Ellen Wallenstein

My mother died on March 31, 2020 after 10 days in a hospital in Florida, alone. 

Her death had nothing to do with the Virus but she wasn’t allowed visitors.

A sad death, a sad end to a life of over 95 years.

Luckily she died before the state of Florida closed its borders and we were able to bury her in the family cemetery plot in Old Carmel Cemetery in Queens. The funeral was small, just myself, my husband, my nephew, my brother and his wife and a friend. The Rabbi was practicing social distancing and stood far away from the grave and the mourners, reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish. As is custom, we each shoveled some dirt on the open grave, dug deep in the ground next to my father, who preceded her there twenty-three years ago.