When Mourning Is at a Distance

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/opinion/letters/coronavirus-mourning.html

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To the Editor:

I am now sitting shiva for my 91-year-old mother, who passed away alone in her assisted living facility. She was not able to be surrounded by her only living child, grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

My mother survived four adolescent years with her parents, hiding from the Nazi plague in Polish forests. Five days before her death, she said to me, sadly, that she could not live this way. She felt that she was back in Poland, isolated, in hiding. The thought of being in hiding once again was simply unbearable.

We were permitted only 10 people at her burial. Not even my entire immediate family was there to say the mourner’s prayer at her grave. Now, I am an official mourner, following the traditions of my religion: sitting in my low chair, alone with my husband in our apartment, mirrors covered, my shirt ceremoniously rent, the mourning candle burning. No prayer services are being held in my home, and no family or friends are allowed to visit.

It feels as if I have been mourning forever, and the last images of my mother’s dying face are burnished forever in my mind’s eye. The human isolation that tormented my mother’s last days has descended upon me.

Sandy AprilNew York

To the Editor:

In rural France, where my parents live, death from Covid-19 has become very simple. My father was taken from us overnight — from none of the usual virus symptoms to dying, all within 24 hours. My mother wasn’t allowed to go with him to the hospital. She could only tell him she loved him and hug him for what would be the last time. And when he died, she wasn’t allowed to go with him to the crematory. Bodies are taken by funeral directors for direct cremation or burial. The cemeteries are closed to mourners. My father’s ashes now sit on a shelf in the funeral director’s chapel, waiting.

But this drastic simplicity has been a relief and a blessing. No decisions, no arrangements, no need for my sick mother to leave the safety of her house. For now, my mother video chats with family and reads us her many condolence cards. She plays my father’s jazz records. Sometimes she feels him in the house, and it brings her great calm. My father would be glad. Plenty of time later to gather with friends and family to celebrate his life. Alan Phillips, Aug. 12, 1935 - March 22, 2020.

Helen SimonsonBrooklynThe writer is a novelist.

To the Editor:

I tested positive for H.I.V. when the test became available in 1985, four years after we heard of the first cases. During the 15 years that hundreds of thousands of people died in a steady stream, we each were coping with the loss of loved ones en masse while we saw others dying. We couldn’t really properly grieve for an individual, because we were grieving for all those others gone and those going.

There had never been a plague of that magnitude since the beginning of modern psychotherapy, and psychologists were figuring out how to help us cope. Mine called it “collective grief syndrome,” which meant that we were already overwhelmed by grieving for people we had lost that the death of someone new did not really get its proper due. We were numb.

If you are losing more than one person at a time, stay strong, and give yourself permission to just let the waves of grief wash over you.

John PowellPalm Springs, Calif.

To the Editor:

My friend Judy died a couple of weeks ago. One daughter was at her side when she died. No one else was allowed to visit. It wasn’t Covid-19. Even during this pandemic, people still get sick and die for many reasons. Times aren’t normal, but we still need to mourn.

A scant handful of close family members was at her funeral, but her shiva, via Zoom, was attended by more than 100 people from all over the country. Judy’s daughters shared pictures of their mother as a young woman. Friends, some of whom had known her for over 60 years, shared memories.

Seeing those pictures and hearing those memories, I felt as if I was really getting to know Judy for the first time. Separated by miles, all of us talked together and prayed together and we were comforted. It was a beautiful experience. Judy would have approved.

Barbara LipkinNaperville, Ill.

To the Editor:

My brother Germán Luis was alone in his room in the house for the elderly he had lived in for the past four years when he passed away, on March 29. He was 70 and in a wheelchair, with diabetes, but otherwise — or apparently — in good health. He was found unresponsive. I was later informed that he had experienced cardiac arrest.

This happened exactly two weeks after the stay-at-home curfew mandated on March 15 by the governor of Puerto Rico. I never saw his body. A week ago I was handed the urn containing his ashes while inside my car by a woman who came out to the parking lot. Mask on, respectfully trying to stay the farthest away from me. Everything else except that moment has been handled through emails and phone conversations.

I miss the balm of hugs and embraces. I miss a roomful of family members crying with me. I have gotten plenty of loving phone calls, and text and Facebook messages. But no service is possible. Nobody knows when it will be.

Coronavirus didn’t take my brother away, but it planted itself, blunt and uninvited, in the space of grief that I need and my brother deserves.

Carlos Bas-HuertasCarolina, P.R.