Tag: Grief and Grieving

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Dramas discuss what makes a good death in the age of Covid

By Alex Spencer

The coronavirus pandemic has forced millions of us to come face to face with death in ways that we never imagined. Whether we’ve experienced personal losses, attended virtual funerals, or watched death tolls creeping up on the news, we are all confronting the pain of illness, death and grief and we’re having different kinds of conversation than we did before.

Researchers from the A Good Death? project at Cambridge University’s English faculty have teamed up with Menagerie Theatre Company to create three original audio plays, released online for free today (Wednesday) to help us to think and talk about this new reality. Written and recorded during lockdown by Menagerie actors, Seven Arguments with Grief, End of Life Care – A Ghost Story and A Look, A Wave are short 15-minute plays that provide glimpses into the thoughts and feelings of a bereaved mother and a hospital doctor, and reflect on the final farewell of the deathbed goodbye.

Written by Patrick Morris, co-artistic director of Menagerie, and inspired by the research of Dr Laura Davies into the history of writing about death, these plays don’t try to provide answers about how to handle what we’re all experiencing, in different ways, right now. What they do is capture personal stories and aim to be authentic to how hard life, death and loss can be.

Laura told the Cambridge Independent: “We have been running them since 2018 to improve conversations about death and dying using literature and the arts that means we run public events such as workshops for bereavement counsellors, people who work in palliative care, hospice workers and we use literature, museum objects and artworks to help people talk about death and dying.

“During the pandemic we built on an existing connection with Menagerie Theatre at the Cambridge Junction to think about how we could make some audio drama that people could listen to at home or on headphones that hopes, in a non-direct way, to help people to think about death and dying in a different way to the headlines of the death toll creeping up.

“We wanted people to think about what they believe and how they are feeling and what their experiences are. Right now we are all being forced to confront a reality that is universal but in a new way. Our ancestors would have been closer to death with it being more common for people to die in the home – child mortality rates were higher and plague and disease that couldn’t be controlled were more usual. We have been protected in the west from that sense that things are beyond our control and that we are quite vulnerable as human beings. You can’t avoid death and dying at the moment and many people are reporting feeling anxious about it, but of course you can’t hide.

“It’s important there’s a way to think about these ideas and listen to a story that can prompt reflections without increasing fear and anxiety. The work of literature and drama is to stimulate emotions,but with a bit of distance because you know it isn’t real. Our message is that death is part of life and that the way in which individuals experience life, death and loss is complicated and unique, andthat there is not a right or wrong way to grieve or a right or wrong way to live your own life knowing it will end.

“The more you talk about it doesn’t make it more likely to happen, but it can enhance the way you live.

“Even if there are elements of death and dying we can’t control, such as where and when and how we might die, it helps to have shared your wishes with your family and to have thought about what you might wish your legacy to be. They can help you to come to terms with it.”

A Good Death? includes workshops designed for practitioners, such as bereavement counsellors and hospice workers, along with public events, creative collaborations and online resources. The project also uses literature and the arts to open up new conversations about death, dying and bereavement.

Laura added: “One of the things emerging in terms of cultural impact is the experience of complicated grief that comes from a traumatic death. Early research points to the fact we are looking at long-term consequences for people’s mental health because they may have experienced not being able to be with a loved one at the end, or only being able to attend a funeral by Zoom. And missing out on those kinds of rituals makes it harder for people to grieve. Psychologists are looking at this cohort of bereaved people and the impact it will have on them.”

Menagerie is a new writing theatre company, resident at Cambridge Junction. It aims to develop and produce new plays which engage powerfully, imaginatively and critically with the contemporary world. Its co-artistic director Patrick explained: “There are so many books about the grieving process as if it’s some kind of logical process rather than something that’s actually faltering, that stalls, that destroys some people, but makes other people. I wanted to create a space for the real difficulties of grief.”

On the value of this collaboration, Laura added: “Working with Menagerie has given me a new perspective on my research into 18th century literature. These plays turn abstract and complex ideas into personal stories, showing new angles that I’ve not noticed before. And they capture brilliantly both how similar our struggles today are to those of the past, and how every person’s response to death or loss is unique.”

