It is no revelation that India has been struggling with mismanagement and a severe lack of empathy when it comes to handling its COVID19 crisis.
While most of us are proud of the way common people have weaponized social media to arrange resources for each other like oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, and medicines, there is another side to this too, where people are sharing stories of the extreme grief and loss that COVID19 has brought to them.
A large number of people online have lost their near and dear ones in this process, and Twitter is flooded with stories like these. There might be a lot of these, but the grief each one is feeling is immeasurable and irredeemable. Here are some of those stories:
1. Losing Your Ailing Mother Due to Non-Availability of Resources
Rajiv Malhotra shared how he lost his mother in the backseat of his car while she was struggling to breath as they were trying to look for a hospital that would admit her. After being turned down by 5 hospitals, his mother breathed her last, but not before giving him some valuable final words. Check out the full thread here:
2. On Losing Relatives and Dealing With Everything They Leave Behind
Harpreet explains how her family used up all their resources (including social media) to save the life of her aunty, who is no more. She talks about how her young cousin is now inconsolable, and yet, it doesn't end there for the family since they now have to go through the excruciating process of cremation.
Read the full thread here:
3. Losing a Long-Time Friend, a Person Who Impacted You in More Ways Than One
Vijayendra Mohanty, a friend of journalist Manoj Beborta recently took to Twitter to share how he had known Manoj for the longest time, how they first met, how they bonded, and how Manoj impacted his life, and finally, how his death had been a very difficult thing to cope with. Read the thread here:
4. On Missing Out the Chance to Meet Someone for the Last Time
Zeyad Masroor Khan, a journalist, talks about how he had plans to meet and surprise his cousin, and how he could never do that. She passed away before they could see each other, and Zeyad reiterates how one shouldn't wait before being nice to older relatives, since you never know when you might get to see them again.
5. Losing a Friend's Father
Another user, Bedatri Choudhury took to Twitter to share her bond with a friend's father and how his death impacted him. "He isn't a statistic," her post reads.
6. On Dealing With the Fear of Losing a Loved One
Nishtha, another user on Twitter, first talked about how her family was struggling to find resources for her uncle and how he was hanging between life and death. She talks about how stressful this time is, how she is terrified for her family, and how she wants the suffering to end for her uncle. She later updated in a separate post that he had passed away days after battling the virus.
7. How Having All the Resources in the World Can Also Leave You Helpless When Things Gets Bad
Mehak Savla, while sharing the story of her uncle who contracted the virus, talks about how they did everything right, followed the rulebook thoroughly, and yet things didn't work out in their favour. She also talks about how they come from a privileged family, and how for many others out there, things are way worse.
Read the entire thread here:
8. On Messages That Will Forever Be Left Unread...
Another user on Twitter, Arnav, posted a screenshot of his chat with his friend, Eva, who lost her life to COVID19. He talks about how she will never read his last message, and how difficult something like that can be to cope with.
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