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Amplify: As an obituaries editor, I see the human toll of COVID-19 from a unique perspective
This is the weekly Amplify newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this e-mail newsletter to you, you can sign up for Amplify and all Globe newsletters here.
As COVID-19 takes an ever-increasing toll on all our lives, I see the pandemic from an unusual vantage point: I edit The Globe and Mail’s obituaries page. And for writers and editors of obituaries, as the now-familiar phrase goes, these are unprecedented times.
Sukhada Tatke wrote recently in Wired UK, “Obituary writers are faced with the challenge of preserving life stories against this backdrop, and distilling the fullness of life for readers at a time when their professional rhythm has been upended. As the death toll has multiplied steadily around the world, so too has their work.”
In the anxious early days of the pandemic I began looking – far too often – at online graphs and charts showing death statistics, like the ones in The Globe. I would look at the number of cases in Italy and Spain, where the pandemic was most virulent at the time, and compare them with the much smaller numbers in Canada. It was chilling to watch the Canadian curve begin to swoop upward, knowing that each tick on the graph represented human lives.
The disease hadn’t yet infected many people in this part of the world, and it wasn’t clear how serious the outbreak would be here. That changed in February when stories began appearing about the people who had died in Canada and the United States. Soon there were musicians and writers and doctors and CEOs dying of the virus much closer to home. Reading about their lives and editing their obituaries made the pandemic real for me in a way that a graph never could.
I’ve been doing this job for about seven years and I find it deeply satisfying, in part because there are so many compelling stories. Like a biography, a good obit gives the reader a chance to appreciate all the unexpected twists of a life story, as well as the person’s character and eccentricities. It is an exercise in empathy.
Speaking about the craft in a recent interview with NPR, Maureen O’Donnell, an obituary writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, said, “When you’re writing about an octogenarian who’s had a chance to have a career and get married, and achieve their goal of going to Antarctica, and seeing their great-grandchildren grow up, and having the best pumpkin pie recipe for 40 miles – all those things temper the sadness of the end of a life. And I think a good obituary brings them back to life again.” O’Donnell is a former president of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
The arrival of the novel coronavirus has given obituaries another layer of significance. They are now essential reading for those wishing to fully grasp the human toll of the global pandemic.
Among the Canadians featured on The Globe’s obits page who have died of the disease are: Joyce Davidson, the brilliant CBC broadcaster who caused an uproar when she said she was indifferent to a visit from the Queen; Renée Claude, a shy but talented Quebec singer who became a grande dame of chanson; and Foon Hay Lum, one of the oldest women in Canada, who fought for compensation for Chinese immigrants who paid the head tax.
All three women lived in long-term care homes, like the vast majority of Canada’s COVID-19 fatalities.
The onslaught of news stories about vulnerable elderly people dying of COVID-19 – sometimes in horrific conditions – hit me especially hard. My mother, who is healthy and turning 90 this year, had been planning to move into a seniors’ residence this spring. We were waiting for warmer weather to visit some homes, and then the pandemic arrived. One place we were planning to see had a COVID-19 outbreak in early April and a third of the residents died.
Because of the pandemic, the normal rituals surrounding death have changed. In the absence of large funeral gatherings, obituaries allow us to reflect together on the lives of notable people while being physically apart.
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Obits are also being given a special prominence in many publications. The New York Times has been publishing a series of COVID-19 obituaries under the banner “Those We’ve Lost.” It also ran a powerful all-print front page on May 24, Memorial Day, under the headline “U.S. deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss.” The page featured 1,000 one-line obituaries, representing just one per cent of those who had died. It showed the devastating human toll of the virus in the United States more effectively than anything else I have seen.
The pandemic has made the job of the obituarist more challenging and more vital than ever. Claire McNeill, an obituary writer with the Tampa Bay Times, summed it up when she told CNN, “Now most of us exist in a suspended state of anxiety and panic, and the grief feels more universal, part of a wave of unfolding tragedy. Part of our role is to keep people from becoming faceless in that wave. No death is impersonal."
What else we’re thinking about:
We have all seen stories about how the natural world is changing while we have been huddled in our homes. The skies are clearer and wild animals are growing bolder. Toronto, where I live, has an extensive network of ravines and cycling paths as well as the miraculous Leslie Spit, a breakwater on the city’s Outer Harbour built from decades of construction waste. It has evolved into lush parkland teeming with animals. This spring I have spotted enough urban wildlife to fill a guidebook: deer, coyote, fox, rabbits, mink, beaver, fish, cardinals, blue jays, yellow warblers, swans, a Baltimore oriole and a colony of noisy double-crested cormorants. It is reassuring to see these urban animals surviving and flourishing in unforgiving conditions. May we all be so resilient.
Inspired by something in this newsletter? If so, we hope you’ll amplify it by passing it on. And if there’s something we should know, or feedback you’d like to share, send us an e-mail at amplify@globeandmail.com.
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