A COVID Theft
On November 7 the New Haven County Bar Association will conduct an annual memorial service honoring members of our legal community who have passed away over the last year. It is always a meaningful event. A reminder to attend brought back memories of the worst of the pandemic.
When we’re young, we can’t understand death or the grieving process that’s necessary to cope with death. That is a lesson that’s taught and can only be learned through experience.
I lived in a rural town in Colombia while in the Peace Corps just after college. A young girl drowned in a river. Her body wasn’t found for days. The entire town was overwhelmed. And when it was found everyone attended the burial. It was moving. The grief was palpable. I was the outsider, but I saw how the process drew the community together by the sharing of their sorrow. I learned a lot from that experience.
Later, I lost my dad. I was an adult, but it was a new experience. There hadn’t been a death in my extended family for a long, long time. This was the experience that really taught me about the value of the grieving process.
Each of us needs and deserves to believe that our life has been meaningful. And our families and those close to us deserve to know that as well. We never acknowledge that to each other as we go about our daily affairs, attending to, like the citizens of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, apparently insignificant, mundane interactions. So then, the wakes, the Shivas, and the funerals give us the opportunity to make up for those many times we’ve taken each other for granted, for when we’ve been too busy to offer a hand and to express an appreciation. It’s too late for the deceased but we have a need to and can do it to those close. We feel better for doing so. We have paid our respects. And the grieving appreciate the respect we’ve given.
So, when my dad died, I stood next to my Mom in the receiving line. I have a vivid recollection of the first selectman coming through the line. He didn’t know my Dad, nor, really, my Mom and her family. It was a political “courtesy”. And I knew it was. But at that time, courtesy or not, I recognized that he had taken the time to pay his respect to my parents and our family. It was meaningful. He had taken the time to show respect.
That is when I learned the importance of that gesture. And, also, when I finally understood that those are the gestures that form our communities and tie them together. And those gestures are most meaningful and most important when the loss is recent.
And so, when Covid stole from us the grieving process, when it required us to delay it to a time when the scars are smaller and the losses are less poignant, it wounded our communities and prevented us from coming together to show respect and sharing our grief and affection.
That is a theft that hurts us all.
