The unexpected intimacy of a Zoom memorial service

When my husband’s mother died this spring at the age of 92, we weren’t sure what to do about a memorial service. She had not wanted a funeral. Cremation followed at some point by the burial of her ashes in a veterans cemetery next to the ashes of her second husband, a former Marine. All the arrangements made and paid for by her some years ago. This took care of her body. But what about her soul? She left this entirely to us. She was not a religious woman. She was open-hearted and generous but also unsentimental. If you tried to talk with her about feelings — yours or hers — she would steer the conversation somewhere else. What was the best way to honor her memory?

The question first came up when we were writing her obituary and we got to the “In lieu of flowers” part. She had given generously to charities and causes in her lifetime and had left several bequests in her will. But what she cared most about was reading and books. For years she’d been an ardent and faithful customer of her local independent bookstore, and they had so appreciated her support, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, that at one point they had sent her what amounted to a love letter, quoting Annie Dillard: “She reads books as one

The whole thing was quiet, relaxed, and piercingly and touchingly personal. People were there who, for reasons of health or distance, would not have been able to attend an in-person service.

would breathe air, to fill up and live.” So in lieu of flowers we suggested that people remember her by buying a book for themselves or someone they love.

As for the memorial service itself, we decided to hold it on Zoom. The first time one of us mentioned this idea to the other, we both flinched. We remembered stories from the first year of the pandemic of people feeling lonely when a virtual memorial service or funeral was the only available option — cheated of the chance to say goodbye in person, to hug one another, to grieve together. The Zoom memorials were felt to be a poor substitute for an in-person gathering.

And yet the more we thought about doing a Zoom service for my husband’s mother, the better the idea seemed. Family members were scattered, and some were old and infirm. There was no family homestead for people to return to. Travel to Florida, where she lived but no one else in the family lived, would have been expensive and prohibitively exhausting for many. Why not just do it on Zoom?

So we did. At four o’clock on a recent Saturday afternoon about 40 people showed up in little boxes on our computer screens.

Her two surviving sisters spoke of their childhood and how they had both admired her. The aide who cared for her during her last few years talked about her courage and dignity, of the fun they had had listening to music together, and of her passionate liberal political principles. Both of our sons spoke, and my husband’s stepsister, and a niece, and one of my mother-in-law’s closest friends. Almost everybody mentioned her habit of writing cards and letters enclosing newspaper clippings she thought the recipient might enjoy (she had worked for many years as a research librarian, and until the last weeks of her life she read three newspapers every morning). People recalled her glamour — she was very tall and beautiful, and could get away with outfits that no one else could have pulled off.

The whole thing was quiet, relaxed, and piercingly and touchingly personal. People were there who, for reasons of health or distance, would not have been able to attend an in-person service. A niece in California, a niece and nephew in Amsterdam. Men in Florida who for years had been part of her husband’s weekly breakfast group. Neighbors from her apartment building. Someone who had just come down with COVID.

During the service people were sitting at their tables or on their couches, in living rooms or kitchens or screened porches. Some people who weren’t good at technology had gotten together with others who were. A couple of cats wandered in and out of the frames, which was appropriate since my mother-in-law loved cats and had never met a stray she didn’t want to adopt. Once the scheduled roster of speakers had finished, we all unmuted ourselves and stayed on and talked more about her. No one wanted to leave, no one wanted to let her go.

There were no travel arrangements, no hotels, no meals. There was no dressing up unless you wanted to (most people did). There was only this little grid of attentive, listening, loving faces. And this unexpectedly powerful and intimate sense of one another’s presence, and of hers, too, even though we couldn’t be together.