“There was immense guilt survivor guilt (that he is alive and his wife died). We gave him anti-anxiety medication to help ease the immediate stress. Eventually, he began to speak. He talked about their plans, their memories. It was catharsis. We didn’t interrupt, we just let him speak and communicated through silence and empathy,” Parekh said.She said in such cases empathetic listening played a crucial role.”We were managing their anger, outburst, and their questions like ‘why us’ (why did it have to happen to us),” she said.For many, the most unbearable part was the wait. DNA confirmation could take up to 72 hours, sometimes longer.In the meantime, grief festered, fuelled by uncertainty.Some relatives insisted they could identify the bodies themselves.”There was one father who kept saying he didn’t need DNA tests he could identify his son by his eyes,” Parekh shared.”We had to gently discourage that. Seeing their loved ones in such a state could trigger PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and depression. We told them: it’s better to remember them with a smile than with charred remains. The team worked through the five commonly known stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance though rarely in a linear way.””People cycle through these stages. Someone might accept the loss in the morning and fall back into denial by evening,” said Parekh.”So we mourned with them. That was part of the therapy”.Parekh stays in one of the buildings on the residential campus where the plane crashed after take-off.Her building didn’t suffer any major damage. Sleep-deprived and broken by anticipation, many began to unravel.One Air India crew member’s family waited seven days for DNA confirmation.”The exhaustion, the helplessness, it broke her mentally,” said a relative. “But the counselling helped. Those sessions were our only anchor.” “A calm voice, the right amount of information, and simply being there these saved a lot of families from spiralling into chaos,” said Dean Parikh.
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