I am grieving just like many other Kenyans

Raise your hand if you’ve learned a new skill during the pandemic.

Bet you didn’t realise that you had it in you to bake gluten-free bread, make a lamp out of lemon rind, do a one-minute plank, or knit a scarf as long as a royal wedding veil.

I mean, I’ve seen people turn sturdy whiskey bottles into delicate glass trinkets, grow spinach out of old tyres, record entire albums, and host global forums from their bedrooms. These are just some of the things folks saved from the fire when Covid-19 was trying to burn our house down in 2020.

Despite all the good things we fought for at a time good things were so scarce, that was a year that many of us wanted to forget. That was a year that should have been annulled.

This year was supposed to be the one we all remembered for all the right reasons. Getting to the end of 2020 alive and healthy, was a common goal because of the hope that if we could just make it across the finish line, things would be better.

But, alas! Here we are again, talking about high positivity rates, variants, more testing, more cases … more deaths. The vaccine should have been a silver lining, but the misinformation around the jabs and the jerky rollout are darkening that cloud too.

At one point the anti-vaccine voices were so loud that even I had become a sceptic. But then corona was like, ‘you think last year was bad? Hold my protein spikes.’ More people are dying. The virus is not even giving them a chance to fight.

Brittle sponge

It is like a prowling lion seeking who to devour and then pouncing without notice. Yes, there are some folks who flouted all protocols, but then there were those who observed each and every one. I’ve seen people die from both groups. And it breaks my heart.

I’m not one of those people who learned how to crochet during last year’s work-from-home period. I didn’t learn how to assemble furniture, or do my own gel manicure. I’ll tell you what I did learn, though. I learned how to home-school a sassy little six-year-old. And with that I learned how to be patient, grateful, and joyful – even in the small things.

But I was also grieving just like many of you. Grieving for the life I never truly appreciated until Covid-19 turned the world on its head. A world that now feels like a dry, brittle sponge.

Abrasive and painful to the touch. And grieving for the people I’ve lost. Grieving for my friends and family who are, and have been, in mourning. Grieving for a country that has ‘no otherwise’ but to hold on tight until the storm passes.

I used to think that grief worked backwards, that people could only grieve things they had lost, but I’ve recently learned about ‘anticipatory grief’, a term coined by American grief expert David Kessler. Anticipatory grief is that uncertain feeling you get about what the future holds.

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It is a feeling that usually centres on death and the possibility that more people will die. You feel like a storm is coming, that there’s something bad out there, and you feel a loss of safety.

This sense of loss of everything from normalcy, to safety, to life, summarises the discomfort I, and many of you have felt as nature pried our hands away from the tight grip we used to have on reality.

We thought we were calling the shots, but it took just one pandemic in our lifetime to show us how disconnected from control we really are. What can I say? We live this life with no guarantees.

Tomorrow has never been promised. All we have is today. All we have is now. The best you can do with your life is to make it count in whatever way that means something to you while you still have the breath.

Those things that you have been putting off, do them. Those thoughts that have been keeping you up in the middle of the night, share them. The ideas that you don’t think will work? Try them out.

In short, live your life while you still have a chance. Don’t put off things for tomorrow what you should have done today. Until tomorrow comes, today is all you will ever know.

In the meantime, friends, follow the Covid-19 prevention protocols – wear your mask, keep your distance, wash your hands or sanitise, and if you can, go ahead and get vaccinated. This virus didn’t come to play. Give yourself a fighting chance.

Ms Masiga is Peace and Security editor, The Conversation