The plays can be listened to on the A Good Death? project website, good-death.english.cam.ac.uk/collab , where you can also watch interviews with the researchers, writer and actors.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Can We Bear This Much Loss?

In William Blake’s engravings for the Book of Job I found a powerful lesson about grief and attachment.

By Amitha Kalaichandran

If grief could be calculated strictly in the number of lives lost — to war, disease, natural disaster — then this time surely ranks as one of the most sorrowful in United States history.

As the nation passes the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from Covid-19 — only the Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and World War II took more American lives — we know that the grieving has only just begun. It will continue with loss of jobs and social structures; routines and ways of life that have been interrupted may never return. For many, the loss may seem too swift, too great and too much to bear, each story to some degree a modern version of the biblical trials of Job.

I thought of the biblical story of Job last month when I was asked to speak to the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation. How would I counsel others to cope with losses so terrifying and unfair? How could those grieving find a sense of hope or meaning on the other side of that loss?

In my research I found myself drawn to the powerful rendition of the Book of Job by the 18th-century British poet, artist and mystic William Blake, in particular his collection of 22 engravings, completed in 1823, that include beautiful calligraphy of biblical verses.

Job, of course, is the Bible’s best-known sufferer. His bounty — home, children, livestock — is taken cruelly from him as a test of faith devised by Satan and carried out by God. He suffers both mental and physical illness; Satan covers him in painful boils.

Job is conflicted — at times he still has his faith and trusts in God’s wisdom, and other times he questions whether God is corrupt. Finally, he demands an explanation. God then allows Job to accompany him on a tour of the vast universe where it becomes clear that the universe in which he exists is more complex than the human mind could ever comprehend.

Though Job still doesn’t have an explanation for his suffering, he has gained some peace; he’s humbled. Then God returns all that Job has lost. So, the story is, in large part, about the power of one man’s faith. But that’s not all.

The verses Blake chooses to inscribe on his illustrations suggest there’s more. In the first engraving we see Job’s abundance. Plate 6 includes the verse: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”

So, the Book of Job isn’t just about grief or just about faith. It’s also about our attachments — to our identities, our faith, the possessions and people we have in our lives. Grief is a symptom of letting go when we don’t want to. Understanding that attachment is the root of suffering — an idea also central to Buddhism — can give us a glimpse of what many of us might be feeling during this time.

We can recall the early days of the pandemic with precision; rites that weave the tapestry of life — jobs, celebrations, trips — now canceled. In our minds we see loved ones who will never return. Even our mourning is subject to this same grief, as funerals are much different now.

In Blake’s penultimate illustration in this series Job is pictured with his daughters. Notably Blake doesn’t write out this verse from Job; instead he writes something from Psalm 139: “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” In the very last image, however, God has returned all he had taken from Job — children, animals, home, health and more. Here, Blake encapsulates Job 42:12: “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had 14,000 sheep, and 6,000 camels, and 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 donkeys.”

Blake intentionally didn’t make the last image a carbon copy of the first, likely in order to reflect new wisdom: an understanding that we are more than just our attachments. The sun is rising, trumpets are playing, all signifying redemption. Job became a fundamentally changed man after being tested to his core. He has accepted that life is unpredictable and loss is inevitable. Everything is temporary and the only constant, paradoxically, is this state of change.

So, where does all of this leave us now, as we think back to how our attachments have fueled our grief, but perhaps also our faith in what’s to come? Can we look forward to a healthier, more just world? Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye.

I think it leaves us with a challenge, to treat our attachments not simply as the root of suffering but as fuel that, when lost, can propel us forward as opposed to keeping us tethered to our past. We can accept the tragedy and pain secondary to our attachments as part of a life well lived, and well loved, and treat our memories of our past “normal” as pathways to purpose as we move forward. We still honor our old lives, those we lost, our previous selves, but remain open to what might come. Creating meaning from tragedy is a uniquely human form of spiritual alchemy.

As difficult as it is now, in the midst of a pandemic, it is possible — in fact, probable — that after this cycle of pain we feel as individuals and collectively that we might emerge with a greater understanding of ourselves, faith (if you’re a person of faith), and our purpose.

