Month: March 2020

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Trump Didn’t Know People Could Die From the Flu.

His Grandfather Did.

President Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump, second from left, with his wife, Elizabeth Christ Trump; the president’s father, Fred Trump; and his siblings Elizabeth and John George Trump, in a photograph from the early 20th century.

What Frederick Trump’s death, in 1918, tells us about the costs of mismanaging a pandemic.

By Mary Pilon

In May 1918, a German immigrant businessman, husband and father of three in Queens took his last breaths. At the time, no one really knew why he was dying.

The 49-year-old man had projected an image of robust health. A few days earlier he had been strolling down the streets of Queens with his 12-year-old son. Suddenly, he slowed his gait and told his son that he felt sick. By most accounts, he went to bed and died within 48 hours, on May 30. Years later, that son would recall the eerie scene of a parade marching down Jamaica Avenue as his father was lying dead upstairs, his devastated mother, weeping.

The man’s name was Frederick Trump, and he was the grandfather of President Donald J. Trump.

His tragic and swift end, historians say, was part of the first wave of deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic that would ultimately kill 675,000 Americans and 50 million worldwide — some 2 percent of the world’s population at the time.

The coronavirus pandemic of today is markedly different from the 1918 flu pandemic. Yet, as the world, and the United States, continues to deal with the deadly coronavirus outbreak, the death of Frederick Trump is an overlooked example of what can happen in such a mismanaged crisis.

President Trump doesn’t talk about his grandfather’s death, and he is hardly the only descendant of a victim of the 1918 pandemic who seems to be unaware of that part of his family history. Until recently, at least, the world had largely forgotten the 1918 flu pandemic, even though it took more American lives than World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. There were few novels or films chronicling the experience then, and there have been few since. Most newspapers and radio stations were slow to report on it.

“It’s really weird,” said Nancy K. Bristow, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound and the author of “American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.” “There was a complete silencing of that narrative of trauma. It feels so tragic because people’s lives were torn apart by this.”

Among those people were the family of Frederick Trump, whose death came early in the “curve,” at a time when no one fully realized that they were in the midst of a pandemic. New York’s close living quarters, its location as a shipping center, and its position as a hub for soldiers during World War I made it an ideal cesspool for the flu’s spread, but many doctors dismissed the early cases, often thinking that they were routine ailments; it was an era when deadly disease was a more common part of life. And yet, looking back, Frederick Trump’s death was a signature of that pandemic, which not only hit both the young and the old, but also many people like him, seemingly in their prime, healthy middle years.

It hit his son Fred — Donald Trump’s father — especially hard. It was “so immediate, he couldn’t take it in,” said Gwenda Blair, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the author of “The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President.” Ms. Blair interviewed Fred Trump about his father’s passing in 1991. She was among the few biographers to have had access to the family and to have investigated their genealogical history. “He was very matter of fact about it,” she said.

“It just didn’t seem real,” Fred Trump told her. “‘I wasn’t that upset. You know how kids are. But I got upset watching my mother crying and being so sad. It was seeing her that made me feel bad, not my own feelings about what had happened.’” (Five days after Frederick Trump’s death, his brother in law, Fred Schuster, also died, likely of the flu as well, according to Ms. Blair.)

Frederick Trump’s life and death is critical to understanding the family’s American narrative. Ms. Blair and others have reported that because Frederick Trump failed to do mandatory military service in his native Bavaria before sailing for America, his immigration to the United States may have been legally murky. It’s a complex tale, but immigration records show his employment as “none” and that he became a U.S. citizen in 1892. But Bavarian authorities eventually revoked his citizenship.

In America, Trump earned his fortune operating restaurants and hotels in Seattle’s red light district during the Klondike gold rush, peddling booze and “private rooms” for women (common shorthand for prostitution at the time). He also purchased real estate in the John D. Rockefeller-backed mining town of Monte Cristo, Wash., and later in Queens, where he settled with his German wife, Elizabeth, and their three children. Like his son and grandson, he also engaged in questionable schemes to build his businesses, including staking a bogus mineral claim on property in Washington and building a hotel on property to which he had no legal right.

Frederick Trump was the only member of the family before his grandson to have been elected to public office, Ms. Blair notes: He was elected justice of the peace in Monte Cristo, 32 votes to five for his opponent. When anti-German sentiment swelled during World War II, the Trump family history switched from one rooted in Germany to one rooted in Sweden, a false claim that Donald Trump has repeated, including in his book “The Art of the Deal.”

By the time of his death, Frederick Trump’s various exploits had made him a relatively wealthy man, yet his loss, like the loss of many others in the pandemic, was devastating for his family. Still, they were relatively well-off; the money and real estate holdings that he left behind started the E. Trump & Son company, which would later fold into the Trump Organization.

