There used to be much to do. Reciting the Mourners’ Kaddish daily. Making phone calls, waiting on hold, filling out forms, managing the estate. Sorting and donating Dad’s personal goods. Answering panicked phone calls and texts from my mother. Explaining my status as a mourner—taking a year off from dancing at celebrations, declining blindingly joyous events that chafed against my mourning soul. Responding to friends checking in. Processing feelings. And marking all the “firsts”—first Thanksgiving, first Father’s Day, first birthday—without Dad.
Now, at the two-year mark, I am relieved that these urgent and important tasks are completed. Still less urgent, less important tasks remain on the to-do list. Process paperwork. Sort through boxes. When I consider tackling these, my energy suddenly wanes and I tell myself, “Another time.” Honestly, I don’t know if such a time will ever come.
My acute grief has evolved into long grief—nothing found in any psychiatry book and not identifiable by observing me. I am my usual self, except when I am not. I have not discovered anything to do with this long grief, except to feel it. When I see my dad’s handwriting. When I gaze at a photo of his smiling face and deep blue eyes. When I hear his voice in my head. When I repeat his words and favorite phrases. When I try to better understand who he was. When I share an anecdote about him that makes me chuckle.
Since his death, December has triggered foreboding and January has brought on a cloak of vague sadness. My attempts to shove down feelings of not-rightness are unsuccessful. And then I remember, January was when my dad died of COVID complications. When my mom called the ambulance. When his oxygen saturation was in the 60s. When he was hospitalized. When he went to rehab. When rehab called to tell me that they were doing CPR and later called with the word of his death, on day 10 of his isolation. When the visit I had planned on day 11 became time I spent with his body, saying goodbye.
COVID is uniquely fraught for those of us who work in the medical field and who have lost loved ones to the disease. With each COVID surge, raw feelings surface anew. Images and memories intrude on my days. Years later, I still do not know what to do with these feelings—so I note them and wait for the surge to fade away.
Pamela Adelstein
Newton, Massachusetts