Pensive mutterings of a scrambled mind: Why people turn to social media in times of grief

People don’t turn to social media in times of grief because they’re heartless. They do it to escape. Escape from the sadness, the desolation, the what-ifs…

THIS TOO SHALL PASS/By Punam Bakshi Mohandas

In my (admittedly very humble) opinion, wisdom comes through experience, not age. For instance, I always thought poorly of those who’d get on to social media immediately there’d been a death in the family. Surely, they were being hypocritical, I’d scoff at them, feeling all high-and-mighty. If they were really feeling so cut up, they wouldn’t be engaging with people on Facebook or whatever. Right? Right. Of course.

So, then my mum died. She died quite suddenly, naturally, and relatively painlessly. The point is that due to the pandemic, I was stuck in another country, hadn’t been able to travel to India for almost two years and therefore, I couldn’t make it in time for her funeral either. The day she died passed in a bit of a blur, trying to remote control and organise her funeral from overseas. My cousin did a video call throughout the proceedings and it all felt surreal, because my brain was a scrambled mess and my emotions were horribly conflicted. I hassled my cousin to check whether – perhaps, possibly – my mother was still breathing, even though she’d been given a bath by then and surely, someone would have noticed. I picked a fight with the pandit because he insisted on removing all her jewellery, including the kada she’d worn for years. (I won!)

In the few months since her passing, I turned increasingly to Twitter, for news, for information, for entertainment and for exchanges with random people. And that’s when I realised – people don’t turn to social media in times of grief because they’re heartless. They do it to escape. Escape from the sadness, the desolation, the what-ifs. It’s so much easier to engage with strangers, precisely because they don’t know you. People who do, are either pussyfooting around you or constantly moaning and bewailing Fate – neither of which you want to hear as a refrain. In a totally bewildered, befuddled state, when I can’t give in to any grieving because I’ve got to find and decide on a suitable photo for the newspaper obituary from clearly unsuitable ones on my phone clicked and sent by the maids (in recent times), heck, I’ve got to write the goddamn obit too…ahh, let’s just check out what some twat has to say on Twitter!

Because, you see, here’s another thing I’ve learned with experience. It is the business of the living to keep putting one foot in front of another and get on with, well, the business of living. There are still bills to be paid and banks to be contacted; organise the death certificate; pay off the maids; buy new locks for the house which is going to remain closed until I go to India. What to do with mom’s mobile phone? Renew and top up the balance? Or not? What about all the ration and groceries in the house? The left-over medicines? The pressure to stay on top of these details was immense!

I used to read about people in similar circumstances, unable to return for their parent’s funeral. And I’d think to myself – gosh, how dreadful but whaddya do, it’s the times of the COVID, best be sane and practical. And then when it turned out that I too was a statistic now, part of this shell-shocked horde, I tried muttering the same platitudes to myself. Some days it worked, on others, it didn’t. In the two months of my mother’s passing, for the first time in my life ever I started having panic attacks; I was hyper-ventilating and couldn’t breathe properly on more days than I can count. One of my cousins became widowed about a week after my mother died…and I literally wanted to just jump out of my skin and be somewhere else rather than listen to this sad woman echoing all the sadness within me that I was trying to stay on top of.

How did I get past this stage? Therapy. I’m a really strong woman, but even the strong must weep sometimes. You see, about the first reaction that hits you is guilt. The could-have’s, should-have’s…I think ‘IF’ is the saddest word in the entire dictionary. And so now, each day on my morning walks, I stand by the swimming pool in our building and just feel the cool breeze waft by, see the swaying palms, feel the first rays of the sun on my face, hear the twittering of the birds…its infinitely calming. Sometimes, I place my hands on the cool tiles, just beneath the water and ground myself, gird my loins to face another day.

Nothing makes you more aware of mortality than seeing how a person is reduced to paperwork and other banalities. Such is the reality of Life.

• The pictures used in this article are from Pixabay and they’re for illustrative purposes only.

Punam Bakshi Mohandas is a journalist and writer with 25-plus years of work experience across India, Dubai and Thailand. A nomad at heart, having travelled over 43-countries at the last count, Punam is also a film critic. She was a weekly columnist for the Hindustan Times (New Delhi edition), Delhi Midday, The Financial Express, The Statesman and the Times of India (Kolkata edition). She is also the author of the book, ‘Fallen Angels’