The winter following Frederick Trump’s death, deaths from the flu pandemic exploded. Public health resources were already strained by World War I, so not much was done to combat it. “Little was done those first two thirds of the pandemic,” said James Harris, a lecturer at Ohio State University who studies medical history and pandemics. “There was the wartime context, pushback to social distancing, people moving around the globe on a massive scale.”

Since then, the world has benefited from better understanding the need for social distancing and quarantining, the rise of antibiotics and vaccinations, and improved hygiene. “An important lesson we can learn is to be proactive,” Professor Harris said.

In her numerous interviews with Donald Trump, Ms. Blair said, he “showed zero interest in history.” That included the story of his grandfather’s life and death, and the impact it had on his father and relatives at the time. “There was no rear view mirror,” she said.

Among his many comments on the ongoing coronavirus crisis, in Atlanta on March 6, Donald Trump, more than a century after his grandfather’s passing, commented on the current state of flu deaths, an estimated 36,000 annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Does anybody die from the flu?” the president said. “I didn’t know people died from the flu.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Grieving the Death of a Pet

Emotions are very real as pet owners come to terms with a difficult loss

By Chris Haws

At the pet loss support groups I conduct at the VCA Southpaws Veterinary Center in Fairfax, Va., I often hear from attendees that they encounter sentiments like this as they grieve a beloved animal companion: “He was only a dog, it’s not as if a real person died.” “You knew the day would come, cats don’t live forever.” “You can always get another pet — move on.”

Generally, such insensitive and unhelpful statements are made by people who have not known the unique, enriching and profound nature of the relationship we have with our pets.

“They just don’t get it,” said Jennifer, the grieving owner of a Miniature Schnauzer.

“And that’s their misfortune,” added Alice, her neighbor at the table and a former cat owner.

The Burden of Disenfranchised Grief

They were both right, and in more ways than you might at first imagine.

Numerous studies have shown that people enjoy a wide range of positive emotional benefits from their pets; the Comfort from Companion Animals Scale (CCAS) lists over a dozen, including companionship, pleasure, play, laughter, constancy, something to love, comfort, feeling loved, responsibility, feeling needed, trust, safety and exercise. Pet owners also tend to live longer than non-pet owners and report fewer visits to physicians, psychiatrists and therapists.

So why the disconnect when a person is grieving over the loss of a pet? Part of the answer lies in the fact that society at large doesn’t always cope very well with certain types of grief.  People aren’t sure what to say or how to behave. Death is never a comfortable topic, but when that death involves “socially delicate” circumstances such as suicide, drug overdose or any other loss that cannot be easily acknowledged, or publicly mourned, it can provoke what is described as “disenfranchised grief”.

And that’s what can occur when someone loses a pet.

Lizzy, the owner of Petra (a recently euthanized 13-year-old Boxer/Bloodhound mix), is a busy wife and mother who works full-time. Of her family, and her grief, she remarked: “They don’t want me to cry in front of them, and no one will talk about my pain.”

It’s a sentiment that is frequently expressed: “I can’t stop crying. My husband gets angry with me. I know he’s sad too, but he just won’t show it,” noted Alice, grieving the loss of the couple’s treasured cat.

And, of course, the additional, unwelcome experience of disenfranchisement only makes an already sad situation worse, as Jennifer observed: “Everybody has moved on like it was just yesterday’s news. I’m not expecting everybody to feel as I do, but to be so utterly deserted has been tough. I was literally told that I would just have to get over it. Just take twelve and a half years and move on … sure, I’ll get right on that.”

A Painful Loss After a Pet Is Gone

The point is that pet loss generates a degree of grief that can be every bit as acute as human loss. Some go even further. “These have been the worst days of my life. For me, this is worse than losing people,” wrote Karen, a grieving Pomeranian owner.

She is not alone. Many of the attendees at my pet loss support group sessions have expressed the same view. Grief from pet loss hurts. A lot.

Grief from pet loss is also an equal opportunity emotion. Our session attendees have included high ranking military officers, diplomats, corporate executives and professional artists. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. There are a lot of us pet owners around.

Sixty-seven percent of all U.S. households, or about 85 million families, own a pet. Some 73 % of those families own one or more dogs (89.7 million) and 49% own one or more cats (94.2 million).

And the sad — and significant — fact is that no pet lives forever. The mean age of death for dogs of all breeds is just over 11 years; curiously, the larger breeds die much younger than the small breeds, and scientists aren’t quite sure why. For house cats, the mean age at death is just over 15 years.

Pet ownership is almost certain to lead to loss, at some point in time. Most of us understand that reality, although we don’t like to dwell too much on it.

The relatively short lifespan of a pet also brings its own unique challenge. The relationship that we have with our animal companions is beyond special — a two-way dependency that is based on an unspoken agreement that we will care for each other with no questions asked. But at the end of a pet’s life, that understanding can be tested in a way that has yet to present itself in the realm of human mortality: euthanasia.

