39
years ago. I know that she was cared
for at the end by people who loved her.
And she and I did have a chance to say
goodbye—the last time I saw her in per-
son, I asked her forgiveness, told her I
loved her and was lucky to be her daugh-
ter. I kept saying those same things, over
and over, on all the calls we had before
she died. I’ll always wish I could have
been there, or that she’d been here, but
I’m not holding on to anything I wish I’d
told her—in the end, there was nothing
broken or left unsaid between us.
What so many of us who’ve lost fam-
ily members and close friends during
the pandemic are facing is not grief or
trauma deferred. It’s not a lack of emo-
tion at all, but a swelling tide of it, un-
checked by the reassurance, the scant
but real comfort, that can and does often
accompany the rituals we are usually
able to participate in when a
loved one dies. These rituals
can still leave us feeling in-
complete, but they can also
act as signposts, guiding us
from one phase of mourning
to another. When my father
died, being at his funeral,
seeing his casket lowered
into the ground, crying with
my mother were all things
that helped me to acknowl-
edge and feel the loss, to
begin to process and live with it.
I never imagined I would lose my
mother without those familiar touch-
stones. I watched her funeral from my
living-room couch, squished between
my husband and children, the same
couch where we’d all crowded for our
last call with her. There was no gathering
or reception after, no hugs and fellow-
ship with our family and friends, no sto-
ries exchanged in anyone’s yard. When
the live feed cut out, I retrieved a vase of
garden-grown snapdragons that a kind
neighbor had left at our door, and then
we ate the lunch my husband had pre-
pared. My 12-year-old and I took a quiet
walk together. I didn’t see or talk to any-
one outside my household.
The rest of the day proceeded like any
other, like most days have since: I do my
job, I help my 9-year-old with school, I
wear my mother’s rings and take long
walks and try to keep alive all the plants I
received as sympathy gifts. Our kids havebeen asking for a dog for a while, and
2020 felt like the year to say yes (“We
need a win,” I told a friend), so now we
have a new, chaotic but adorable family
member to focus on. “I think Grandma
knows we’re getting a dog and is excited
for us,” one of my kids announced after
we made the decision. “I just think that
somehow, she still knows about the big,
important things.” I told her that made
sense to me, and amid the sadness and
grief, I felt glad that we all still talk about
my mom often.
For so many of us now, the personal
traumas of this pandemic are constantly
compounding as the crisis stretches on,
as we remain cut off from some of our
loved ones far longer than we once imag-
ined possible. These losses will represent
still more detritus for us to grapple with—
individually, within our families and
communities, and as a nation—
in safer, hopefully healthier
days ahead. But that doesn’t
mean we can’t feel and find
ways to honor our grief now.
On my mother’s birthday,
I wrote her a letter, looked
through family photos, bought
a nice meal to eat with my hus-
band and children—nothing
fancy, nothing my mom had
ever made for me, just some-
thing I knew she would have
enjoyed. I couldn’t visit her grave, with
the headstone I chose to match my dad’s,
but I sent flowers to a relative who agreed
to place them there for me. I ordered
from the same florist who had designed
my mother’s memorial flowers, and they
promised to use the same colors. The two
arrangements were made in different sea-
sons, with different flowers in bloom, so
of course they could not be exactly the
same. Nor can a livestreamed funeral
provide exactly the same experience, the
same companionship or comfort, as one
attended in person. But neither the dev-
astating loss nor the depth of gratitude
I feel because I had such a parent can be
undermined by the unforeseen, by pan-
demic or by distance. She’ll always be my
mom, and I’ll always miss her, and in that
sense, her absence and my grief are pre-
cisely what I would have expected.Chung is the author of the memoir All You
Can Ever Know‘Never, never
forget how
much I love
you,’ she
said to us.
It was the
last time
we’d hear
her voiceshortly after, and my husband and kids
and I told her we were glad she’d had a
good day and we wished we were with
her. She spoke slowly, with some effort,
and sometimes she would forget to hold
the tablet at the best angle, so we could
see only the top of her head. But after
hearing about her day—sitting up, eat-
ing ice cream, even joking with people—
I told myself that she was worn out; she
could still rally.
“Never, never forget how much I love
you,” she said to us. It was the last time
we’d hear her voice.Since She died, many people have
asked me if I feel a lack of “closure”
because of all the moments missed. My
father died 2½ years ago, and I was at
his funeral, and I still don’t feel anything
like closure. It’s an open wound. It
always will be.
In many ways, I know that I am
fortunate: I was able to help support my
mother financially during her illness,
something I would have been unable toILLUSTRATION BY SARA WONG FOR TIMEdo to a meaningful degree two or three