The word “healing” is derived from the word “whole.” Healing then is a return to “wholeness” — not a return to “sameness.” Those who work in hospice know this well — the dying can be healed in the act of dying. But we don’t typically equate healing with death.

Ultimately, to me, that’s the lesson offered by Blake’s Job: understanding his role in a wider universe and cosmos, transformed in his surrender, and the release from the attachments to his old life. Job had the benefit of journeying across the universe to understand his life in a larger context.

We don’t. But we do have the benefit of being his apprentices as we begin to emerge from this period, and begin to choose whether it propels us forward or keeps us stuck in pain, and in the past.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How death doulas are helping people process grief during the pandemic

By Tracey Anne Duncan

Like so many people, I have spent much of this pandemic grappling with grief. I’ve lost people I love, and even now, people I care about are ill. Even if you haven’t personally lost someone, you’re likely tapped into the collective sense of mourning. It’s hard to know how to comfort people who are dying or the people who love them under any circumstances, but when you can’t be together, it makes it even harder.

That’s where death doulas step in. In case you aren’t familiar with the term, a death doula is like an end of life midwife. They help dying people by guiding them and their families through the dying process. They help people plan out their death experiences. They can aid in navigating the practical parts — like wills and funeral planning, and also the emotional aspects — like helping people figure out what kind of rituals will make grieving cathartic.

Many of the usual ways that dying people and those who love them deal with death — deathbed visits, meetings with spiritual advisors, grief counseling — are not available to us right now. We may not get to have much, if any, contact with a person dying of coronavirus. In this pandemic of mass uncertainty, death doulas can help us through the grieving process.

“Doulas are professionals who provide support and guidance to individuals and their families during transformative life changes,” Ashley Johnson, an Atlanta-based death doula and founder of Loyal Hands, a service that matches people with end-of-life doulas, tells me. These doulas can train family members in some of the practical aspects of caregiving, help people create support plans, and counsel those who are dying and the people who love them, Johnson tells me.

Death doulas are also educators, in a way. Most of us spend a lot of time trying not to think about death, and we aren’t well-versed with the death process. Most of us aren’t even aware that death is a process that can be charted. Death doulas help folks get familiar with the normal and natural stages of dying, Johnson tells me. In the terrifying and confounding moments when grieving people are wondering what happens next and how they can deal with it with dignity, death doulas can step in to fill in the blanks.

There’s kind of a new-age, woo-woo stigma surrounding the work that death doulas do. They aren’t priests and they aren’t psychiatrists, so their professional world is kind of murky spiritual-ish/life coach-ish territory. But some psychologists do think that death doulas can play an important role in helping people cope with grief. “A doula could help people figure out how they want to mourn,” says Aimee Daramus, a Chicago-based psychotherapist.

Daramus adds that people should be mindful that many doulas aren’t trained therapists, but because they are familiar with managing grief so they are generally able to tell when a clinical professional is necessary. For people who are spiritually inclined, but not formally religious, this middle ground can be a comfortable place to mourn without devolving into either over-medicalized melancholy or eccentric science-shunning spiritualism.

“A doula should be able to recognize when someone’s thinking or behavior is starting to go beyond the normal range of mourning experiences.” In this way, death doulas can be a touchstone for figuring out if a person is having a healthy grief response or if they may benefit from another type of help. There is no one right way to grieve, of course, but some people can sink into depression if they don’t process their grief as it’s playing out.

One of the benefits of working with a death doula is that you can shop around to hire someone who fits your needs and understands the cultural specifics of your background. “A professional should work to understand the unique cultural practices relevant to that individual or family,” says Thomas Lindquist, a Pittsburgh-based psychologist and professor at Chatham University. This is especially important, he says, during important life milestones.

A lot of folks in the hospice and funeral industries will likely have a passing knowledge of many kinds of death practices, but you can find a death doula who shares your beliefs, or who literally speaks your own language. Grieving, while it is a universal experience, isn’t generic, and Linquist says that it’s important for a family or person’s religious beliefs to be incorporated into their care plan.

But how can a doula help someone die with dignity if they can’t even be in the same room with them? “As doulas, we have had to get really creative about the ways we meet with people,” says Christy Moe Marek, a death doula in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and an instructor at International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA). Marek says that she has met with the families of dying people on their decks and porches, but that she has had to meet with most dying people via Zoom. It’s not ideal, she says, but adds, “it is opening up such possibilities given the constraints of the pandemic.”

