Me and Mrs. Dalloway: On Losing my Mother to COVID-19

Spitzer describes caring at a distance for her mother and father with COVID. Her mother dies, and Spitzer (a literary scholar) explains how Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (a book that helped Woolfe come to grips with her own mother’s death) takes on new meaning as Spitzer grieves her mother. She explains, “Reading and interpretation are how I deal with overbearing emotion, and they are also the way I am working through this grief and making it mine.” She asks, “How to square the collective grief of COVID with the solitary grief of a mother’s death and a father’s illness?” and here, too, she finds insight in Woolfe’s work, Mrs. Dalloway. The essay’s concluding section describes interactions in her neighborhood and the process of grieving during social isolation.

The essay could be used to discuss different ways of dealing with grief, and some of the common and distinctive features of COVID-related grief. It also points out the value of literature and personal stories in grieving processes.

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