Europe

One of the best parts of being a trailing spouse is stitching together an amazing tapestry of friends and family across different corners of the world.

Perhaps the worst part is the cruel distance when you most want to be near them — including when it’s time to say goodbye.

Earlier this year, I lost my dear friend Anne Doll in Seattle to appendix cancer, at the age of 40. Earlier this week, I lost my grandmother in Nicosia, Cyprus, at the age of 104. In both cases, I was thousands of miles away in Delhi, trying to push through my grief and guilt to continue parenting through this pandemic. (Our inability to observe communal mourning rituals during COVID lockdowns, even when mere driving distance away, has surely been a core element of our collective trauma this past year.)

Although I spent years writing for newspapers, including dozens of obituaries, and there’s so much to share about how two heavily-pregnant trailing spouses became fast friends during the hottest Seattle summer on record? I couldn’t bring myself to eulogize Anne. Fortunately, her husband has done that for us all. And, while I can’t be there for her memorial service this summer, at least my family’s absence will provide a few extra bedrooms for her college friends who fly in for the occasion.

For my grandmother, however, given that I missed her funeral by a matter of hours, I thought I could share my thoughts here. After all, she was a trailing spouse, too. (Whenever she had to list the different Cypriot city where each of her three children had been born, the reaction was usually something like, “Lady, did you have to have a kid each time you moved?” I think some of our readers can relate!)