A large animal hospital such as VCA South Paws “puts down” over 20 animals a week, but only after extensive veterinary medical review and never without the full agreement and participation of the owner. Nevertheless, many of the attendees at the pet loss support sessions are still wracked with guilt about the decision they made to end their companion’s life. Might he have recovered? What else could have been done for her? Had they been too hasty?

If it’s any consolation, in every case I’ve encountered, not only had the time truly come to end the animal’s pain or suffering, but in many cases the creature seemed ready and willing to stop battling on as well.

“He was ready to go,” observed Sue, the owner of a Chocolate Labrador. “She was suffering and I needed to help my best friend,” remembers Lizzy, the Boxer/Bloodhound owner.“There was nothing more anyone could do” agreed John, the heartbroken owner of a fourteen-year-old Yorkie.

Grieving in a Safe Space

That unfamiliar blend of resignation, relief and heartache is a difficult one to process and it takes a while for people to reconcile all those internal conflicts. That’s where grief support groups can play an important role. It really helps someone who is bursting with questions and doubts, on top of their inevitable grief, to hear others express similar feelings and emotions.

As one newcomer to the group remarked: “I was astonished to hear her talk about the same feelings I have and the same behaviors I’m doing. Someone I’ve never met, not in my age group, probably with a completely different life than mine, doing the same things and feeling the exact same way as myself.”

Another fellow griever agreed: “I was surprised that my reaction is normal. It’s nice to speak to others that recognize those dark moments.”

As you might imagine, there is a lot of sympathetic nodding and wry smiles of recognition at these meetings. We also go through a lot of tissues. And that’s perfectly OK, too.

Like any grief counseling session, the participants are encouraged to talk openly about their feelings and express whatever emotion overwhelms them. Pet loss support groups are resolutely safe places … places where nobody is allowed to feel disenfranchised.

And there’s also a lot of laughter, as we hear about how Stan the cat defended his place on the family couch or how Petra the dog had a habit of herding the young children towards the meal table at supper time. These are precious memories, shared with people who understand.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why You Should Request an Extra Layer of Support When Living with a Serious Illness

By Andrew Esch, MD

Did you know that most large hospitals in the U.S. have a specialized medical team that uniquely cares for people living with serious illnesses? If you or a loved one has any type of cancer, heart or kidney disease, dementia/Alzheimer’s disease, or any other serious illness, you should know about this extra layer of medical support. It’s called palliative care and focuses on relieving symptoms and stress that so often come with these kinds of illnesses.

The goal of palliative care (pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv) is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.

Experts in Symptom Management, Care Coordination and More

Your palliative care team has expert training in managing symptoms and treatment side effects. Palliative care teams help patients and families in many ways, like avoiding unwanted and unnecessary trips to the hospital.

In addition, they will make sure you have the support you need to make informed decisions about your care. Having a serious illness often means having many doctors. Your palliative care team will make sure that you, your family, and your doctors are all on the same page. They will take the time to get to know you, help you plan goals for your treatment, and coordinate with your other doctors to match your treatment options to your goals.

Palliative Care is Available in Many Settings and Most Hospitals

As of 2019, more than 70% of hospitals (with 50 or more beds) in the U.S. have a palliative care team to help people living with a serious illness. And when people receive palliative care during hospital stays, they spend fewer days in the intensive care unit, have less pain, and are happier with the care that they receive. They may also be less likely to end up back in the hospital. Palliative care is also becoming more available outside of the hospital, in clinics and at home.

What This Means for You

If you or a family member are living with a serious illness, ask your doctor for a palliative care referral as early as possible. To find out which hospitals or clinics provide palliative care where you live, search this Palliative Care Provider Directory.

To learn more about palliative care, visit GetPalliativeCare.org, an online resource with clear, comprehensive palliative care information for people living with a serious illness. The site is provided by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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We’re used to grieving together.

What happens when we can’t?

Coffins accumulate in a tent at the Bergamo hospital in Lombardy, Italy, where funerals are now banned.

By Meghan O’Rourke

One recent night, as my concern mounted about the spreading coronavirus, my partner observed in reassurance: “It’s not like it’s the Spanish flu. People are still able to hold funerals.” On the very next day came the news that Italy had banned civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals — meaning people can no longer come together to grieve the dead. With coronavirus cases exponentially rising in the United States, this problem may soon be ours, too: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that families hold “virtual” funerals, streamed online, to limit the numbers in attendance.

Most of us have adjusted quickly, or tried to, amid the radical changes that constitute our new normal. But this possibility — that the newly bereaved may be unable to hold funerals — is a gutting reality we may never make peace with. Within it lies the trauma of the pandemic: This global public health crisis brings with it a surge of infection-driven death and chaos (temporary, we hope) that few of us have ever witnessed. There’s a lot we can numb ourselves to in order to survive. But I’m not sure we can numb ourselves to the idea that we can no longer come together for funeral rites — behavior that defines us as human.

