38 Time November 30/December 7, 2020
So I postponed one trip, then the
next. Surely, I kept thinking, enough
people would do the right thing—stay
home if they could, wear masks when
they couldn’t—and we’d all get a re-
prieve. Instead, state after state began
to reopen, even as the virus kept raging.
Soon after attending my mom’s funeral
via livestream, I would see ads welcom-
ing tourists back to Disney World in a
state where infections were surging.
My mother was cared for by her sis-
ter and sister-in-law, assisted at night by
hired aides. I did my best to handle her
finances, help manage home health care,
send flowers and letters and gifts. When
I called, I knew I was burdening her care-
givers with still more tasks: giving me
updates, seeing whether my mom could
speak with me, bringing her the phone or
tablet. I could not stop calling, worrying
or apologizing to everyone.
One day, her hospice nurse called
me with news that seemed too good
to be true. “She had a great day! She’s
such a fighter—she has a real chance at
more quality time.” My mother called usThis year on my moTher’s birThday, in ocTober, i woke
up from one of many dreams I’ve had about her since her death.
I’d been sitting with family and friends in my grandmother’s
backyard, our lawn chairs scattered across a carpet of sun-
dappled grass. We were all talking, sharing memories of my
mom. I don’t remember the specific stories, but I know there
was joy, more laughter than tears—even though, in my dream,
my mom was also gone.
Like so many grieving families in 2020, we haven’t beenable to gather or mourn together. My mother died of cancer
in May, and my husband, kids and I had to watch the small fu-
neral service via livestream from across the country. Until the
day before, I wasn’t sure we would be able to do even that—two
months into the pandemic, the funeral-home representative
told me they had never set up a livestream before. My mom’s
priest had privacy concerns about filming, and said it was al-
ready difficult to choose who among my mother’s many church
friends could attend. An additional person filming would, he
said, “take a place that could have gone to another mourner.”
When I heard this, I caught my breath and let the silencestretch. I didn’t want to get angry. I didn’t have the energy. My
mom loved her church community, who had been her family
too—no doubt one reason she stayed at home instead of com-
ing to live with me when I asked—and I was grateful to them
for being there for her when I wasn’t, doing what I couldn’t. But
I was her only child.
“You have four spots you wouldn’t if my husband, my kidsand I were able to be there,” I pointed out. “Can’t you just think
of the person filming as taking my place?”
There was a pause. “Of course,” he said. “You’re absolutelyright. I’m sure we can work something out.”
The lasT Time I saw my mother in person was in late January,
when my 12-year-old and I flew out to visit her. We had seen
her just a month earlier at Christmas, and I had also planned
trips for March and April.
But by mid-March, visiting felt impossible, especially trav-eling 3,000 miles from my high-infection area to my mother’s
small town, where there were almost no cases. Mask wearing
was becoming more common but was far from universal. To
even attempt the trip responsibly would mean two weeks of
quarantine at either end, in addition to however long I spent
with my mom. Our home life just wasn’t set up for one of us to
parent alone for weeks or months, particularly while working
remotely and dealing with anxious kids and distance learning.
And what if I carried the virus to my mom? What if I passed
it to her caregivers, her hospice nurse? What if I gave it to my
husband or kids, or someone far more vulnerable whose name
I would never know, whose illness and death I would never be
aware of causing?
Grieving my mother’s
death without the
reassurance of rituals
By Nicole Chung
TheView Essay