Mourning in a time of pandemic

Last Friday, I "attended" a live-streamed funeral, that of my cousin's daughter, who died at age 46 (tragically leaving two small daughters) of breast cancer. Bob is the son of my father's sister, my Aunt Margaret.

Although I'm close to this cousin's sister, I'm not close to him. 

But he's very much part of my family.

My father's family was relatively small - he had just one brother and one sister - and throughout my childhood and well beyond, we pretty much had all our holidays together with Margaret's family. (While they were still living, my grandmother and my father's brother were always with us, as well, but my Uncle Charlie kinda-sorta didn't have a family. A story for another day.) With the death of my aunt and my mother, these joint holidays pretty much petered out. For a long while, we continued to have a big family gathering each summer, but we haven't done that for a few years. Mainly, with this cousin whose daughter has just died, our relationship was a Christmas card, funerals, and weddings.

But there were enough of those family events over the years, that I feel that I watched Bob's girls grow up. I even remember the baby gift I made for Diana: a baby-sized crocheted afghan in pale coral, pale yellow, baby blue.

In before times, I would probably have gone down to Connecticut for Diana's funeral, but the post-COVID Funeral Mass was limited to the closest of relations and friends.

At first, I was reluctant to watch the funeral. Would it be voyeuristic, weird? But I am e-mail friendly with one of Bob's other daughters, and once in a while, when West Coast Julie is in Boston, she’s come over for lunch. After I learned of Diana's death, I had a small e-mail exchange with Julie. I assumed without her saying anything that she would be giving her sister's eulogy, and I wanted to be "there" for her. 

So I “went” to the funeral.

Mourning in the time of pandemic is so devoid of the rituals and gestures that get us through. So many of the little things - the hugs and back pats, the story shared in the moment, touching the casket as it rolls by - are no longer there for us. But we all still need something.

No one I know has died of COVID. I know several people who've had it. And have several friends who've lost friends to it. But that's it. And no one in my immediate circle, that precious group of family members and friends whose death would bring me to great grief, has died or suffered a grievous loss of their own since the pandemic began.

But in my wider circle, a few orbits out, there have been several terrible deaths this year.

In April, the 32 year old son of friends died of complications of Type 1 diabetes. In before times, would I have gone up to Maine for his memorial service - which has yet to be announced? I might have, as these friends had come down from Maine for my husband's memorial service six years ago. But I might not have. In any case, I wrote a letter Sam and Jane and made a donation in John's name to the charity they had chosen.

In June, my brother Rick called me. The son of one of his closest friends from childhood had died. A sweet but troubled kid, Jack was only 30. I've known Jack's father since he was in kindergarten; his mother was also a "kid" from the neighborhood. I hadn't seen Jack since he was a little kid. The picture that accompanied the obituary. Sigh. Jack was the spit and image of his father. Ceremony, burial were private. I wrote notes to both of Bill and Anne, and made a donation in Jack's name to the charity they had chosen.

Diana. John. Jack.

Children outliving their parents. 

Although I have no children of my own, I am possessed of a good imagination, and I can think of no greater grief than the death of a child. Trying to even imagine it is nearly impossible. It's sort of like imagining nothingness. It is not something you can even begin to wrap your head around.

Hovering over my childhood was the specter of my sister Margaret. My parents' first child, she had died in infancy. My mother never fully recovered. Although she was blameless, I think my mother blamed herself for the baby's death. Margaret was a perfectly healthy full-term baby. The doctor was late in getting to the hospital. The baby had crowned, she was coming fast. My mother called for the nurses to help her deliver her baby. (This was well before fathers were in the delivery room.) Instead of helping her, they told her she had to hang on. And when she went to deliver the baby on her own, they knocked her out. 

My sister, deprived of oxygen in the birth canal, lived a few days. If she had survived, she would likely have been severely brain damaged. My father saw the baby, but they never let my mother see her. 

Today, this wouldn't happen - or there would be a multi-million dollar settlement. But in 1946, they just told my parents to get back on the metaphorical bicycle and start peddling. Eleven months later, my sister Kathleen was born.

Having grown up around my mother's pain - I'm sure my father suffered plenty as well, but unlike my mother, he didn't have a depressive bone in his body - I can only begin to imagine how painful it must be to lose a child you've not just brought into this world, but brought up in it. Safely seen into adulthood. But not able to protect, to save...

July brought another outer circles death. Again, a call from my brother Rick. The brother of another of his closest childhood friends had been hit by a truck. Jack was a couple of years younger than my brother, but all the kids palled around together. They all played sports together. Jack and Rick went to the same high school. 

I babysat for this family. They were lovely. Five kids, all with "J" names. Their parents were the nicest and most fun parents on our street. (Not that it took much to be the most fun parents on our street. After Nancy and Denny, I'd have to say my father would have been next. My mother was plenty nice; she was just no one's idea of fun.) Jack, dead at 63. So much pain for his wife and kids. I'm happy that Nancy and Denny didn't live to endure this.

I made a donation to the GoFundMe page set up when they thought Jack would survive, and wrote a comment, scrolling through the list of donors, recognizing names of the long ago past. Mike S lives in Texas. Betty H - one of the neighborhood moms - is still alive. I wonder if Richie G is still as cute as he was when he was a little kid running around with my brother's pack.

*****

If my cousin's daughter was not in my inner circle, she wasn't far removed. Certainly, this was a closer death than that of John, Jack, or Jack. This is family, and Diana's death hits home. It filled me not so much with grief as with sorrow, sorrow for those that she leaves behind.

Although her funeral was live-streamed, not Zoomed, I got a bit dressed up for it. I swapped out the too-jaunty striped tee-shirt I'd worn on my walk for a nice sweater. I ran a comb through my hair, slapped on a bit of makeup, put on good earrings.

As so often is the case, there was a note of levity at even this most somber of occasions. The priest, who I believe is a native of Vietnam, said that Diana was leaving an "inedible" mark on the world, rather than "indelible."

Diana was a possessor of a wicked, and often inappropriate, sense of humor. Both of her sisters are her equals here. If I know my family, "inedible" will become a thing. 

Julie's eulogy was beautiful. Funny, touching. She spoke of Diana's love for dancing around, putting on tunes and having an impromptu (and sometimes solo) dance party whenever the spirit moved her. The night before the funeral, Julie and her sister Ellie had held a dance party for Diana's little girls. They're nine and six. (My sister was only 11 when my father died after a long illness, so I've seen this one before. How terrible for those two little ones...)

I had already written my notes to my cousin and his wife, to Diana's husband, to her sisters, to my cousin (Diana's aunt). And made a donation to the charity they'd chosen.

But there was still something left to do.

After the funeral ended, I YouTubed up a dance party of my own. "Twisting the Night Away." "Sweet Caroline." "Down at the Twist and Shout." "All the Single Ladies." "Shake It Off." "Margaritaville" (my cousin and his family are Parrotheads). And, although it's not really, dance-able, "Friends in Low Places," because it seemed like a Diana sort of thing.

Odd thing, this mourning in the time of pandemic.