Mourning rituals across cultures show that we need others to grieve with us. After my mother died in late 2008, I was struck by how these rituals, which had once seemed rote to me, suddenly became important. I craved social recognition that I was no longer myself, exactly, that the loss had made me a new person. The bereaved need witnesses to help them begin to separate themselves from the dead, to adjust to the sudden, shocking absence of their beloveds. Most cultures have a scripted set of customs: rituals tied to the preparation of the body; rules about the period before the burial. At an Irish wake, mourners gather to visit the body of the deceased, saying their goodbyes and often telling celebratory, even raucous stories in honor of the life now gone. In Jewish culture, mourners sit shiva typically for seven days, supporting those who were closest to the dead person. In many such rituals, visitors are meant to take their cue from the primary mourners — looking at the floor if the widow was somber, talking if she wanted to talk. In the Muslim tradition, the body is buried as soon as possible, but visits of comfort happen afterward (again, it is believed that social encounters help with grief), as well as a 40-day mourning period, in which the community is encouraged to send flowers and food to the bereaved. To support mourners, many traditions feature more than one ritual over the course of a year or two at specific times, including, in Judaism, the yahrzeit observance, commemorating the anniversary of a death. Everywhere, food is welcome and passed around: “a small, good thing,” as Raymond Carver put it in a short story about sharing fresh bread after an unthinkable loss.

The coronavirus pandemic is changing us in ways we can’t imagine yet. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, the dead exert power over us long after they are gone. All the more so when the circumstances of loss are traumatic, as they are now in northern Italy, where the hospital system is overwhelmed and near breaking — and as they may soon be in the United States. In “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” the historian Drew Gilpin Faust points out that the mass casualties in that war “transformed the American nation as well as the hundreds of thousands of individuals directly affected by loss.” Americans began referring to the “ordinary death” that existed before the war, distinct from the extraordinary deaths during it. Surrounded by death, Americans embraced ideas that made it seem less of an irrevocable loss: The first national Spiritualist conference was held in 1864 in Chicago, the idea that it was possible to communicate with the dead having grown more popular during the war years. Some modern funeral practices — embalming, for example — were born of an emotional need then: Families wanted to see the bodies of their loved ones, and embalming helped slow their decomposition, allowing them to be shipped home on slow trains.

Through mourning, we insist that erasure isn’t complete. We honor what was and give shape to the fact that — through our loss, our love — the person who is gone still exists in our minds. Our disposal of our dead distinguishes us from animals. As the scholar Robert Pogue Harrison writes in “The Dominion of the Dead,” “Humans bury not simply to achieve closure and effect a separation from the dead, but also and above all to humanize the ground on which they build their worlds and found their histories.” When we don’t do it, we have a sense of deep wrong. Think of the lengths to which we go to recover the bodies of fallen soldiers. In 1993, for example, the American ambassador to Somalia negotiated with clan leaders in Mogadishu to bring home the bodies of the helicopter crewmen and Special Ops soldiers who had been dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. In this current crisis, it’s not as if we won’t be burying our dead, but many people are dying alone in hospitals, unable to say goodbye to their loved ones, and even in the days after, an essential social element is missing. Something in us, at the core of our humanity, wants to elegize, to remember — and to do it together.

The science of mourning is hard to pin down, as one might expect with such a complex human process, but studies suggest that rituals do help the bereaved: They bring some immediate relief to acute grief, and they establish formal avenues of coping and social support. Holding a funeral, saying goodbye to a loved one’s body, marks the rift between life and death, the rending of the universe we feel. To bury, Harrison writes, is not literally or merely to put in the earth (humans also have cremation, and sky burial, and more), but “in a broader sense it means to store, preserve, and put the past on hold.”

So what happens to us now, in a moment that presents these challenges? As during the Civil War, we face a bright line between the ordinary past and the extraordinary present, a before and a now whose full ramifications — emotional, economic, psychological and national — we cannot begin to understand. We hardly know what now is; we won’t until the worst is over. Along the way, we will surely find alternate ways to grieve, watching our funerals on the blue light of our screens, distant but not isolated, trying to be together while apart. The challenge is to find meaning in the chaos — to find a story we can hold onto, even in the stark absence of a reassuring ending to this pandemic in sight.

The coronavirus pandemic will be understood by its cost in lives, but also by its economic, social and cultural costs, by how it forces us to reconceive ourselves and our humanity. This is yet another reason to push to “flatten the curve,” as epidemiologists put it: so we are not forced into such isolation that most of us are unable to mourn together.

