How do you deal with grief, really?

In a letter to his friend whose wife had passed onmdashfilmmaker Sudhir Mishra recalls this from approximate memorymdashthe great Ghalib wrote ldquoDoosron ke marne par gham woh hi manayein jo khud na marne waale honrdquoMeaning only those must mourn who wonrsquot die themselves Which is a thought the existentialist Ghalib may be capable of What of you and me whose Facebook has felt like an intermittent virtual graveyard over the past month due to Covid19Virtual because even an individualgroup hug from a world socially distant has become an unattainable luxury Almost everyone I know has dealt with this Making this the worst phase in human historyWersquore left to descend separately into a collective funk where death anyway is never the end of a lifemdashbut along with it potential memories shared hopes and future and a part of each of us connected that never returns Theyrsquore gone but yoursquoll never be the sameThink I sort of know how to deal with the loss of someone not so closemdashjust assume theyrsquore still there Itrsquos not like you wouldrsquove met them that often in any case Denial acceptanceHow does one deal with grief do you know I donrsquot Ancestrally wersquove turned grief from death into a ceremonial process with designated days to distract the closest ones from the onslaught of the blinding pain with practicalities of social rituals that followThe deceased is the star at the centremdashusually third time in their life since birth and wedding Only that theyrsquore not there to see a huge gathering of extendedclose relatives even neighbours in a village in their honourmdashmany out of social obligation several out of love to group together into a huddle and share sorrow that of course befalls all but never equallyDoes it help those most hit I suspect so Better than being alone in grief surely Over generations of mass migrationurbanisation the social network has got rewired to make the friend the closest fellowtravellermdashafter immediate family of course You can pickfind that friend among neardistant relatives colleagues schoolmates cousins social circle strangers playmates dateshellipIn that melee of the bereaved the lost loved one morphs into mythologymdashthe WhatsApp stories shared heighten emotions of the moment but does this journal of positive memories assist with handling irreversible heartache too Have been on it Genuinely hope soWhat does feel true they say is that you die twice the second time when yoursquore forgotten Until then yoursquore around just not alive These memories wersquore told come and go in flashes for long the intensity only reduces with timeWhich is probably why again they say time heals But whatrsquos time but life itself And there is a point when we wonrsquot live Until then we are alivemdashso how to deal with bereavement in that momentIrsquove been looking up the Internet the most common stuff in it are the seven stages of grief Of which only the first makes sensemdashthat is lsquoshockdenialrsquo and therefore helplessness that will follow as response Subsequent stages such as anger etc seem too calculative If not deeming humans as an algorithm designed to eventually attain lsquoacceptancehopersquoThere is no hope in deathmdashof a part of you This too shall not pass So I find this point made by actor Kabir Bedi in his recent autobiographymdashabout his psychichealer father late Baba Bedi The Bedis are direct descendants of Guru Nanak the founder of SikhismItalybased Bedi Srrsquos philosophy centred on humans essentially being creative souls looking for expressionmdashitrsquos unexpressed creativity that creates disease Creative expression therefore could be a momentary release for griefAnyway I hum a song when stressing about something But it feels different to watch a 24yearold sing lsquoJaane tu ya jaane naarsquo to his late mother on Instagram describing his relationship with both the mother he just lost and the song they lovedAlong with a graveyard FacebookTwitter feels like a massive funeral where we are all in it together I read with renewed care long emotional posts about loss of friends and colleagues what they said did heard saw What they were likeThe same way we devour obituaries of public figures But not quite Sometimes itrsquos poetry many a time a collage of candid pictures quite often simply a string of adjectives More dedicated sitesprojects exist This is why art was inventedmdashdoesnrsquot matter how you express Sufficiently inspired for the first time in my life I write a piece a letter not an emailmdashwhich isnrsquot for work Itrsquos for me and for my best friend who passed on last weekmdashdelivered to his son who can read it when hersquos older Felt lighter Little for sureMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper