A Year of Loss by
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A Year of Loss

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since the pandemic robbed us of life as we knew it.

And in this frightful year I’ve lost several beloved friends.   Although it was cancer and heart disease that took them,  it was Covid that kept us from gathering together to mourn.   Zoom funerals and memorial services didn’t allow us to embrace,  or cry in comforting arms,   leaving many bereft to deal with our grief alone.  I’ve written about three of my lost friends.   (See Comfort Food for Renee,  Inks and Derek: Art and the Cricket Scores  and Cantor Gladys)

I will write about the last,  but for now I grieve.

Renee,  Derek,  Gladys, and Gerhard

RetroFlash / 100 Words

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Profile photo of Dana Susan Lehrman Dana Susan Lehrman
This retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com

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Tags: Covid 19
Characterizations: moving, well written

Comments

  1. John Shutkin says:

    How very sad, Dana, but so beautifully put. This truly was a year of loss — including, as you so perfectly note, a loss in our ability to memorialize that loss. We grieve with you.

  2. Dave Ventre says:

    We had a Zoom shiva for our dear friend Stacy, taken in October at just fifty by a horrid neurological disorder. Having to refrain from physically comforting each other for our loss was terrible. I am sure that our healing has been made much harder by the enforced distance.

  3. Betsy Pfau says:

    A beautiful memorial, Dana. May their memory be for a blessing.

  4. Marian says:

    My heart goes out to you, Dana, for all those losses. I’ve been to several Zoom shivas and couldn’t visit my cousin Joe (whom I’ve written about on Retrospect) in his final days. This is when memory counts for a lot. Virtual hugs to you.

  5. Laurie Levy says:

    Dana, I’m so sorry for all of your losses this year. It is so hard to do these things remotely when what we really need is to hug and hold one another.

  6. Marian says:

    Dana, the story is “Joe Defeats Google, Both Win.” I do miss his humor and fighting spirit.

  7. We, your Retrospect family, grieve with you, Dana.. So very sorry for your losses. XO

  8. Suzy says:

    Sorry for your losses, Dana. It is hard not to be able to be with others when you are mourning.

  9. Khati Hendry says:

    Thanks for writing about the people you loved and still hold in your heart. This has been a year of loss in so many ways. You are not alone.

  10. Most touching, Dana. I noted in today’s NYT a story about “preparing for grief”. Seems an oxymoron of sorts. Hold fast your memories in the face of your losses. Godspeed.

    • Thanx Tom, just today spoke to the widower of my Scrabble friend Gladys who’s having a hard time coping with her recent death, and spoke to another close friend whose sister is in hospice.

      Am usually not the morbid type but now we’re at the age when we’re losing contemporaries much too often!

  11. Loss has been so prominent this year. Plague, autocratic insanity, incomprehensible suffering, insurrection and — the life burden of death, grief’s grinding wheel always slow and difficult to turn, now seeming impossible. But you know how to do this, Dana. In due time. And in due time, extenuating tragedy will lift, grow lighter, become, once again, just barely manageable.

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