Since the start of the pandemic, it’s felt important to me to occasionally look at some online lists of names and faces of those we’ve lost to the virus. I didn’t want to just see the ever-growing number on the television screen and discount or dehumanize the enormity of our loss. I didn’t want to forget that every person lost is someone’s child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor. Every person was loved.

Growing up, there was an unspoken rule in my family that after someone passed away, their name was never to be spoken again. Then a beloved cousin, Dorothy, died tragically in a car accident while on vacation in Italy. Vinny, her husband, refused to play by the rules. He kept her alive by always talking about her, every detail of her personality, her cooking, her clothing. We’d sit down to dinner and he might say, “Oh Dot would love this!” I was maybe 10 years old, and even then I knew that this wasn’t the appropriate behavior my family expected. I could just tell that my parents were uncomfortable hearing her name. But I remember it felt right, it felt brave. This sense always stayed with me, I knew Vinny was doing the right thing by saying her name.

I recently came across Henry Scott Holland’s “Death is Nothing At All.” Here’s a portion of the poem:

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
And the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak of me in the easy way you always used.
Put no difference into your tone. […]
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

I love this language of relationships continuing, of everything staying the same, of love going forward. This is what Vinny instinctively knew, that we should continue saying our loved ones’ names, that we should keep them alive not just in our hearts but with our voices, too.

Today I invite you to say the names of those you’ve loved and lost. Or maybe you’d like to spend some time online looking at the names and faces of those we’ve collectively lost from COVID, strangers we love just the same. Let’s say their names.

Blessings & peace to you,
Jennifer Andersen
CPE Intern