since, has since been on a mission to fulfil his dream of visiting all the national reserves in India. She often teased him about this ambition of his, when he was alive. She had no great interest in seeking out wildlife or searching for rare birds.

In life, they always stepped in for one another. What she couldn’t do, he took on, and vice-versa, she says. He never got to see all the reserves, so now she will.

Every time my aunt spots a big cat or a new kind of bird, she feels his loss keenly. But she says the mission is helping her heal.

Whether one has more in common with Rouhaan or my aunt; whether you cannot (yet) face the grief or choose (for now) to pin it to each day, it helps to acknowledge it. Without that, one is left merely going through the motions of living.

Don’t merely go through the motions, and don’t do it alone. Most of us have lost someone we love. It’s one of the things that eventually connect us all. Reach out for the comfort of those who understand. It is what the person you have lost would have wanted for you.

(Simran Mangharam is a dating and relationship coach and can be reached on [email protected])