A New Way to Mourn: An Update

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes from this year and checking in on what has happened since the stories first ran. In our society, the public part of mourning is ritualized by a coming together. What do we do now that the opportunity for collective mourning has been taken away? Earlier this year, we heard the story of Wayne Irwin. A retired minister of the United Church of Canada who lost his wife, Flora May, during the coronavirus pandemic. He never once considered delaying her memorial, opting to celebrate her life over the internet — a new ritual that, as it turned out, felt more authentic and real. Today, we check back in with Wayne to find out how he’s been doing in the months since his wife’s passing. Guest: Catherine Porter, Toronto bureau chief for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here. Background reading:The rituals of our lives have been transformed. An expert on gathering shares advice for birthdays and baby showers in our audio series “Together Apart.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Michael.
0:02.3	This week, the Daily Is Revisiting are favorite episodes of the year.
0:07.4	Listening back and hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran.
0:12.5	Today, the story of the new rituals that we create in a crisis.
0:19.9	It's Tuesday, December 29.
0:27.7	Katherine, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about what you've been watching from
0:31.1	your home in Toronto ever since the pandemic started hitting North America?
0:37.5	Well, I have written a lot about death over the years.
0:41.8	It's one of those things that, for whatever reason, it interests me and I keep coming back
0:46.8	to it.
0:47.8	So, because I've always been interested in death and written about death, I've been looking
0:52.0	through the birth and death notices.
0:55.5	And the Obyts have been really interesting because something that I'd never seen before
0:59.9	at the bottom, whether or not the person had died of COVID, many of them have died just
1:06.4	of old age or of cancer or whatever else.
1:09.4	But at the bottom, I started to highlight these statements that seem to repeat themselves
1:15.2	over and over again, which were things like, though we cannot celebrate her life now,
1:20.2	a happier time will come and we can all come together.
1:23.2	Our celebration of her life will be celebrated when it's safe for us to be together.
1:28.6	We will get together when we're allowed to get together.
1:38.4	And so that planted a seed of, like a thought in me, like the public part of mourning is
1:44.3	ritualized in our society by coming together.
	...

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