She zips up a dark skirt over dark tights and pulls on a pair of boots. She’d rather not go through with it, but it’s better than doing nothing. So after tidying her shoulder-length brown hair and wrangling ties onto her two boys, Annette Jordan Nielsen heads to her aunt’s house in Sandy, Utah, to watch her grandma’s funeral on Facebook Live.
It’s been six days. Annette had just come home with burgers from a drive-thru. She wiped down the bag and all the food containers. She couldn’t be too careful on these visits. Her 95-year-old grandmother, Erma Yengich, was already deteriorating. Annette’s mother sat in the living room watching television when she looked at Erma’s hospital bed. “I think something’s happened,” she announced.
To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, only 10 people are allowed at the funeral mass, at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Sandy. Between the priest, the musician, Erma’s three kids and their spouses, only two spots remained. The grandkids held a lottery, and Annette didn’t get picked.
In her aunt’s living room, Annette settles into a cluster with her husband and sons, six feet away from two similar family groupings, mostly in quiet contemplation. When her cousin connects his laptop, they crowd around the television — as much as they can. On the screen, Erma’s family drapes her casket in white linen and rolls her to the front of the church. The music is loud and choppy, so Annette mutes the feed until it stops.
She watches her family read from the Bible, and the priest points to where Erma used to sit. “No doubt, if it wasn’t for the COVID-19 regulations and rules, this church would be full,” he proclaims. “Not only with her kids, her grandkids or her great grandkids, but also all the people of the parish who love her.” The video ends as the casket is rolled outside, the family following past empty pews. “If death should carve a canyon in between us for a while,” the musician sings, “then sing this song for me ‘til I come home.”
From her aunt’s house, Annette makes the brief drive to the lush green lawns of Larkin Sunset Gardens, in the shadow of the Wasatch mountains. She’ll at least get to say goodbye. But something’s still ... off.
“There was a kind of background fear,” she admits later. What if the pallbearers are standing too close? And she worries that her husband will pan the camera over the crowd and catch her hugging a cousin. “It was just really weird,” she says. “Really weird.”
Just under two months earlier, family members and friends gathered to celebrate Erma’s birthday. They rented out a private room at Marie Callender’s, packed it elbow-to-elbow and celebrated a long, blessed life in a way they no longer can. It frustrates Annette to realize what she’s missing that won’t come back, even if the pandemic abates, so she clings tightly to her memories. Maybe someday they’ll hold a real memorial. “We’re all still sort of suspended,” she says.
Erma’s obituary recalls a few of her favorite pastimes, like crocheting and “faithfully” seeing her hairdresser each week to keep her white curls in top form. She researched her family’s history and enjoyed gardening — especially red geraniums. Her pearl necklace; the pair of Ann Taylor perfumes — Passion and White Diamonds — she always wore; her tendency to swear in Italian or Yugoslavian; everything that made Erma who she was, the family reasons, can’t be buried with her.
So after the casket and flowers have been placed in the ground, the family breaks the rules. They gather at Erma’s house to share stories and reminisce over delivery pizza. “Like we would have,” Annette explains, “only it would’ve been in a group of hundreds of people.”