Our Death Toll Is Incomprehensible, How Do We Cope?
A hospice social worker’s advice on how to process
Everyone dies — and yet, no one wants to talk about that. Even as we continue to find ourselves in a pandemic with a death toll so destabilizing, so different from the familiar I face as a hospice and palliative care social worker. We’re dying, and we’re grieving, and there is no end in sight. I write this as a call to soothe — to offer a space to this grim, untranslatable experience.
In my work, I have witnessed thousands of deaths over the past 21 years — all within a 30-mile radius of Los Angeles. I have sat with those in transition and those who have just died. I have calmed patients and families in crisis. I have joined with centenarians, babies, children, teens, adults, brand-new parents, veterans, newlyweds, Holocaust and internment camp survivors, the newly retired, political leaders, celebrities, royalty, doctors, CEOs, artists, healers, musicians, and hermits.
One thing I know is that death is in the back of our minds constantly — but we rarely allow…
