Help me find an essay about covid, death, and artistic loss

March 2, 2023 10:27 AM

I am looking for an essay/blog post I read during covid, at least a year ago, maybe more. I thought maybe it was Maria Popova but I am not seeing it on her website

In the article, the author (a woman) talks about her mother, who had recently died (possibly due to covid, but DEFINITELY during the stage of the pandemic where going to say goodbye to dying loved ones was challenging). She talks about those challenges, navigating losing a parent on top of navigating the pandemic, but the real point of the article was about all the friendships, connections, creations and collaborations that the world has missed out on due to the pandemic, and about mourning those as well.

Like — how many songs were not written because of covid, how many movies weren't make, how many ideas were left to flounder because people could not be in community with each other in the ways that we were used to. And it wasn't like "Hollywood is shut down and can't make money" but more like "covid has also caused us loss in these immeasurable ways and we need to mourn these losses as well."

posted by Brittanie to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

That sounds like a friend of my wife, Pam. She's done a few posts I've adored covering grief and loss. The one closest to your solicited topic that I found was this one. Here's the one she wrote on her mom. And the one about her stepfather was even better.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 11:47 AM on March 2, 2023

Was it Jennifer Spitzer's "Me and Mrs Dalloway: On Losing My Mother to COVID-19" (LA Review of Books, 7/19/2020)?

We talked about it here.
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:23 PM on March 2, 2023