Without funerals, obituaries all that’s left

GRIEF IN ISOLATION

I should be in England to mourn my grandfather. Arthur Denley died a little over two weeks ago in a hospital in Yorkshire, having finally succumbed to injuries related to a fall he had in his home. My grandfather was in his 90s, retired decades ago from his work on the British railroads, a lover of horseracing and holiday cruises in Spain. A warm, charismatic presence through my childhood, he remained affable if reserved in his later years, witty and charming when we last had lunch together, at a Toby Carvery in Doncaster last winter. A real working-class Englishman of both grit and refinement, he was a wonderful man and a continuing inspiration. He will be missed.

My grandfather’s passing was mercifully unrelated to COVID-19. He would not have survived even if the hospitals had not been overwhelmed by the attendant surge in demand, and it was quite miraculous, under the circumstances, that he was able to buck the doctor’s prognosis that he had only 24 hours to live and instead carry on with indomitable cheer for another two weeks. But the pandemic did prevent me from travelling to the United Kingdom to see him as it became clear that he wouldn’t make it. My mother, again somewhat miraculously given the situation, narrowly got over there on one of the last flights before restrictions on non-essential travel.

It’s a small comfort to know that I’m not missing the funeral, because there hasn’t been a funeral, and there isn’t likely to be a funeral in the immediate future. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the ordinary customs of grief and mourning, the traditional ways we honour the dead and commemorate the lives of our loved ones when we lose them. For the next few months, perhaps longer, the memorial service as we know it is universally suspended, and there is no alternative recourse to collectively grieve.

That this transpires at a time when the people around us are dying in record numbers, when the same pandemic that has suspended funerals has created an unimaginably vast demand for them, is a typical irony of a crisis whose scale and meaning we cannot yet comprehend. These are mortal days. How will we mourn?

As funeral services have been discontinued, another avenue of mourning has flourished — the obituary, in print and online. All around the world, as the death toll for the coronavirus is on the rise, newspapers are printing unprecedented volumes of death notices and memorial advertisements, showing the degree to which we yearn for ways to express our sorrow and cherish lost lives together. Weeks ago, a video of a man in Italy flipping through 10 pages of densely packed obituaries in an Italian regional broadsheet went viral, because it vividly depicted the impact COVID-19 has had on that country. But now, with the disease wreaking similar havoc everywhere, the rise of obituaries is happening simultaneously worldwide.

Obituaries have such a long history that they actually predate newspapers, and indeed the printing press. The Acta Diurna in ancient Rome, introduced by Julius Caesar, were daily notices carved in stone or metal and presented in the Forum for the benefit of Romans, who could read of current events and the news of the day, including significant deaths. With the arrival of the printing press and mass-produced newspapers in the 15th century, the practice carried over, and during the American Civil

War, especially, people came to rely on obituaries to learn of the death of people they might know or care about. As newspapers grew longer, so too did obituaries, which gradually transformed from simple accounts of the facts of lives lost to more detailed tributes to the departed.

They are getting longer and more detailed still. Obituaries in the time of COVID-19 are beginning to span far beyond the typical one or two columns of biographical data. Many recent obits have run as long as nine or 10 columns, filling entire pages. On the internet, meanwhile, digital obituaries allow families to create elaborate virtual memorials to their loved ones, and visitors to these sites can read tributes, leave messages, or otherwise explore information about the men and women so paid the honour, to an extent that wouldn’t have been imaginable two decades ago. Whether traditional or innovative, the obituaries seem more pertinent and valued now than ever.

It’s easy to understand the appeal. What I feel I’m missing, in the absence of a proper funeral for my grandfather, is the opportunity to celebrate his life and his accomplishments with the many people who knew him and loved him, to come together and pay our respects to someone we deeply miss. As we struggle to get by on our own in self-isolation, that private grief can severely use a public outlet, and the obituary is a meaningful substitute for the chance to speak to a crowd or pay respects among family and friends. The pandemic is bound to continue, and as its toll on human life grows more terrible, we must learn to grieve meaningfully however we can. These obituaries may be the best way forward.

OBITUARIES SEEM MORE PERTINENT AND VALUED ...

THAN EVER.