Death doulas are finding new ways to support people. “So much of the way this works right now is in helping both the dying and their loved ones to manage expectations, reframing what they hope for, and to shift focus onto how the ways we are connected whether we are able to be together in person or not,” Marek says.

Marek says that helping people accept the reality of difficult experiences is really the whole point of her work. “During the pandemic, what is actually happening is different than we could possibly imagine and we may not like it. We may actually hate it with our whole being, but it won’t change what is. So we work with that,” Marek says, “And that is what ends up being the mark of a good death.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘These Are Real People Dying’ —

Why an Artist Filled His Yard With Flags

Plastic flags, each representing a Texan who died from Covid-19, outside the home of Shane Reilly, an artist in Austin

Shane Reilly plants a flag for each Texan who dies of the coronavirus. As the national death toll nears 200,000, The New York Times used an image of his memorial to illustrate the staggering scale of loss.

By Will Wright

In May, when Shane Reilly, an artist in Austin, Texas, started planting one flag in his yard for every Texan who died from the coronavirus, the state had fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Now, Texas is approaching 15,000 people dead, and the nation will soon hit 200,000.

For passers-by and those who have seen pictures of the memorial, including an image featured on the front page of Monday’s New York Times, Mr. Reilly’s yard serves as a sobering reminder of the losses so many American families have endured this year.

I spoke to Mr. Reilly recently to ask how his project started, and where it stands today. Portions of our conversation have been edited for clarity.

Take me to the beginning. What made you want to do something so public? And how did you land on flags as the way to tell this story?

I’ve got an immunocompromised son, so when the coronavirus hit, I started paying close attention to it. We live on a corner, so I see people walking by every day and I would notice that they just weren’t wearing masks, and I thought, something’s not hitting home with them.

These are real people dying, real Texans dying, and I’ve got a kid in quarantine here at home and people are acting like this is almost a vacation.

So I thought, what could I put out there that would wake people up and make them say, “Oh, this is real, this is something we should pay attention to”?

Where do you get the flags?

I started getting them from Lowe’s and Home Depot. Lowe’s carries orange and pink, and Home Depot carries red and white. When I started this project we were at 850 deaths here in Texas. I thought, “Wow, 850 flags in this yard is really going to wake people up.” So I bought 1,000 just to be on the safe side.

And now we’re at roughly 15,000 deaths.

As I’m talking to you I see a guy and a girl outside, taking photos of my yard. I get a lot of that. I get a lot of people walking by and taking photos.

Coronavirus Schools Briefing: It’s back to school — or is it?

The response has been pretty amazing. I’ve had several handwritten letters in my mailbox, no name on it, no return address. Just, “Thank you for doing this, I’m a first responder and I’ve seen a lot of deaths from this.” Or, “My mother died of this, thank you so much.” Other people have left bundles of flags outside. It’s been pretty touching.

For people who haven’t seen this in person, can you explain how your yard has changed over time?

In the beginning I was trying to space everything out in an even pattern. I thought that would have more of an impact, to see this uniform field of flags.

Now I’m at the point where there are so many flags I just kind of walk in between rows until I can find a large enough space, and I just plop a bunch of them down. When I hit 3,000, I had people telling me, “You’re going to run out of space.”

What started just in the corner now covers the entire front yard and the entire side yard. I put flags out about every other day, but there were certain times when Texas was spiking that I couldn’t wait two or three days because there would be 1,000 more flags I would have to put out if I waited that long.

Now that you’ve been doing this for so long, does it still carry the same emotional weight?

I never lose sight of the fact that these are people’s lives. That stays with me every time. The other day I put out 300 flags and, you know, that hits you. But also I’m looking out at this sea of flags and it seems never-ending.

I can’t keep carrying that weight like I did earlier in this project, so I’m starting to build a callous. That sounds awful, but I do have to remind myself sometimes that this was someone’s mom, this was someone’s lover, this is real.

As the nation approaches 200,000 deaths, how are you grappling with that?

My first emotion is anger. There was a plethora of information out there to suggest that we could have done things differently, but people in charge chose not to. They actively went in the other direction.

