Echoes of pandemic loss: Navigating grief in the wake of a COVID death

The COVID pandemic resulted in widespread grief due to the high number of deaths. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand patterns of grief and bereavement following a COVID death. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 individuals who had lost someone close to them to COVID. Thematic analysis revealed that specific features of COVID, as well as complex interdependence within the community, shaped the experience of grieving a COVID death. These experiences, in turn, led to disruptions in coping and moving on from the death, resulting in a long psychological tail of COVID and foreignness of the loss to others. Overall, participants described a grieving process that was unsupported, protracted, and in some cases, ongoing years after the death. Taken together, these findings suggest the potential usefulness of targeted interventions to address the unique psychological factors in grieving a COVID death, with potential implications for other complex losses.