Crossroads

In the May 4 edition of the New Yorker , Laura Collins reflects on grief during the COVID-19 pandemic. To be sure, grief becomes potentially far more complicated for families whose loved ones died by COVID-19. But what has been largely overlooked in the pandemic narrative is the vastly larger number of families whose grief has been made more difficult by our responses to the pandemic. This is a compelling tale of one person's experience dealing with her father's death in absentia , unable to travel back to the U.S. to be with her family or to even adequately say goodbye. While the issues are well known to those of us who take care of the bereaved, perhaps it will garner more attention because of its focal  point in a major media outlet.  And a shout out to my friend Rick Andrews, his siblings Laura and Scott, and their family's whole team of funeral professionals in Wilmington, NC who "stepped up" for this family and provided a vital caring presence for the fami

William G. Hoy Medical Humanities Program Baylor University There is a lot of talk these days about "no funeral." However, it isn't so much because we do not want to have them as it is because we cannot have them in the ways we had become accustomed . That has created a strange paradox in that some folks are realizing now how important this set of ceremonies can be for the grief process. A couple of days ago, I came across an article I wrote eight years ago that I reworked here. This topic still has relevance, I think, because as we "ramp up" our return to the kinds of ceremonies we used to have, we will once again be faced with the choice of how highly to value death-related ceremonies. I hope you will offer your comments, ideas, and rebuttals in the comments section below. You can even remain anonymous if you want. In the midst of people determining in advance that they want "no service" upon their death or telling family members to just