I squarely place a lot of these deaths on them. Proper leadership could have saved tens of thousands of lives.

It’s shocking and saddening and infuriating. And every day, people walk by my house still not wearing masks.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why Indians of all faiths commemorate the dead with food

An excerpt from ‘Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes’ by Shylashri Shankar.

By

Each February, on the lunar day my father passed away, I wake up at dawn, bathe and drive over to my mother’s house. I enter the kitchen and begin sorting the vegetables. I wash the spinach and soak it in salted water. The bhindi, I pat dry. I remove the mud clinging to the arbi, rinse the green chillis, ginger and coriander leaves. Then I make a cup of tea for my mother who is unwell, and sit at the dining table to choreograph my cooking moves this year. Sixteen dishes have to be made by half past ten when the priests will arrive. Four hours to wash, chop, chiffonade, boil, cook, simmer, combine, soak, grind and fry vada, knead dough for puris, pickle the mango, roast the arbi over a low flame for half an hour, make the rice, kheer and mango chutney. Everything has to be done from scratch – no preparations can be made the previous day. Even the vegetables have to be cut on the day.

I begin the dance between the tasks like a Sufi dervish, meditatively and fluidly. These were my father’s favourite dishes – keerai, kootu, rasam, puris (we used to compete over how many puris we could eat), bhindi fry, crispy arbi with rice flour and spices, the mango and gur boiled in its own juice, and the mint chutney. These dishes were made on the tenth day after his death, and each year my mother and I make these dishes on his death anniversary. As I cook, I also think of others whom I loved who have passed away – my aunt who lived with us and was famous for her coconut barfis and chikkies, my perima who made the most delicious chutneys, pickles, papads and pastes and sent them to us from Shimoga every couple of months, my favourite uncle who was born on the same day as me and who lived a simple and contented life. I remember the things they did, and what we shared. There is a sense of calm, of peace, of unhurried movement. I salt and spice by instinct, not by taste. I cannot speak over the food, and I cannot taste it – it would be polluting. The priests arrive. After a short chant, they are ready. I serve everything course by course, on a banana leaf. They eat everything and take second helpings. I cook only occasionally, so you’d think the spices would be off, but instinct serves me well on this day. Or is it the emotions and memories infusing the cook?

Research shows that rituals can help in relieving people of their grief and other feelings that torment the spirit. A ritual, whether it is a religious one or something you have made up, helps to restore a sense of control to the mourner, control we have lost in the unexpectedness and the suddenness of the tragedy. A ritual involving cooking returns that control to you as you decide when the coriander seeds have been roasted enough, when the vegetable is done to a crunchy bite, and when the chana is cooked.

It is not surprising that many traditions contain rituals where the person who has passed on is remembered through food. The bereaved are comforted by other mourners who bring dishes like fried chicken, biryani, sandwiches and so on. The Koran, for instance, discourages the family of the dead from cooking but urges the community to bring food to the family. In Hyderabad, Muslims bring biryani, haleem, kebabs and dahi baday. Across the pond in Sri Lanka, visitors dressed in white deliver food to the mourners and the monks. The Buddhist ceremony, Daane, involves eating parupu (dal), kiri bath (rice and coconut milk) and gotu kola sambol. Pitru paksha of Hindus observed during the dark half of the lunar calendar uses food to commemorate the dead. So do similar festivals in other parts of the world: All Souls Day in Italy and Sicily where marzipan delicacies are crafted in the form of fruit and vegetables, and the Day of the Dead in Mexico where sugar skulls, candied pumpkin and mole negro are prepared for the souls of the dead.

Why are these dishes and not some others used in the formal rites? Is it because they create a sense of calm, some succour to the grief-stricken mourners? Is it ethnicity, religion or the geographic location that makes a dish or particular ingredients comforting to a mourner? In India, religion plays a key role in deciding whether vegetarian or non-vegetarian foods can be served to a mourner. Unlike Muslim and Christian mourners, Hindu mourners eat vegetarian meals even if chicken and fish are part of their daily diet. Why? It could be because death is involved in the act of eating meat (dead animals) since in Hindu culture a person is both bodily and morally what he or she eats.

