Category: 02 – Through the Window – reflections on loss and grief

We lost my wife’s older sister Kim just before Thanksgiving after a long battle with cancer. It is incredibly difficult to heal and gain closure being separated by the pandemic. Kim had a place above the village that she hiked to often in spring, summer, and fall, and would snowshoe to in the winter. We… Continue reading james h.

A very good friend suffered heart failure in September of last year. She was in a medically induced coma for two weeks and then her husband (also one of my closest friends) decided to let her go. What was tough was that I couldn’t escape the situation even at work because my boss (also a… Continue reading heidi n.

In February of 2020 my husband was admitted to the hospital. By the second week of March we were fighting to even get into the hospital to see him. The lockdowns had just started here in Iowa. We were told he would need to be placed on hospice and we had to move him to… Continue reading misty b.

For the past year, the pandemic itself hasn’t affected me other than working from home and isolation from people. Which in and of itself is different and hard. But while I knew people who got sick no one close to me has died in the past year. Except for one person. Her name was Mary… Continue reading michawn s.

In the book Alice through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself on a chess board with the White and Red Queens; they explain to her that she must run as fast as she can if she wishes to stay in the same place and twice as fast if she expects to go anywhere … since… Continue reading shelia b.

I lost my closest aunt and uncle this past year. Neither was directly Covid related unless perhaps the stress of living through these times was a contributing factor. They were both in their 60s. Nothing prepared us for it, no warning. They just dropped dead and then we got the shocked and devastated phone call.… Continue reading adrian b.

Grieving in a pandemic is twice as hard. You can’t hang out with friends or go places to distract you. A walk in the woods only made me feel more alone.

Witnessing a live-streaming funeral felt like we were ghosts. We could see our loved ones grieving, but they could not see or talk to those watching through the livestream. It was like a taste of being gone, as the camera was on the ceiling and we were looking down at the coffin and the rest… Continue reading jeanette g.

Someone extremely close to me died suddenly, in Canada, this past summer, and I was stuck here on this side of the border. Had Covid not been a factor, I would have travelled home to Canada to be with the family and helped in all the ways I could (not only with grief, but also… Continue reading anonymous