Tending to Endings (sixteen)
Last week, on the first anniversary of my mom’s death, my sisters and dad and I planned to meet by Zoom. Like many, my family has taken our grief online. The digital world has made incredible things possible during the pandemic. John Prine dies and we are able to hear Brandi Carlile pay tribute from her home in Washington. Doctors and nurses help patients near death say goodbye to loved ones over FaceTime. And families gather in separate living rooms and grieve via video conferences. While it isn’t the same as holding and hugging, it is a form of connection, something more than we would’ve had, say, during the Influenza epidemic of 1918.
I’m so grateful for digital opportunities to see one another and talk, and yet, it is not enough. Too many senses are missing, particularly touch. And, timing, too, that delay, the fraction of lost time that affects laughter and eye contact and the ease of anything in unison. No one ever says jinx, you owe me a soda on Zoom. You cannot say a prayer aloud in unison. You cannot feel the music come through your own chest as someone sings, or the warmth of a shoulder near yours, or the clasp of another’s hand.
And then there is the leaving. The way loved ones are there one minute and then gone and their absence is so complete, the screen making clear they were only an apparition. I now am aware that when humans leave a room, their warmth, their scent, the echo of their movements remain awhile. People linger. After video chat, there is only the loneliness of the computer screen.
And so, as grateful as I am for the chance to see and converse with loved ones, sometimes, video conferences leave me feeling not quite grounded, missing something, off kilter. I’ve learned to balance digital time with earthier things.
The morning of April 9, a few hours before our meeting time, I turned off the news and closed my computer and began collecting items that belonged to my mom. Mom had a saying in our house—no shrines—to which she meant our bedroom was not going to be our bedroom after we left. Mine was quickly made into an office with sailboat pictures where my swim team ribbons used to hang. So a shrine isn’t exactly in line with Mom’s personality. I can hear her laughing, saying, What, you think I’m holy? Some kind of saint?
Still, it felt right to hold the objects she held. A pewter plate from her collection and the sugar bowl from her tea set that was always in our living room, the books she read until the bindings went soft. I included one of the stuffed bears she brought to the hospital when my the boys were born and Scrabble tiles arranged in the names of her grandchildren. I brought fresh cut flowers from the yard and found a photo of her with a classic Jane expression and her arms reaching towards the sky.
As the table came together, I decided, she would’ve appreciated my creation which was more along the lines of a Day of the Dead Altar than a shrine, a collection of things that she enjoyed here on earth. In any case, I loved it, and it felt good to hold things she held dear.
Once the day warmed, I went for a walk on the trails wearing Mom’s jacket. And when I returned, I knelt in the grass and planted iris bulbs and her favorite, lily of the valley. It felt good to have earth in my hands. I thought about all the days I came home from school and found my mom sitting in her garden, happily working in the dirt. These small acts of doing made me smile.
I know I’m not alone in my longing for tactile experiences during these days marked by collective and personal grief. Homeschoolers leave love notes on trails in the form of painted stones. Friends post photos of knitting creations and one mails me a paper crane and a letter penned on stationary. We find solace in sensory experiences: dancing, holding, making, planting, breathing.
Once it was late enough to text to Maui without waking Dad, I sent photos of the altar to him and my sisters and aunt and uncle. Amy followed with a photo of a tree her family will plant in their yard, a Jane Magnolia. And Sandy sent a photo Loa, born to my brother-in-law’s cousin and his wife that very morning. A new baby in the family. Mom would love that best of all.
Sometimes when I make room for grief, joy slips in. Grief is such an unpredictable force, isn’t it? Just when I think I know what is coming, it shifts again into something new.
April 9 was a beautiful day in Boise, and at three o’clock I sat on the back patio and opened my laptop so I could gather with my sisters and my dad via Zoom. We talked about our current lives, and how all our kids were doing. We considered what Jane would think of all of this, sure she would be philosophical and positive. She would be sending people book recommendations for saving the world and talking on the phone with friends. “She definitely would be supporting all of the restaurants by ordering carryout every night,” Sandy said. We all laughed.
“She would want to gather, though,” Amy said. And we knew, then, that Mom wouldn’t let a pandemic keep her from doing so. This is a woman who, in the 1980s set up live link via satellite in our basement (years before Dish network or internet) so that neighbors near our home in Chicago could attend Beyond War meetings with people in Palo Alto. (My dad notes that she did need some help with installation from him and Tim Kelly down the block).
In 1988 Beyond War awarded a peace prize to Reagan and Gorbachev for their work on ending the Cold War, and Mom helped organize an event in Evanston so hundreds of people could participate in the ceremony that linked the groups on different continents by what they called a space-bridge, and what we would now call video conferencing.
Mom would’ve found Zoom before any of us.
During all of this, Jane would be Jane—the woman who hates cooking and supports local business and more than anything wants peace on earth and good will toward all. Mom always knew the world could be (has always been) a heartbreaking place. Her response was to build bridges. To put her energy into whatever she could do.
On the anniversary of my mom’s death, most of what I felt was grateful, happy even, to have my sisters and father all together, and my mom, too, in whatever way is possible. When our call came to a close and we expressed our love and said goodbye, I shut off Zoom and felt the sun warm on my skin, watched birds flit from branch to branch. Our laughter lingered still.
More Resources
Some of my motivation for this column came from a video Creating Tactile experiences to grieve death in the time of Covid and also an article, Funerals and Dying in Abstentia, by Sarah Chavez, executive director of The Order of the Good Death. The article offers both digital and tangible ways of honoring loss in the time of Covid-19.
The full collection of resources where I found these can be accessed at Pandemic Resources for End of Life in a newsletter published by the National Home Funeral Alliance.
Last week I included an episode of Unlocking Us on grief. David Kessler also has a website devoted to online grief support grief.com
If you have any resources or ideas about how to honor loss during a pandemic, please feel free to share them in the comments section. (If you don’t see a place to leave comments, click here.)
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Enjoyed your piece on “Words”. Don’t know what I would do w/o them.
But your latest on “Touching” got to me as I observe the 1st Anniv of my little bro’s passing. The memories abound but the intimacy from the touch and feel and smell is gone.
Thank you, Mike. And I am so sorry about your brother.