But in a study of mortuary rites in Benares, Jonathan Parry highlights how some aspect of the deceased is symbolically digested not only by the ghost but also by the ‘chief mourner, by the impure Funeral Priests (a specialist subcaste known as Mahabrahmans) and by the pure brahmans’. Parry points out that in some instances, as in the funeral rites of the Raja of Nepal, the Funeral Priest was fed the deceased’s ground-up bone in a preparation of kheer (concentrated milk and sugar), and was laden with gifts and banished from the kingdom. By digesting the deceased, his pure essence is distilled and translated by the digestive fire of the stomach to the other world, while his impure sins are eliminated. The ghost is converted into an ancestor, or pitr. The food served to the group consists of rice boiled without salt but garnished with milk and horse bean lentils (urad dal).On the thirteenth day, the mortuary feast is prepared.

Nirad Chaudhuri narrates an incident where a wealthy relative had to rubber-stamp the backs of peoples’ hands to prevent them from eating twice, many having trekked over 50 miles to attend the feast. It is not just the wealthy who have to feed hundreds of people to mark the end of mourning. The poor have to do it as well, and usually incur high debts as they sell their bullocks and grain and borrow at exorbitant rates of interest to meet the expense of feeding the village. For the Gonds and the Bhumias, the death feast is the most expensive ceremony.

The formal rites also involve other offerings in the soul’s passage from being a ghost to becoming an ancestor. Hindus offer rice or flour balls known as pindas. Some castes leave these pindas outside and hope that a crow will eat it. If it does, the ghost has become an ancestor. In Mysore, some middle castes throw three balls of butter at the idol beseeching it to open the gates of heaven (vaikuntha samaradhana).

Death need not be only of the body. The death of a relationship can be quite brutal. In mourning for the ‘we’ that has died, you may turn to your favourite dishes and binge-eat day after day. Well, don’t. In randomised trials of over 45,000 participants, London-based researchers discovered that eating meals high in vegetable and fiber and cutting back on junk food eased depression. But not anxiety. Also these meals worked better on women than men. They are trying to figure out why. NIH research has found that enhanced recovery from depressive disorders is delivered by oysters, mussels, seafood and organ meats, leafy greens, lettuce, peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli. Now we have an Antidepressent Food Score, a nutrient profiling system to give dietary recommendations for mentally ill people.

What about foods that can increase and worsen depression? These typically are sugar-rich foods – cookies, doughnuts, red meats, fried chicken and soft drinks – that create a high followed by a crash. But dark chocolate, thank god, enhances the mood by releasing endorphins to the brain and promotes a sense of well being. I tested it over a two-week period of nibbling two slices of chocolate after lunch. Godiva’s 78 per cent cacao made me perky while Cadbury’s Crunchie left a claggy sensation in my arteries. Either there is some truth to it or I may be exhibiting the recency effect – remembering best whatever I have read or encountered most recently.

The moral of the tale is to treat grief as a natural phenomenon and address it through rituals, simple or elaborate, and eat foods that produce equanimity.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Upside Of Virtual Grieving

By Caitlin Stall-Paquet

I attended my first Zoom funeral this past June. My husband Aaron’s aunt Maria, who lived in Pennsylvania, died of breast cancer, but her passing was still defined by the pandemic. Sitting in front of a laptop at the dining-room table in my mom’s house in southeastern Quebec, Canada, we, along with a dozen or so others who couldn’t be there in person, watched our American family gather for the small service.

Despite a few to-be-expected technical issues — people not knowing how to mute or talking over each other — it was incredibly moving. I could see the faces of all the other online participants at once, noticing their collective grief more than I ever would have in person, a mournful mosaic. Towards the end, the funeral organizer asked if anyone joining remotely wanted to share a story. Everyone in attendance turned towards the laptop screen and the grief of the absent unexpectedly took the spotlight. Though I didn’t share, I felt more visible than I ever have attending a funeral, aside from when I delivered my father’s eulogy. It was unlike any service I’ve been to, in a good way.

