Last Saturday I buried my mom. No, she wasn’t one of the unfortunate souls that passed from this horrible virus alone without anyone to comfort her. She died ten months ago in hospital of cancer, with her sisters nearby, after a short battle with cancer. Her remains were cremated, and at first my dad and I didn’t know what do with them.

By the time we decided to bury her, the cemetery had stopped burying through the winter. And then the pandemic hit, and at first there were no services. And then the limits of 10 came; with my aunts, uncle, cousins we hit the maximum quickly. An officiant counted against the maximum, so we would have been at 11. In case you’re wondering we had 14 people including the officiant at the burial.

So many thoughts have flown through my head in these past few months. I sometimes wonder how much of a laugh she’d get at all this; she was an ER Nurse with a dark sense of humor to match. Other times I could see her volunteering to do contact tracing, or maybe returning to work if it were something she could do at home. In a way now I’m glad she didn’t live to see this. Getting proper care for her here at home would be a full-time job. We probably couldn’t have done it. She probably would have died of the virus because of the terminal cancer.

They say it’s like mourning twice. Once for the life you’ve had with your loved one, and the other for the life you had prior to the pandemic. That’s exactly it. The burial has helped to lighten the sadness, and allow the happier memories to begin pushing through. It will be there in the background, as a dull ache probably for the rest of my life.

Now to focus on the life I had before the pandemic. That starts with admitting that life after won’t be the same; that the kind of normal we had was left behind sometime in March. I was planning to make some changes this year, and the circumstances have forced me to speed them up a little. There have been points of uncertainty; times when I really have asked myself what to do next. And not coming up with too many answers. On the flip side of that, I’ve also been asking myself “What have I got to lose?” And the answer comes back nothing, something that’s oddly freeing.

This pandemic has created a lot of chaos, and sadness for many. It could also create a chance to build something new. May we all have the courage to do it.