My father died suddenly in a hospital two years ago, on March 9, from a case of pneumonia that turned into sepsis and caused further complications. The two weeks when his body was fighting sepsis were disorienting, timeless, traumatic, full of beeping machines and sunless rooms. His sudden turn for the worse came while he was with strangers; we never said goodbye. But his doctor was kind enough to let us go into the operating room where a team had tried to save his life: restarting his heart, ventilating him and more. When we saw his body, it looked small and alone, heartbreakingly so. But at least I have an image to hold on to, had a chance to touch his hand and whisper our love, the love that underpins grief and drives the living to mourn, through ritual and memory, the gulf between us and those who have gone. We know what is by marking the shape of what is lost; we do that by saying goodbye, together.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Offering Sympathy From a Distance in the Time of Coronavirus

When a friend is grieving a loss, here are ways to provide support

By Margie Zable Fisher

When my good friend, Nikki, told me a few days ago that her father had just passed away from natural causes, my first reaction was to offer sympathy. Then I asked, “What are the funeral arrangements?”

Her answer: “I’m not sure. We will have a memorial service, but we don’t know when. This pandemic is kind of getting in the way.”

Well, yes, it is.

Nikki and I are part of a group of friends who met playing tennis over 20 years ago. We’ve celebrated and helped each other over the years, through marriages, births, divorces and deaths.

But after Nikki’s response, I was stumped. How was I going to support her through the grieving process, when there was no memorial and when we were all supposed to be practicing “social distancing?” I reached out to experts to get some ideas.

The New Rules of Gathering

David Kessler, a Los Angeles-based authority on grief and founder of Grief.com, is in a similar situation. Someone he knows recently died. “This is a strange new world of grief,” he says. “If we can’t gather for a funeral, mourning gets very complicated.”

In the blink of an eye, the world’s burial rituals — which have traditionally helped people through the grieving process — have changed. Italy has banned traditional funeral services. Countries around the world (including the U.S.) have suggested limits on the amount of people attending services.

People over 60 may have the toughest time attending funerals of family members or friends. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that those at a serious risk of COVID-19 avoid gatherings of 10 or more, and older people are at highest risk. Some funeral directors, including Virginia Kerr Zoller, co-owner of Kerr Brothers Funeral Homes in Lexington, Ky., are already suggesting that people’s older relatives stay home, according to a recent article in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

James Olson, funeral director of Olson Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Sheboygan, Wis., and a spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association, notes that Wisconsin’s governor declared that no gathering be larger than 10 people. This seems to be the most common suggestion around the country. But, as Olson notes, this could change daily or even hourly.

Matt Levinson, president of Sol Levinson and Bros. Funeral Home, serving the Jewish community in Baltimore, says they are still conducting burials quickly (as commanded by Jewish law), but are recommending that only the immediate family of 10 people or less attend. The funeral home is also offering the option to conduct the memorial service at a later date.

Levinson and his team are offering comfort the best way they can during this time — by alleviating some of the worry of gathering.

“Funeral arrangements are made over the phone, chairs are continually sanitized and spaced farther apart at the cemetery, and gloves are used for people who want to use a shovel to place earth in the grave,” he says.

Levinson also notes that he is working hard to keep his staff healthy. He has them working in shifts, not only to protect them from infection, but also to give them time off to handle the daily demands of this crisis.

One thing that hasn’t changed: informing friends and family about a recent death through phone calls, texts, newspaper obituaries and in Facebook posts. What’s missing are funeral arrangements, and details about gatherings such as shivas, where, in the Jewish tradition, loved ones and friends get together at a home for a week after the burial to support the family of the deceased.

Phone Calls Are Important

So if we can’t mourn together in person, how do we offer comfort?

“We aren’t able to hug, and physically connect, so we need to rely on using our words,” says Kendall Kridner-Protzmann, a pastor of congregational care at St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, Colo.

Kridner-Protzmann suggests calling mourners frequently. “Reach out through phone calls, and leave a message if necessary. Even just saying ‘This is really hard,’ is very healing.”

“When you can’t be physically present with a grieving loved one, you can still offer your emotional presence,” says Kelila Johnson, founder of Communing with Grief in Seattle. “There is solace in sitting quietly with someone, even if it’s over the phone or a video call. Often what grievers need most is to know that they don’t have to speak but that they are safe to speak, if they wish.”

Kessler suggests that in the first week after someone has passed, check in with loved ones multiple times. “If the person is in tears for an hour, you probably need to call daily,” he says. “If the mourner says that things are okay, you can probably check back in a couple of days.” He also strongly recommends calling instead of texting, and using FaceTime or Skype, to create a visual connection.

Technology Can Help

When you can’t gather in person, technology offers opportunities to comfort:

  • As mentioned, video calls are a great way to deepen your connection beyond audio.
  • Live streaming, which has been available for long-distance loved ones to view funeral services for many years, is now a necessity.
  • Social media is also helpful. “I’m usually not a big fan of Facebook,” says my friend Nikki. “My sister suggested we announce my dad’s passing on it, and I was floored by the comments we received.” Not only did Nikki receive hundreds of condolences, but she also heard from people from her childhood who shared stories about her father. “It was the greatest thing to hear from so many people. It really made me feel better,” she says.