COVID-19 has forced us to reassess everything in our lives these past few months, but especially our relationship to death and grief. It’s the great force hanging over this pandemic, the thing we fear, what we’re fighting to stave off, while it’s simultaneously thrust in our faces on a daily basis via news reports and press conferences. Though this proximity to loss is a new experience for those who have been luckily shielded from saying goodbye to a loved one, we can all use it to become better at handling grief beyond the pandemic. There have been a lot of calls for not returning to “normal” post-COVID, and the way we mourn deserves to be part of that change.

In part, because many of us aren’t great at dealing with death.When my father died from cancer when I was 29, barely anyone knew how to talk to me about it. (Though it comes from a good place, “I’m sorry for your loss” can start feeling impersonal after a while.) Three-and-a-half years later, I’ve gotten used to my sadness being awkwardly side-stepped or ignored.

There are a few who are willing to dive into the grief weeds with me, who ask questions about my dad and understand that, though the years pass and the pain changes, it never goes away. But many people act like even mentioning someone I love who has died is a faux pas, turning the individuals themselves into taboos. Though grief will always be a personal experience, it doesn’t need to be an isolated one. I’ve never met anyone who wants to be forgotten after they’re gone, so it’s no stretch to assume that the dead want their names in our mouths, shared times in our minds, and swells of feelings in our hearts.

Many of us aren’t great at dealing with death. When my father died from cancer when I was 29, barely anyone knew how to talk to me about it. Though it comes from a good place, ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ can start feeling impersonal after a while.

This loneliness we feelwhen faced with death can be exacerbated by the way we mourn. Although Christianity has been on the decline in the US, our society’s handling of grief has been largely shaped by that faith’s solitary and stoic traditions. For many, grief is seen as something best talked about behind closed doors, and if you’re lucky, in therapy. We’re told to “stay strong” and have been taught to treat mourning as a disease to cure ourselves of within a tidy time frame. After that, we’re mostly silent about our pain rather than reflecting on its shape-shifting, life-altering nature.

This was partially why the Zoom funeral felt so important. It reminded me that, though they’re held to honor the dead, funerals are mostly for the living, one of the few times we’re allowed to mourn openly. The virtual service drove home the importance of coming together even though physical distance felt more impassable than ever. There was also something surprisingly reassuring about attending a funeral at home, surrounded by familiar comforts, with the option of turning off the camera or stepping away from the screen if we needed a moment. It’s unique to be forced to grieve in this new way, so privately and publicly at once. It was something I didn’t realize I’d needed.

For years, I’ve been envious of people who participated in Mexico’s Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), the holiday that honors those who’ve passed, year after year, long after they’re gone. The celebration reminds me of a trip I took in 2015 to central Bali, just before the one-year anniversary of my uncle John’s death. My visit in the mountains coincided with a Hindu-Balinese cremation ceremony known as ngaben: It started with a long procession through the village for which people wore bright clothes adorned with tons of flowers, and it culminated in an outdoor cremation.

The closest I’ve come to that communal celebration of death was when I was nine years old and my family held a haphazard shiva after my zaida died. As per the Jewish week-long mourning tradition, we covered the mirrors in his Montreal apartment, and people dropped by to sit in uncomfortable chairs. But more importantly, I had a lot of time with my extended family during which zaida’s passing could settle in and move us through a spectrum of emotions, tears, and jokes, solidifying our relationships in the process. That’s the thing about mourning, when it’s shared openly, it brings people together.

Taking the time to let grief sink in feels natural in a pandemic when we’re alone with so much time on our hands.During quarantine, I got more recognition for my sadness than I have in the past, too. Maybe that’s because we were mourning all sorts of things — the normalcy of our lives, our lost connection to each other, the tenuous future. With our everyday fast-paced routines stopped in their tracks, it became painfully obvious how much we craved the contact we’ve taken for granted. Isolation also seemed to make many better at paying attention to what truly matters. On what would have been my father’s 66th birthday, my friend Catherine left me flowers on my doorstep. Another friend left me a voicemail playing one of my father’s favorite songs in its entirety, a gesture that made me laugh-cry like I never had before, and I felt closer to both of them for it.

