*Trigger warning: suicide* Humans are complex beings, with a unique combination of traits which conform their individual identities. But behind those clusters of labels hides a myriad of unknown stories.
“Picture number eight, so this must be your son”, I say, while looking at the picture of the boy behind the piano. He looked my age and had his head bent over the black and white keys.
I was in the midst of an interview for my research project on the COVID-19 Pandemic. A qualitative study which involved having participants tell their personal experiences of the pandemic through a series of photos they had previously chosen. I had recruited the participants with the intention of hearing different perspectives and avoiding focusing on one particular group. I had a nurse, a retired historian, an asthma patient, a father working in healthcare, an international student from a different cultural background, a writer, a grandmother... It was not perfect but I concluded it was as diverse as it could get in only three weeks of recruitment.
“Yes, this is him in his studio upstairs, and he loves playing the piano a lot”, she then proceeded to tell me. I knew he followed a music program and really wanted to buy this piano to play at home during the lockdown. “But this piano was very expensive, so he asked his father for money. And so he got this piano from his father, and he would later pay him back half of its price.”
Initially, from her pictures the only thing I gathered was that she was a nurse, but quickly after starting our conversation I also learned she was divorced and her new husband unemployed, temporarily making her the sole income provider of her house. I am looking at the picture again. Imagining how nice it must have been for her son to finally get to play his instrument after having waited for so long. “... So they agreed on that, and he would pay him back as soon as he could, but”, she then continued, “on the day that his piano was delivered, we received a phone call… Saying that his father had committed suicide. In the midst of the pandemic.”
I do not know why it took me so long to understand that you never get to see the entire picture. Here I was, staring at 14 different images, photos I had chosen because I assumed they held some big stories. Nonetheless, those frozen moments of time, captured in this digital frame, never told me the whole story. Not even once:
I had been able to see her son was playing a piano but if it wasn’t for the backstory I would have never known he was playing on his father’s last gift, and neither would I have known it was the piece he would play at his funeral.
I click again to go to another picture, and it shows a small outside gathering, people playing music and smiling. The distance between them is noticeable. Many questions go through my head, but I am still too stunned from the previous story to ask. Luckily she continues without me talking this time.
“My son doesn't like to celebrate his birthday”, she starts, "but this year was the first time he wanted to do so. He had a feeling of ‘I am turning 21, I'm so young and I'm celebrating life, therefore I want to celebrate my birthday too.’ Despite the fact that his father was no longer there.”
I had been completely oblivious to the fact that this woman had a very intricate and complex backstory. She was indeed a nurse but also the financial provider of her household. She was divorced and had remarried and was a mother whose children had lost their dad during the pandemic. She was so much more than just the obvious, and she definitely is much more than just the previously stated.
I later have a second interview and talk to an elderly woman on her experiences behind the pictures and various descriptions she sent me. The conversation is very interesting and takes a lot of turns. She tells me about all the sweaters she knitted, the many pictures of animals she has taken, about her daughter in Norway and the many walks with her dog. I thank her for her time and end the conversation but when I later reread through her document I find out she had written the following as a last paragraph:
"When looking back on my experience of the pandemic I realize not much in my life has been changed. I consider myself privileged: with tons of spacious living space, no financial worries, quite healthy, including diabetes 2, an ablated right breast, and all kinds of wear and tear but still 82 years old anyway."
For me, she was just an interesting elderly woman with a big love for photography. But she also appeared to be a breast cancer survivor and living with extra risks like having diabetes two. Nonetheless, she did not mention it once during our entire conversation. For her those traits were facts but not any defining characteristics of her experience.
The point I am trying to make here, is that diversity is not only present in a group but at the individual level definitely too:
People are not limited to one category, they never fit a single label. They are a unique constellation of different traits. Some obvious, some hidden, some undiscovered and some to be changed. But we can never assume we see the entire constellation because assuming so only shows how little we actually know. The more we see of a person the more we understand their ever-changing individuality.
But most importantly behind those trait-mosaics lie the experiences that have molded and shaped them individually too. One person is not solely defined by labels and those labels do not strictly define their experiences. There is more to it than the obvious, always.
And that, for me, is the complexity of an individual’s story
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