“This is not prison,” she said. “I know that. But, just a little bit, just occasionally, and if I’m feeling down, it does seem . . .”
She paused, sighed, and then added, “. . . like I’m stuck in jail.”
I remember making the call back in April 2020, wanting to see how she was getting along a month after her husband had died. He had been my hospice’s patient since the beginning of the year. From just after Christmas 2019 to nearly the start of spring, the husband (and father of three and grandfather to many more) had gone from taking walks with his family to bedbound. His wife of over sixty years, the woman I called for grief support, held his hand when he took his last breath.
And then she went to “jail.” The Covid-19 pandemic, in the final weeks of his life, dominated the news. If he had died a week later, she may not have been by his side.
“We were lucky,” she said, not sounding lucky.
A few years earlier, the elderly couple had moved into a “senior citizens’ joint” (her husband’s words). Their small apartment was adequate. The twice-a-day meals were nourishing. The facility staff was friendly.
Then, shelter-in-place.
Now, at time of my call, the food was brought to her. A knock on the door: “Dinner, ma’am.”
She waved through her window at other residents through their windows.
Several times a week, she beelined for a far corner of the sprawling property to claim a bench in a shady spot near one of the busy avenues serving as the boundary for the facility. One or more of her kids or grandkids would bring a lawn chair and camp six-feet away for a visit. It was as close to family as she could physically get. They would chat. Cry. They would tell family stories. They would sneak her favorite cookies to her . . . sneak because the facility had sent out those flyers and emails warning about “outside food.”
I suspect the woman I talked with will continue to claim she had been one of the lucky ones. She got to be with her husband until his death. Some did not.
She had a way, even if it felt like she was an inmate hiding from the guards, to occasionally visit with family. Some did not.
She had food delivered, daily check-in phone calls from staff, and if something broke down, one of the maintenance crew would show up. Some had no one.
In 2020, in the year that sounds like a hindsight, the pandemic impacted everyone. Everywhere. In so many different ways.
How we visited the dying. Or didn’t.
How we communicated with family and friends. Or didn’t.
How we took care of the “business” after death. Or didn’t.
How we grieved. Or didn’t.
How we healed. Or didn’t.
Under normal circumstances, grief can birth regrets. We regret not having a final conversation. We regret not seeking or giving forgiveness. We regret not spending enough time. We regret arriving too late. We regret ancient unresolved arguments or new scars caused by angry words.
I still worry about the ongoing regrets (and guilts and blaming) that may be experienced. It doesn’t matter that the cause of those negative reactions were beyond our control. Care facilities would not allow families to visit until the final days or hours (or minutes) of their loved one’s life. How many “last words” were spoken on a phone or with a tablet’s screen . . . or not at all?
In the first months of the pandemic, I read Gina Kolata’s Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (published in 2005). It’s a plunge into the 20th century’s first global pandemic, the so-called Spanish Flu. Surprisingly, the opportunistic disease, a killer of as many as fifty million people from every part of the world, became a forgotten part of that era. Kolata wrote, “But the flu was expunged from newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and society’s collective memory . . .” Was the cruel virus forgotten because it came during a World War and added to that conflict’s horrific death toll? Or because of being followed by the “Roaring Twenties?”
Was there a preference to party into today’s night rather than recall yesterday’s nightmare?
Historians will continue to ponder 1918’s “season” of illness, and the survivors’ selective, collective lack of memory.
How will historians view our pandemic?
I think of families without funerals, of delayed or derailed gatherings where no one had a chance to hear a favorite story about their beloved. I think of lovers and friends, children and parents, spouses and partners, that did suffer and do suffer because of regrets. I think of health care workers, those on the front line, those who are often weary, sometimes fearful, but still worked the next day to try to continue the healing. I think of an elderly woman, who sometimes feels like she was in jail, sitting on a bench in the shade, and longing for her family’s companionship.
Don’t forget this time. (Though, like 1918, I wonder if we will?)
Of how much you hurt.
Of knowing that many of the regrets you have were not your fault.
Even with tears, even with the excruciating pain of loss, remember your loved one’s love.
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My book, A Companion for the Hospice Journey, is available at Amazon.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
That was an awful year, our family was all together for for the last time a few weeks just before the shutdown. Bill’s heart doctor told him to stay away from people so we did. Never again though, we missed out on being with our family, church family and friends. Our church was shut down for three months and opened again in June of 2020. We started back to church in the spring of 2021, we had missed it so much! Maybe we should’ve listened to the doctor but we did what we thought was best. What got us through was our faith and our Sunday school class we did on Facebook live Every Sunday morning. I set my phone up on a stand I made and also had my computer on so I could see comments our class would made about the lesson. I would get up at the end and tell everyone hi and sometimes I had a plate of rolls or muffins on the table, most Sunday’s Bill would have around 12 in class that responded and eighty some people on line watching his class! It’s great being with our family again, do we have regrets? Yes we do, if there is a next time we will be with our family, life is too short. Good article Larry!