A Death in the Family

On March 29th, my wife got a phone call from her family in California: Her Tita (aunt) had passed away in her sleep. April 29th would have been her 88th birthday.

Death in the age of COVID is a strangely remote thing: We are not there to comfort the dying by their bedside. The dying die alone for fear of infecting the living, the living stay away for fear of infecting the dying. My wife’s aunt, I should make it clear, did not die of COVID. For her, a lifetime full of physical pain came to its merciful conclusion, freeing her from decades of bearing up under excruciating agony. Our last phone call to her, lasting only a minute or two, was pitiful and awkward as she could barely recognize it was us who was calling her. It was a lesson in always telling your family that you love them — at every opportunity.

In the meantime, other relatives must now handle the business of cremation, burial, and bringing a close to a life no longer lived. With two weeks’ quarantine in the United States and another two weeks upon our return to Japan, we decided to not return to California after talking it over with our family. Time, distance, and disease separate us during a time when we would usually come together.