Other Ways to Show You Care — In Person

I also learned four creative ways to get out and about to support those who are grieving.

Visit the grave. Just because you weren’t able to go to the burial, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go to the cemetery. “Any time after the burial, and while cemeteries are still open, you can go to the gravesite on your own, or at a distance from others, and pay your respects,” says Olson. Letting loved ones know you did this can offer comfort.

Bring food. “When you go food shopping, buy a bag of fruit for your friend, and drop it off,” says Kessler. “You don’t even need to go in the house.” Does your friend have a favorite restaurant? Order takeout, and deliver it.

Walk together — at a distance. Exercise is important to our mental and physical help at any time, but especially when grieving. “If you live nearby, offer to go for a walk with your friend,” suggests Dave Wyner, psychotherapist and certified grief counseling specialist in Louisville, Colo. “Make sure to follow health experts’ advice on keeping your distance. It might feel a little weird to walk that far apart from each other, but it can still feel incredibly supportive to the person grieving. It really comes down to helping them know they’re not alone with their pain.”

Volunteer. Obituaries often list charities you can donate to in someone’s honor. “Why not volunteer for that charity, by helping them out in person?” suggests Olson. He gives an example of The Humane Society. Instead of donating money (or in addition to it), you could offer to walk dogs, in the name of the deceased, he says. This is needed all the time, but now, it may be especially helpful.

How I’m Helping My Friend

Now that I’ve learned how to provide solace and love to those grieving during the pandemic, I’m planning to reach out to Nikki more often by phone. I will give her space to talk and I will listen.

I’m also going to offer to take a walk or a bike ride together (at a distance, of course). And I’m going to ask her what type of meal she and her family would like me to deliver.

The bottom line: We’re all struggling during this health crisis, but people mourning the deaths of their loved ones really need our support. While you may not be able to offer comfort through traditional grieving rituals, I hope these suggestions can help in a time when it is so needed.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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She discovered a lost graveyard and a mystery she longs to solve:

Who is buried there?

A footstone lies in a secluded section of the woods west of downtown Harpers Ferry, W.Va. Amateur historical researcher Bonnie Zampino says she believes the site is a forgotten Civil War-era cemetery.

The neglected plot of land in the woods of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., may hold remains dating to the Civil War era

By Peter Jamison

It was last summer that Bonnie Zampino first noticed something unusual about the wooded plot of land in the hills above this historical town.

Zampino, a case manager for recovering drug users who lives in the neighboring community of Bolivar, was used to encountering curiosities from the past on her hikes through Harpers Ferry, a town where history has left its imprint several times over. The village overlooking the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers is most famous for the failed anti-slavery raid led by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. It was also the site of a Civil War battle and hosted large contingents of Union and Confederate troops.

Zampino, 50, had made a hobby of her interest in abandoned rural properties, taking photographs and researching old land records. But the lonely section of woods to the west of Harpers Ferry’s historical downtown and national park were unlike anything she’d seen before. Thin, jagged slabs of stone stuck up in rows. There were bathtub-size depressions in the ground — what Zampino would later learn can be a sign of settling graves. A small, white footstone sat unsteadily in the earth, like a loose tooth.

She set out to learn more about the town-owned property. Records were scarce, but after months of archival sleuthing, Zampino developed a theory that this section of woods is a forgotten remnant of some of the nation’s darkest and bloodiest days. She thinks she has discovered a lost graveyard of Union dead.

Her hypothesis, at this point, is only that. Even if soldiers’ remains are buried at the site, the number of bodies is uncertain. Zampino’s detective work has been complicated by confusing and sometimes contradictory records from the years immediately after the Civil War, a time when many of the corpses left behind by America’s deadliest conflict were disinterred and — at least in the case of federal troops — moved to special resting places.

But Zampino has uncovered compelling documentary support for further investigation, including National Park Service and military records — some dating back 150 years — that point to a soldiers’ cemetery at the location in question and suggest it fell into neglect not long after the war ended.

“Whoever’s here, I’d like to know,” she said, standing at the site in Harpers Ferry on a recent afternoon. A narrow lane of cracked pavement runs through what Zampino believes to be the old cemetery. The ground was covered in matted leaves and fallen branches. “This shouldn’t look like this,” she said.

The roots of the mystery Zampino has been trying to solve lie in a largely forgotten epilogue to the Civil War. The American military has long prided itself on the faithfulness with which it recovers the remains of those who die in conflict. After the war’s end in 1865, that endeavor took place on a huge scale, with federal officials fanning out to battlefields to retrieve the bodies of soldiers, sometimes in advanced states of decomposition. Those remains were reburied in new national cemeteries.

The job, while harrowing, was deemed essential by the government and welcomed by relatives of the fallen.

