Let’s celebrate our scars after the very tough year
A few months after I had lost my partner, I ran into the mother of Donncha O’ Callaghan (the Irish second row rugby player). Marie had lost her husband at a very young age and had to raise four boys and a girl on her own.
We discussed the difficulties of mourning. “You know everyone says that the first year is the hardest,” said Marie. “It’s not. The second year is the hardest, because you expect it to be better or even over and when it is still there, it is more challenging than you could have ever imagined.”
I think this applies to 2021.
It is was a tough, tough year - even tougher than 2020.
Like the second year after the loss of a loved one, we all expected it to be easier. We had gotten through the horror of 2020 when all our lives changed. We even survived the second wave over Christmas last year, because we hoped and trusted that 2021 would be different.
I’m sure that very few of us expected that we would be in the same – or even worse – place 12 months later.
My daughter recently remarked that her children would never know what the world was like before COVID. This really upset me. The thought that we will never again have a world free of masks and social distancing is really too depressing to contemplate.
Of course, COVID was not the only challenge we had to face collectively this year in South Africa. There was social unrest and riots, which shook the country to the core. Eskom left us in the dark {again) after we had hoped that it was all sorted.
There were more corruption revelations and our economy stuttered and choked.
Like the plagues of Egypt, we had floods, droughts and fires, and the debate to vax or not to vax which created angry divides amongst us.
In my personal life, I will always remember this as the year of my big operation. As the world’s recent history is now marked by the time before COVID and after COVID, mine is before the op (BO) and after the op (AO). AO started with more COVID in the family and on my birthday, Table Mountain (where my house is) caught fire and we had to evacuate. Shortly after I had my fateful visit to the doctor.
“The second-year [of grieving] is the hardest, because you expect it to be better or even over and when it is still there, it is more challenging than you could have ever imagined.””
So, on a personal level it was also a tough, tough year.
Yet, I am alive. My family is well and we will be able to spend Christmas together (whilst observing COVID protocols) – for which I am very thankful.
I recently stood next to a woman in the Woolies coffee queue. She had many tattoos over her arms, legs, face, and neck, and I admired the way she carried them with such confidence.
I said that to her and told her that I was thinking of getting a tattoo on the surgical scar that I now have following the operation earlier in the year. “You know, you must do it if it is a way to celebrate the scar – not to hide it,” she said to my surprise. “We should never hide our scars – they should be celebrated as a sign of what we have overcome.”
I have been thinking about that a lot - and not only on a personal level. As we exit this year, we should take time to be thankful for what we have in this beautiful country, but we should also celebrate the scars, because they are a sign of our collective strength.
We have come through a lot this year – riots, floods, droughts, COVID, darkness and corruption. We have done that together – and even when it looked like everything would untangle, the treads of our common humanity held us together.
Archbishop Tutu always says that he is a “prisoner of hope”.
I am too.
So, I am unwavering in my hope that 2022 will be a good year, not only on a personal level, but also for us all collectively.
Happy new year to you all and thank you for all the support and interactions during the last 12 months!