When we look at the pandemic, which might have started unofficially in December 2019 to current, you see that we can no longer count the deaths we had, of relatives, close intimate family member and in the NHS in UK and across the globe we have lost relatives to Covid-19. This is the time when the world has been forced to revisit grief due to bereavement. At the end of each day, I am grateful that I had journey mercies, travelled out of the house and back home with no hiccups. There are so many bodily functions we never stop to think how they work because we expect them to work all the time. Breathing and breath became a topic of the day as people struggled to breath and requiring assistance from mechanical machines. What if the systems stop working and all those machine stop helping? What if that is the end of the road for me or someone?

I live a day at a time and make the most of it and I share love.

When I wrote my first book, it was not the one that was published. Then I wrote a second one that was not the one that was published first either. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and the death toll started causing pandemonium and havoc in people’s families it became like déjà vu as nations across the globe were forced to deal with death. Even though I was being reminded and being taken on the journey of revisiting grief, I had to stand on what the word of God had forewarned the church when we went into 2020. I remembered the situation which we had experienced as a family in the past when we expected that someone would die every 6 months because we were used to death.

When I flew out to attend the funeral of my loved ones, I said it was difficult because that's a very long lonely journey home. It seems like you are flying into the oblivion of dark emotions and you will not land. While we had always been lockdown overseas with our families back in the motherland, we had a chance to go out but not during the Covid lockdown. It brought back those sad memories from September 2015 when I was flying home to bury my baby sister and realised that you set close to someone on the plane who is oblivious to your emotional turmoil. But now it appeared that all the frontline nurses I knew were under the viral attack. We were suffering from double blow, lockdown; we could not attend local funeral celebrations, locked out, we could not fly out mourn as a family and also mentally locked in we had no one locally to be in the room with us as we watched the Zoom funeral ceremonies. We were now watching funerals on Zoom and anxiety was settling in because we were perishing. We know that all of us will die one day but, not when we drop down like flies after being sprayed by an insect killer. We will never get used to death.

From the previous deaths in my family, I learnt the importance of gratitude when I am granted another day to breathe, a gift of life. I don't take today for granted because tomorrow is never promised. When I go to bed, I know that I might not make it to the other side of midnight. I live a day at a time and make the most of it and I share love. Because of the pandemic the order of the book publication for my books changed the first to come out was to do with dealing with grief. My publisher and I felt that it was relevant to the time and people required emotional support on how to cope with grief. That is how the book titled, “Essie's Ten Steps of Dealing with Grief” became the first publication.