The pandemic caused a delayed reaction to mourning my Dad

A funeral ceremony 8 months later triggered my regret

The day I returned from the trip to bury my father, I actually said these words: “He was 89. He went in his sleep. What more could I have asked?”

I thought that I had parked my Dad in a place beyond emotion. We were opposites politically, and he would throw out names and opinions to try to rile me. Pat Buchanan. Sean Hannity. Coal-fired energy. I had had to build an insulation around myself to spend time with him.

I thought I had done that pretty successfully. He died in November 2020, during the Covid lockdown but he didn’t die from a Covid-19 infection. He had been active until the last moment. As his home in Florida, he had visited the hot tub that morning and had walked his dog. He was sitting in his chair, legs crossed, book open on his lap, as usual, waiting for my stepmother to make lunch. And then he didn’t wake up.

My father was a lifelong Catholic and wanted two things for his final farewell: a Catholic funeral Mass and a lunch afterward for his loved ones. Because of the pandemic shutdowns, church services were suspended for months. We waited for them to open again, and booked a date in July 2021.

It was a lovely service and lunch. Perfect, really. Lots of far-flung family gathered, and I saw cousins again for the first time in a decade.

Eight months after my dad died, I finally begin mourning him.

It was after this that I returned to my home in New York and said to colleagues, “What more could I have asked?” But my words belied my feelings. Eight months after my dad died, I finally begin mourning him. Was it the priest’s words that triggered grief in me? Perhaps it was seeing the dear, sweet faces of my extended family, all of whom cherished memories of Dad.

When I was 12, my Dad and I hid Easter eggs in the back yard for my younger brothers and sisters to hunt the next morning. Dad and I had finished with the eggs and were looking up at the starry night sky. An engineer, a man of science, my dad began talking about the concept of time. “I think we will find that it’s like space,” he said, hinting that someday we may be able to move through it.

He knew he wouldn’t be the one to solve that equation, but it intrigued him mightily. In a talk like this, just the two of us, I could sense his fear of his own passing. I won’t be around to see this, but isn’t it great to think about?

In November, when my stepmother telephoned to say she couldn’t wake him, I thought, “I’ve been expecting this. I’m prepared.”

My siblings and I — there are seven of us — organized a memorial on Zoom in December. Together, we sold his other house, in Massachusetts. My brother Bill and sister Gail walked through the home with their phones on live video, as the rest of us watched remotely. We claimed any of Dad’s belongings we wanted to save. There was some furniture from his bedroom with our mother, who had predeceased him by 31 years. A homemade game board from our Pépère (French Canadian for “grandfather”), who had crafted the game pieces from spindle ends discarded from his workplace in a textile mill. Dad’s table saw, which had fascinated us as children with its spinning arced teeth.

Nobody fought over these things. That’s our culture. We pull together.

I would busy myself with my young daughters’ care in a way that shielded me from my Dad’s verbal volleys.

For a long time when my Dad would visit my home, I would hide behind my two daughters. Not literally, of course. I would busy myself with their care in a way that shielded me from his verbal volleys. When he had finished trying to get a rise out of me, he would begin watching me intently, staring. It was maddening. I was clammed up. I knew he wanted us to be closer but I couldn’t un-clam myself.

He outlasted my daughters’ young years, when they needed my close attention. What more could I have asked?

His first wife died of cancer when he was 57 years old. He told me on the phone that he was thinking of becoming a priest in the Catholic church. Is that even possible? There are so many rules for Catholics. I said, “Sure, if that’s what you want.” I didn’t really engage with the idea, and he never brought it up again. Now I wish I had been more of a friend to him, that I had drawn him out and really talked seriously about his struggles to find new footing as a widower.

In retirement, he spent many hours transferring his reel-to-reel recordings and vinyl records to CDs. He sent them to his children as gifts. I found mine, unopened, in a bubble-wrapped envelope, years later. I regret this now. I regret that I didn’t respond to him in a genuine way, with appreciation and engagement with this gift.

I could not open up that last measure, heart to heart, like on the night of the Easter egg hunt.

In my defense as a daughter, I did quite a bit. He was invited for holidays and visited often for weekends. However, I could not open up that last measure, heart to heart, like on the night of the Easter eggs.

It took the July funeral ceremony, eight months after my father’s death, to fully understand this idea and allow the regret to sink in. This is the grace of a ceremony, confronting us with reality. For eight months, I lived in a cotton-wrapped haze of doing: hiring a probate lawyer, listing Dad’s home, locating assets, making spreadsheets, scheduling Zoom calls with his heirs.

This is a legacy of Covid. Delayed reactions and muffled reality. I’m not alone in this.

The funeral ceremony made him human, again, for me. This is a legacy of Covid. Delayed reactions and muffled reality. I’m not alone in this.

My Dad married again, and they would have celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary this year. He and my stepmother reprised a spat that existed between he and my mother: he loved junk food, and his wives, each in her turn, tried to get him to eat healthier. When he died, my stepmom found stashes of Nacho Cheese Doritos, Goldfish and Cheez-Its hidden throughout his car, bedroom and office.

When we left the cemetery, she placed a small bag of Doritos on his grave.

It comforts me that he was loved, if not perfectly by me.

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