Last week, in the New York Times, psychotherapist Esther Perel wrote a touching piece on how we are ALL grieving. She said, it is not fair to judge who is grieving the most.
Is it petty that the high school seniors who are missing their once-in-a lifetime prom are grieving the loss of their senior year? What about the children of emergency workers who cannot reach out and hug their mom or dad upon their return from work — for fear of getting contaminated?
We are, every one of us, grieving the loss of our former lives — the touch of loved ones we are separated from, the casual lunches at Baker’s Table with girlfriends, the events eagerly looked forward to that are now canceled.
And, of course, there are the unemployed workers not sure when they’ll have a paycheck again, the business owners scared to look at their daily receipts, the retirees equally scared at checking their retirement funds: It’s all grief. It’s all loss. It’s all valid.
But then this week, three friends have talked to me about losing a parent in this time of isolation and quarantine. There is the horrible pain of not being able to grieve the parent as we’d do in normal times: in the close physical proximity of loved ones, with the comfort of a face-to-face religious or spiritual memorial service and, perhaps most painfully, not being able to be at the side of the dying parent to say goodbye.
I spoke with JoEllyn Goodman of Los Alamos this week. She lost her beloved father, Joseph Codespoti, who died in Indiana on April 22. His death at age 87 was not a surprise, and not due to the coronavirus.
However, under any other circumstance, JoEllyn would have joined her mother and sisters at her father’s bedside in Northwest Indiana. Joellyn and her husband Neil and their children and grandchildren would have then stood shoulder to shoulder at a Catholic service honoring their devout father, grandfather and great-grandfather. And later, in relative’s homes, they would have all gathered together over baked goods and coffee, and maybe something stronger, and told stories about this amazing man who’d influenced them all.
JoEllyn said she didn’t mind speaking to me at this sorrowful time, as speaking about her dad was what she would have done with close family friends and relatives as they mourned him back in Indiana.
In Judaism, this ritual is called, “Sitting Shiva”. It is the comparable ritual to a Catholic wake — a time when people get to dig deep and remember someone. My religious teaching says that we’ll never be certain of heaven. What we can be certain of, is that beloved people are remembered in the hearts and minds of those they leave behind.
Hazel Mortensen can't seem to shake the thought of a child having to say goodbye to a beloved pet because their folks can't cover food costs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Joseph (Joe), was married to his wife Theresa for 67 years. They were a part of each other, JoEllyn said. (JoEllyn was named after her father Joe.) After a career in Indiana’s steel mills, he devoted himself to Catholic charity work. A Deacon in his church, he performed religious and ordinary acts of kindness.
A few months before, when JoEllyn visited Indiana, her ailing father, a lifelong baseball fan, quoted Yogi Berra and said, “When it’s over, it’s over”. And wisely, he added, “My bags are packed and my box is made.” Surprisingly, Joe meant that last part literally. An accomplished woodworker, he actually built his own coffin a few years ago — a plain pine box constructed to old testament specifications. It was done with fine craftsmanship, the pall bearers handles placed just so, the wood sanded carefully.
However, I don’t think Joe envisioned that his funeral, he in that plain pine box in the church in Indiana, would have been live-streamed to his family on the Central Coast of California, to Denver, to Chicago and other places around the country. JoEllyn describes the sense of unreality of watching her father’s funeral in real time, but being thousands of miles away.
The Indiana requirements of there being only seven people in the church meant that only the camera person, the musician, the priest and JoEllyn’s mother, sisters and her oldest son were present. However, even her mother and her sisters had to sit six feet apart … denied the physical comfort of each other.
I don’t know about you, but every funeral I’ve attended is a hug fest. It’s what we can give one another — love expressed through physical closeness.
Someday, JoEllyn says, there will be another funeral — a time when the family, including, she hopes, her 87 year-old mother, can gather in person and give each other those hugs. In the meantime, we do what we do, including grieve, through technology.