It started like any pandemic-era Zoom meeting. I awkwardly angled my screen toward my bedroom wall to hide the clothes littering my floor. I changed into one of my button-up Zoom shirts. I joined others on screen. A gray cat slinked across someone’s keyboard. One participant struggled to turn on her video.The moderator asked everyone to say the name of their loved one who had died. “My mom, Dana.” “My dad, Hal.” “My friend, Laura.” “My husband, Robert.
A few weeks later, my mom called. She’d received my dad’s ashes. They came in a dark box engraved with gold designs. I imagined a van full of these boxes shuttling across the country, delivering the dust of the dead like holiday packages. I pictured my mom, in her one-room apartment in Berkeley, with this box for as long as the pandemic dragged on. I was too sad to cry.
I was nervous before my first meeting. I imagined I’d find Brady Bunch squares of grievers, a pixelated quilt of strange sad faces. I wondered if it made sense to sign up for more darkness. What I found, though, were heartbroken but whole people. Like me. Struggling through the pandemic and longing for a new future, while learning how to build bridges with loved ones lost to the past.
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