Learning the language of grief

In a different yet powerful take on her Ateneo journey, student journalist, training facilitator, and LS Awards for Leadership and Service Most Outstanding Individual Cristina Batalla (AB Development Studies 2021) looks back on the faces of grief she encountered through Ateneo and how Ateneo has taught her the language of grief.

I am not a Psychology student, but I know that grief is a human response to loss. Grief is the emotion—an insidious pain creeping through the chest. Therefore, an appropriate action to accompany grief is mourning—to express deep sorrow for what one has longed to have or become. Sometimes, grief translates to anger—to rage at injustice and utter unfairness of the world. “Why me? Why them? Why now?” are questions hurled into the void left lingering as one struggles to live their way into an answer.

I am reflecting on grief today because the past four years of my life have been spent learning its language: how it speaks, feels, and navigates through the windows of my soul. I met various faces of grief in people I encountered throughout my stay in Ateneo as a student journalist, researcher, training facilitator, representative, and Development Studies major. 

It was in a friend whose dad lost his battle to cancer when she was seven. She mourns the father who died before she could be taught how to bike.

It was in the class president of a public high school whose service was dedicated to a student at risk of being killed for substance abuse. Instead, he mourns for the freedom of a kid lost to a bloody drug war.

It was in the workers with a labor union that spent decades without benefits and pay increases but ended up unfairly terminated. As a result, they mourn for prosperity their families can never afford. 

It was in the farmer who toiled on 12 hectares for four decades, only to give it up to pay for rising hospital bills. He mourns for the precious land his children could have inherited.

It was in the climate activist whose family and town perished in the Typhoon Yolanda floods. She mourns for the many memories washed along with her childhood home.

It was in the youth leader whose innocent father was shot dead because of political conflict. He mourns for the man who stood for just governance in a city where there was none.

It was in the long faces of the bereaved whose grandparents succumbed to COVID-19. They mourn for a space where funerals did not have to be confined to a screen, where even cold bodies could be close to touch.

And it is in me—a graduate who always dreamed of marching on stage holding both her parents’ hands. Instead, I mourn for the warmth of their palms telling me, “You made it. I’m so proud of you.” I long for their embrace and just another chance for me to whisper back, “I love you. This honor is yours.”

It’s terrible, really. I have no other words for this feeling. We all have had to sit with the reality that life did not turn out the way we hoped, most especially throughout this pandemic. Grief burns with pangs of regret and what-ifs and silent resigned despair. “If only the world were less cruel; if only we had a little more time,” a friend told me.

But the world has always been cruel and more time is not something we can demand. So it is on us to decide if that pain is still worth carrying or if we would rather offer forgiveness to live another day with the time still left in our hands.

In retrospect, all these stories add up to help me understand that grief is so much more than anger and sorrow. At the heart of suffering is a love that perseveres, one that continues to fight and care for others, knowing it’s the only way to fill in the spaces carved by profound loss. To this day, I know that those people I’ve met continue giving their hearts to honor their beloved and, more importantly, to bring meaning to the days they are still given. We continue serving those still alive in our families, communities, and our country. 

Ultimately, to learn the language of grief is to learn how to love. As I come out of the Loyola Schools, I carry these stories in my heart. I continue to learn the language of grief; how it could translate from hurt to longing, to forgiveness, to hope, to love—and back to sorrow as it gently permeates other dimensions of the soul. 

“Whether the next year will be better or worse, more difficult or easier—that is not for us to determine. But whether we can muster greater courage and faith and love, that is for us to choose. And if we are found wanting in them—which is all too human and can happen to anyone of us—at the very least we can muster enough humility to beg for those graces, for truly graces they are indeed.” (Prof. Remmon Barbaza)