A Year-Long Black Saturday of Pandemic Grief
A dear family friend passed away a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t cry because it didn’t feel real.
The same thing happened when my best friend’s mother, my second mom who I grew up with, passed away late last year.
It felt wrong —I don’t know if I’ve become numb to the news of death or if I’ve just become so acclimatized to terrible events that nothing shocks me anymore.
It’s as if I shut down emotionally, maybe even physically.
With friends who lost parents and parents who lost friends, I’ve seen how reactions to grief vary. Some people are vocal about their feelings, and they share their sentiments on social media or channel their emotions through an art form. Others become more cloistered or drown themselves in work.
But one thing the grieving have in common though is this: They all need a break.
We all need a break.
Black Saturday is for feelings of grief and hopelessness
It’s Black Saturday and we’re in that ambiguous moment in-between Jesus’ death and resurrection, where everything’s uncertain and the world is quiet.
Many see this day as one of anticipation. Black Saturday reflections often focus on the hope of Mother Mary while she kept vigil for the return of her son, how we should be like her.
This year though, the other disciples who were experiencing much fear, sadness, and confusion are far more relatable. Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears? Sounds like something I would do.
I used to get the notion that the passages on Jesus’ death urge us to be like Mary and avoid being like the disciples, but I’d overlook and undervalue the humanity of the latter.
Even if they knew that Jesus would resurrect after 3 days, the disciples couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with all these emotions. It was an appropriate reaction to loss.
During difficult times when hope seems too divine and incomprehensible for us to reach, we turn to these disciples and find permission to grieve and be human.
On Black Saturday, it feels like God is truly dead. And we have practically been living in Black Saturday for over a year now.
Everyone lost something this pandemic, whether it was a loved one, a job, a sense of security and stability, or all of the above. It seems as if God isn’t among us anymore and the demons are all running free, snagging lives as they please, making everyone miserable for spite.
This doesn’t mean that God is gone. But that being said, the turbulent changes and the physical, emotional distance from other people would naturally make us feel abandoned.
We are all grieving, some more than others; and during a global crisis like this, we couldn’t blame anyone for not having the energy to actively seek hope.
Hope is for another day
Of course, I know that hope exists after Black Saturday because I’m familiar with the story of Jesus’ resurrection. But without the luxury of being able to see the COVID pandemic in retrospect the way I do with Jesus’ resurrection story, hope may seem like an unreachable concept, maybe even an impossible one.
We’re not preparing for a joyful COVID Culminating Activity the way we prepare for Easter Sunday lunch and parties and pastel clothing. We feel stuck in an abyss, because this Black Saturday isn’t a one-day event written in the scriptures. It’s an on-going, seemingly unending narrative that we’re learning to live with.
Some days I do feel hopeful like Mary. But most days, I resonate more with the disciples, and the fear and confusion of not knowing what comes next leaves me feeling overwhelmed.
Given that, I believe it isn’t right to force the idea of hope prematurely. The same way how we should avoid telling a new widow to “look on the bright side” or that “everything happens for a reason,” we mustn’t feel obliged to crawl out of our holes as soon as possible.
Because as real as hope is to us, so is grief. It is just as valid, and just as accepted in the wide spectrum of emotions we feel as humans.
It is healthy to take time to sit with our grief and acknowledge that it is there. Not because we are concluding that hope doesn’t exist, but we must affirm that we are living in the present. Life is chaotic now; grief is a natural response to chaos.
Just like the disciples mourning Jesus while the tomb was filled, we have every right to take a break from actively hoping and just slowly, naturally take everything in.
And now, more than ever, this is something everyone has to understand.
What you feel today is for today
Black Saturday is not just a day of mourning Jesus’ death, but honoring and acknowledging the grief that we feel in the real world. It is a time to be still, to pause, and to just be.
While we are here in the present, in our collective Black Saturday, we ought to raise awareness on the validity and uniqueness of grief — how it is natural and real.
With this understanding brings the duty to be kinder to others who have yet to seek hope, including oneself.
May it motivate us to check in with our friends we haven’t heard from in a while, to take a break from our work when the world is too heavy, and to be each other’s safe spaces.
May we all have a blessed, human Holy Week.