“Words fail to describe the grateful relief that this work has brought to many a sorrowing household,” wrote David Wills, a lawyer who led the effort to create the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

John Frye, a local historian and curator of the Western Maryland Room at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, Md., said it was unlikely that the federal government could have overlooked a sizable number of bodies in Harpers Ferry during its retrieval efforts. Zampino said she believes anywhere from dozens to several hundred soldiers may have been interred at the site based on records she has reviewed.

“I can’t imagine the United States of America letting 300-some graves of Union soldiers go unmarked,” Frye said in an interview.

Zampino has gotten used to skepticism — or plain confusion: At the outset of her research project last year, most people seemed unaware that bodies had ever been buried at the site she discovered. “The more I couldn’t get information, the more I was like, ‘Man, I want to figure this out,’” she recalled.

She eventually discovered a 1959 National Park Service report that identified the plot as Pine Grove Cemetery, established in or around 1852. The report stated that “the cemetery was used as a burial ground during the Civil War.”

At the National Archives, Zampino discovered letters between military officials from 1866 to 1869 that discuss a “Citizens Cemetery” — separate from the other known cemeteries in Harpers Ferry — that she believes to be Pine Grove. An 1866 quartermaster general’s report says the cemetery “contains a number of soldiers graves, said to be not less than 75” that are “not distinguishable from citizens graves.”

Some of the stones Zampino says she believes were part of a wall surrounding the now-forgotten Pine Grove Cemetery in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

Even then, however, confusion reigned over what the graveyard held.

In 1867, a military officer, responding to a request that the cemetery walls be rebuilt to protect the commingled grave plots of soldiers and civilians, replied that “all the bodies of U.S. soldiers interred at Harpers Ferry” had already been moved to Winchester National Cemetery in Virginia. Military records of the war dead from the time state that hundreds of soldiers’ bodies were moved from Harpers Ferry to Winchester between 1866 and 1867, but they are vague about what cemetery they came from. Zampino said they might have come from the more famous and centrally located Harper Cemetery.

At this point, Zampino said, the only way to resolve the questions raised by the documents is to conduct a physical examination of the site for graves and human remains. To that end, she is hoping to work with the Harpers Ferry Historic Landmarks Commission to apply for a grant that would fund ground-penetrating radar.

“I think it’s worth pursuing,” said Deborah McGee, the commission’s chairwoman.

If such research confirms the presence of soldiers’ remains, the National Cemetery Administration said, it “stands ready to provide government-furnished markers and/or grave space in a national cemetery.”

Whatever the outcome, Zampino said, she believes that after a century and a half, it’s time to solve the mystery of who rests in Pine Grove cemetery.

“There are people here,” she said. “And nobody knows who they are.”

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The State of the Medical Aid-in-Dying Debate

Diane Rehm updates us in her new book, ‘When My Time Comes’

Diane Rehm spoke during her book kickoff event Feb. 3, 2020, at the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington D.C.

By Richard Harris

Maybe, just maybe, America’s greatest taboo — talking openly about death — is itself dying a slow death. Too slow, if you ask Diane Rehm, author of the new nonfiction book, When My Time Comes.

“Until we overcome our fear about talking about death,” the longtime NPR host says, “few of us can have the end of life we envision. We’ve been so focused on living and accomplishing and moving forward that we don’t think about death as part of life.”

For 37 years, Rehm’s morning talk show — first on Washington, D.C.’s public radio station WAMU, then on NPR — allowed her to focus on living, accomplishing and moving forward. But that changed as she witnessed her husband of 54 years, John, decline to the point where he pleaded with his doctor to prescribe him a medication to end his life. And without a medical aid-in-dying law in Maryland, his doctor refused.

So, John Rehm, wracked by Parkinson’s disease, with a severely diminished quality of life, decided to starve himself to death. No water. No food. No medication. It would take him 10 days to die.

And that began Diane Rehm’s journey into advocacy. After signing off her talk show in 2016, she has immersed herself in the world of the terminally ill and studying the limited options available to those for whom palliative care (focused on relieving pain and symptoms) is not the solution to their end-of-life misery.

“We focus so much on happiness and joy surrounding birth, but we think about death as this place no one wants to go — but we’re all going there. Everybody is,” says Rehm in her office at WAMU, where she hosts the podcast “On My Mind.” A February 2019 episode discussed end-of-life issues and why so many people’s end-of-life wishes are not realized.

Discussing Aid in Dying

For several years, Rehm, 83, has crisscrossed the country, speaking to the terminally ill and their families, as well as advocates and opponents of medical aid in dying. She also talked to ethicists and physicians on both sides of the issue. It’s all part of an emerging national conversation about the right to die that Rehm has captured in her new book.

A companion public TV documentary of the same name as her book to be presented by WETA in Washington, D.C., is due out in the spring of 2021, and is being shown at festivals. See the trailer here.

