Editorial: Shedding a light on grief

Today is the final opportunity for Americans to view the 630,000 white flags on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — an installation called “In America: Remember” by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg — honoring each person who died of COVID-19 in the United States.

About 70,000 additional Americans have died since Firstenberg planned the display and purchased the flags in June. And each tiny marker represents something much bigger: the loss of a father or mother, sister or brother, a child or a friend.

Virginia has lost more than 12,800 residents in the pandemic: nearly 500 in Virginia Beach, more than 300 each in Chesapeake and Norfolk, and more than 200 in Newport News, Hampton and Portsmouth.

That’s so much death it makes the heart ache to contemplate. A substantial number of deaths occurred in long-term care facilities and nursing homes, but that doesn’t obscure the fact that each meant the end of a rich and fruitful life.

Those are empty chairs at the dinner table. Guests absent at a child or grandchild’s birthday party. Cheering voices missing from the stands of a high school ballgame. The absence is hard to fathom and harder to accept.

We feel the loss — the immense, sometimes paralyzing weight of it — and it is personal, even though it shared hundreds of thousands of times over across the nation. We are a country in mourning that has yet to confront that awful reality.

There is no secret formula for coming to terms with it. There’s no easy path to healing or a reliable respite from grief. Those are difficult truths familiar to most, and a reality thrust upon thousands more in nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So many of those who succumbed to the disease died in restricted hospital wards, connected to family through technology when possible. It impeded the comfort people can give and receive in the final moments and robbed them of the closure the living can find at the end of a loved one’s life.

Funerals were delayed, memorial services postponed. Some used Zoom or Facetime to connect with family and, together, celebrate cherished memories, but that simply isn’t the same as a warm embrace or an actual shoulder to cry on.

All of that takes a terrible toll. It can fuel depression and hopelessness, increase stress and anxiety. It can cause physical as well as emotional and psychological ailments. It affects personal relationships and even employment.

As the pandemic exposed serious flaws and gaps in our health care system, the cumulative effect of so much grief demonstrates the inadequacy of our mental health systems. People are oftentimes reluctant to seek help, and overstretched professionals can struggle to provide it.

But there are resources available, and anyone experiencing feelings of grief, depression and loss should utilize them. People can find comfort in communities of faith. They can learn constructive, effective strategies in bereavement support groups, which meet frequently across Hampton Roads.

Talking may not alleviate the pain and sorrow, but it can help with healing and reassure the afflicted that they are not alone.

Finding help is especially important for people who have turned to alcohol or drugs, or other types of self-harm, as a reflexive coping mechanism. Substance abuse and other counseling is available through community services boards throughout the region.

It can be hard to wrap our heads around the notion that 700,000 Americans have died in this pandemic, more people than live in the state of Vermont. But it is critical that those who lost a loved one not suffer in silence or live in darkness.

Projects such as the flag installation on the National Mall are critical to help to shed light on America’s grief. They inspire hope we need as we mourn our dead — the family and friends now departed — and allow us to find comfort together as we try to come to terms with the magnitude of our loss.