38 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
to look, pay attention,
and see who and what has
been lost. We must do
our best to seek out and
learn people’s stories. We
must check in on those
we know, but also ask a
stranger, “How are you?”
and actually listen to the
answer. And if someone
throws a fit about the
temperature of the milk
in their latte, we must
remember that we don’t
know what kind of grief
they might be shoulder-
ing, due to COVID-19 or
otherwise. Not all masks
are visible.
We must engage with
these stories, however
difficult, for so many
reasons: Public health
is failing us (last week I
paid $200 for a required
rapid PCR test, one thatNATION
“WoW, i jusT can’T
imagine.” That’s what peo-
ple emailed, texted, and
uttered after my parents
died. They couldn’t imag-
ine losing a mother to a
violent car accident or a
father, a mere four years
later, to a heart attack in
the middle of the night
while he was traveling
abroad. I was 34 and felt
truly alone, and while talk-
ing to someone about my
grief would have helped
immeasurably, “I can’t
imagine” felt like the op-
posite of an invitation—it
felt like a warning. Don’t
even try to share, I won’t get
it. But if my grief was too
hard for me, and it was too
hard for others, what was I
supposed to do with it?
“I can’t imagine.” Fami-
lies and individuals who
have lost children, siblings,
partners, and friends hear
it all the time, this con-
fession of an inability to
imagine the worst, the un-
speakable, the most feared
event. I understand why
people offer the phrase—
as an earnest gesture of
solace or a filler in lieu of
anything else—but it rarely
brings comfort. More
often, the recipients are
left feeling even more iso-
lated at a time when grief
has already banished themto a cold, dark place.
The truth is, it’s not that
we can’t imagine the ex-
perience. It’s that we don’t
want to. In saying that the
deep loss someone is feel-
ing is too unbearable to
picture, what we’re really
doing is drawing a line:
not mine, not ours, only
yours. Perhaps we think we
might prevent this pain,
this chaos, this fear and
uncertainty, from reach-
ing our own lives. But if
this global pandemic has
taught us anything, it’s
that grief doesn’t work that
way. Grief belongs or will
belong to everybody, if not
today then someday.In 2013, I co-founded
a publication and global
community called Mod-
ern Loss, which is cen-
tered on helping people
move through the long
arc of grief. The other day
I was aimlessly scrolling
through our Insta gram his-
tory and stopped cold at
a post from Feb. 22, 2021,
that announced 500,000
deaths from COVID-19
in the U.S. I scrolled back
further, to Sept. 23, 2020,
and found another post
marking a grim milestone:
200,000. The number was
described at the time as“unfathomable.”
Now we’re at roughly
1 million. A number that
equals the population of
Austin, or, perhaps more
fittingly for these times,
of Odesa, Ukraine, at least
until recently. A number
that feels at once make-
believe and overwhelming.
The actual number could
be as high as 200,000
more, given the excess
deaths that surpass typical
mortality rates and seem to
stem directly or indirectly
from the pandemic.
“Can you imagine?” For
a while, we had a pretty
good excuse not to: we set
off on this terrible adven-
ture under an Administra-
tion that tried to convince
us that we should not be
afraid of this new virus,
nor should we let it “domi-
nate” our lives. The gov-
ernment tried to discon-
nect us from reality when
reality was disconnecting
us from the humans with
whom we used to spend
our days: co-workers, rela-
tives, neighbors, the shop
owner on the corner. For
so long, we were physi-
cally separated from one
another, trying to deal
with our own “new nor-
mals,” which likely in-
volved the addition of too
many roles and the sub-
traction of others. Aside
from glimpses on screens,
we didn’t see the insides of
other people’s homes. And
so we didn’t see the people
who inhabit those homes
going through the motions
of daily life after a loved
one’s death.
But now, as we attempt
to more fully resume in-
person interactions (at
least between variants),
we must force ourselves