During a speaking engagement in a church in Falmouth, Mass., Rehm asked audience members to raise their hands if, “you are one of those people who is not going to die.” Not a hand went up, of course, and it provoked a lot of nervous laughter.

Some of the crowd had gathered at that church for a “death café,” part of a movement that began in Europe in 2004 in which people of all ages talk candidly about dying, their fears and hopes for the end of life. It’s a sign that America’s reluctance to bring death out of the shadows may be fading.

The medical aid-in-dying movement for the terminally ill — some call it death with dignity —began in Oregon in 1994. It took another 14 years for Washington state to pass its law. “But since then, Montana (2009 State Supreme Court ruling), Vermont, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, New Jersey and Maine have followed suit.

Each jurisdiction allows a patient who has no more than six months to live (certified by two physicians) to request a lethal dose of medication as long as that person has the capacity to decide and can self-administer.

Changing Minds on Medical Aid in Dying

More than a dozen other states are considering such a law, including Maryland, where Rehm testified last year in support of medical aid in dying. The bill lost by a single vote in the state Senate. But supporters, including the bill’s sponsor, the Maryland House of Delegates’ Shane Pendergrass, are optimistic that the End of Life Option Act will pass this year.

“Everyone is one bad death away from supporting the bill,” Pendergrass, a Democrat from Howard County, said during a news conference in January 2019.

Case in point: Maryland Del. Eric Luedtke, a Democrat from Maryland’s Montgomery County, who originally opposed the legislation. “The two biggest things that gave me pause were the concern about normalizing suicide (three of his family members had attempted suicide) and that some folks in the disabilities community believed aid in dying could be abused,” he told Rehm, who included his comments in her book.

Then, Luedtke’s mother, stricken with esophageal cancer, was in extreme pain — even with palliative care. A few days before she died, “she got the bottle of liquid morphine she had been prescribed, tried to drink it, tried to commit suicide,” he said.

A few months after his mother died, Luedtke signed on to the bill. “I began to question whether I had the right as an elected official, or even as her next of kin, to make that decision (of whether she could use a lethal prescription),” he said. “I think her death would have been less painful and there would have been more closure, had that option been available to her.”

Joe Fab, producer and director of Rehm’s documentary, became interested in end-of-life issues after his sister and both his parents died within four years. “We are just too frozen up in this country, talking about death,” he says.

The Core Conflict

Dr. Lonnie Shavelson, a former emergency room doctor who founded Bay Area End of Life Options in Calfornia, distilled the complex debate surrounding medical aid in dying, to a phrase, included in Rehm’s book: “You’ve got the ethic of autonomy against the ethic of maintaining life.”

The American Medical Association sides with maintaining life, opposing what it still calls “physician-assisted suicide” because the group says it’s “incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer.”

The question that remains unsettled in the context of the physician’s Hippocratic Oath is whether a doctor does more harm than good in writing a lethal prescription for a suffering, terminally ill patient.

The Catholic Church and other religious groups have not given their blessing to medical aid in dying. Diane Rehm is quick to say she respects all opposing views, but remains steadfast in her support for the terminally ill individual choosing when his or her life should end.

The public likely associates two people — Jack Kevorkian and Brittany Maynard — with medical aid in dying more than anyone else. Kevorkian, the controversial pathologist who assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill patients in the 1990s and was sent to prison, kicked off the national debate over the right to die.

But it was Maynard who put a new, young face on the right-to-die movement and perhaps did more than anyone in accelerating the growth of laws. Given six months to live with a brain tumor, Maynard moved to Oregon to take advantage of that state’s death-with-dignity law. Before she died on Nov. 1, 2014 at 29, her videos promoting medical aid in dying went viral.

Rehm’s Take on the Subject

At the conclusion of Rehm’s book and documentary, she asks her grandson, Benjamin Zide, a Dartmouth sophomore studying medical ethics, to pick up his phone and take a video of her as she described what would be for her a “good death.” Here’s what she says:

“I came across a perfect paragraph that Anne Morrow Lindbergh left behind. She wrote, ‘To my family, my physician and my hospital: If there is no reasonable expectation of my recovery from mental or physical disability, I request I be allowed to die and not be kept alive by artificial means and heroic measures. I ask that medication be mercifully administered to me for terminal suffering, even if it hastens the moment of my death. I hope that you who care for me will feel morally bound to act in accordance with this urgent request.’”

Last night, as Rehm kicked off her book tour at Washington, D.C.’s Sixth & I synagogue, she recounted her mother’s suffering before dying at age 49 and how John Rehm’s father and mother committed suicide. So, the subject of death was part of the conversation at their dinner table, even before John was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Diane Rehm says she told her husband, “When my time comes, I need some help from you. I don’t want to live to the point where I’m sick and infirm and cannot take care of myself.” And, she says, “John looked at me and said, ‘I feel the same way.’”

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