It’s a cliché that death is the great unifier, but COVID-19 has given us the opportunity as a global population to reflect on what that means and empathize like never before. We can use our times of solitude — as we might have to go back into isolation periodically — to contemplate and appreciate the lives we get to live, while paying our quiet dedication to those who are gone. Allowing the loss to redefine us while also moving on is surprisingly healing, and that in the end is the greatest tribute we can give.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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This year, Rosh Hashanah is a time of mourning

By Elliot Kukla

Yesterday, the sun did not rise in my Bay Area home. My toddler who usually wakes at dawn, slept until 9am and woke up confused, pointing to a dark umber colored sky, obliterated by clouds of smoke from wildfires billowing all over the West Coast. Even the hummingbirds and bees in my backyard were disoriented.

This fall, we are not approaching an ordinary New Year. I will celebrate Rosh Hashanah in my living room, connected by video conference technology to my community, as California burns, hurricanes threaten the southeast, and the entire country faces a lethal virus. Everything is changing. We can no longer even depend on the sky to be blue.

We have all faced so much loss in the year that passed, but have we taken time to grieve?

Some of the losses of the past year have been obvious and clear: Precious people have died, countless homes and habitats have burnt down, and jobs have been lost. Other losses are more amorphous. We don’t know yet what we will get back of the world of 2019: Will our kids ever get to play freely again? Will we have predictable seasons in the future?

I am a rabbi who offers spiritual care for grieving and dying. I have learned from my clients that grief is essential; without naming the loss we are unable to draw together and comfort each other and we remain isolated in our suffering. There is a cavernous absence of public grieving for the momentous losses we all are facing in 2020.

Just consider the scale of resources given to grieving the 3,000 lives lost in 9/11, versus the 190,000 people (and counting) who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. Where are the large national memorial services, the plans for monuments, the presidential condolence visits? Much of this disparity is linked to who is dying (at least in the public imagination), and the prevailing belief that “only” old, sick, and disabled people die of COVID-19.

Mourning is humanizing, and its absence cracks open the door to atrocities.

My Jewish ancestors were snatched off the street by SS officers and buried in mass graves; my queer ancestors were denied funerals out of fear and bigotry as they died of AIDS. My disabled ancestors were warehoused in institutions, and often buried without names on their graves. My trans ancestors are left murdered in alleys, their cases growing cold, as I write this.

Despite this lack of official lamentation, they found ways to mourn and be mourned by each other. Grief has always been a way for disenfranchised people to claim our value.

After surviving the Holocaust in Belgium, my great-grandmother Rivka moved to England. Before she died, she took my father out to the coal heap behind their home: “Swear on this mountain,” she said to him, “that you will mourn for me.” To this day, I feel bound by this oath made by my nine-year-old father long before I was born, to grieve for this woman I never met, whose face looks so much like mine.

My friend, Stacey Park Milbern, died on May 19th, 2020, her 33rd birthday. She did not die from COVID-19, but from battling for care in the beleaguered medical system as a disabled activist and a person of color in an era of pandemic. I attended her funeral from my living room. I picked white geraniums and purple thyme from my garden and held my partner close. The internet was flooded with what Stacey taught us.

Disabled activist Alice Wong wrote an obituary on loving Stacey and the radical world of love and care she had built. Wong’s post was filled with Stacey’s own words on her legacy: “I do not know a lot about spirituality or what happens when we die, but my crip queer Korean life makes me believe that our earthly bodyminds is but a fraction, and not considering our ancestors is electing only to see a glimpse of who we are.”

Reading Stacey’s words and Wong’s tribute, I felt my own sense of self-love as a disabled person, restored by mourning for Stacey, at the same time as aching against the unfairness of it all.

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the new year, but it is also a time to say good-bye to the year that past. Our ancestors, like us, lived in times of chaos and change. Tears are a central High Holy Day theme. All the traditional Torah and Haftarah readings for Rosh HaShana speak of weeping.

The Shofar itself is a symbol of tears. Our sages teach that the ram’s horn we blow on Rosh Hashanah must be kakuf (bent) to reflect our own bodies bent over in grief; while shevarim (the broken blasts of the shofar) are meant to echo the sound of our own tears, they are always surrounded by tekiah (whole sounds). This teaches us that even though our heart has been broken it has the capacity to be whole again and, in fact, more complete for having encompassed brokenness.

Grief is transformative: When we name the immensity of loss, we also claim the depth of our capacity for love.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!