The mourning breaks

In yesterday's post I mentioned mass graves and backed up funeral homes. I have only heard of mass graves in New York. The backed up funeral home (and crematoria) stories have also been from New York, but if I heard of it happening in Seattle or the Bay Area, I would believe it. They have higher populations, and have been harder hit.

Things would have to to get much worse for that to be an issue in Oregon, even in Washington County (where I live, and where Oregon has the most cases.)

But no one is having traditional funerals anymore. You can't gather more than ten people, churches are closed, and it's just not happening until self-isolating is no longer necessary.

Previously, funerals have been our most controversial issue.

I have four living siblings. Two of them are very opposed to a funeral. They do not give this as their reason, but I believe that they do not want to deal with their emotions publicly, or at all. Another sibling would really want the condolences, I am sure, but the fourth probably would not.

I have thought about how we could work it out. Sit together, then "You three slip out the side door," with a car waiting, and then I wait with the other one to deal with people.

Without having any idea on how long COVID-19 or our mother's life will last, it might not be an issue. But realistically, we may not have a choice.

I could be fine with this, but I worry about a few different things. At first my worry was that it would seem disrespectful to my mother if we did not celebrate her life. Even more than that, I worried about closure, that maybe not going through the rituals of grief would leave my family with all of these unprocessed emotions and things would come out in other, more destructive ways. Or maybe it wouldn't come out, and eat them up inside.

When I have dealt with deaths in the past, I have seen in our conversations that there is this process of coming to terms with them being gone. It often surfaces as questions about details, but really it seems to be about working toward acceptance of the loss. A funeral, having communal and ritual aspects, could be really important for that.

As I have thought about this, I have realized that I could not set myself up for a more spectacular failure than making my goal emotionally healthy and adjusted Harris siblings. Seriously.

Beyond our family, I am sure there is going to be a toll taken by people not gathering to grieve and say goodbye to our dead. It feels like it could stall acceptance, and maybe leave more guilt. On the other hand, there are already so many difficult emotions floating around - with isolation and feelings of powerlessness and dread - that the one specific issue of not having traditional funerals may not be something you can look at separately.


I have figured out some things. I can recover from this, but I don't think I can recover if when Mom dies, it happens through any neglect on my part. That initially meant being careful with medications and being alert to symptom changes. Now it it has the added aspect that no matter how good it can be in some ways for her to go sooner, I do not want that virus in this house. So it means more care about where we go, and how much hand washing we do. I try. I still touch my face too much.

I may not be able to recover if she dies after one of those nights when she is threatening to call the police to get to the bottom of why we are making her stay here, and keeping her away from her children, and why we never told her we were her children before. I can't control that, but it is a reason to keep from saying anything hateful. I have to try to stay gentle, no matter how firm I need to be.

I guess, ultimately, the best way to ease death comes from what we do in life. You will probably know people who die from this; is there anything you want to say now? Is there anything you want to change?

I was working on a ghost story once where the things you always wanted to say most were "I love you", "I miss you", and "I'm sorry". Generally, the ghosts already knew, too, but it still felt important to say.

It may also be important to tell someone off, and then to forgive them, or to forgive them without talking to them, or just to make peace with knowing that they won't make up for it. That's okay too.

Peace doesn't always have to wait for the grave.