WHAT OUR FRIENDS LEFT BEHIND

Noe reflects on the difficulties of mourning during the pandemic in this nonfiction book on the nature of grief.

The loss of a good friend is always difficult; during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the normal rituals of mourning were unavailable, such a loss could be especially so. “COVID has upended the way we grieve,” writes the author. “And at a time when draconian limits were placed on family members, the friends left behind found themselves even more restricted from comforting and grieving as they normally would” be. Though Covid-19 itself was responsible for many premature deaths, most of the 16 friends Noe lost over the course of the pandemic died from unrelated diseases. In most instances, health and travel restrictions prevented her from attending the funerals. In this book, the author ruminates on the peculiarities of grief in the time of Covid-19, comparing it to the early days of AIDS, a period during which Noe also buried many friends. Along the way, she celebrates some of the people she lost, documents how people in America acclimated to the new funerary circumstances, and explores the ways in which the disease’s victims in America have been publicly memorialized. Noe writes with great power and moral clarity. “This book is not an instructional manual on how to do grief,” she states. “Anyone trying to sell one of those is scamming you because grief can’t be taught any more than it can be avoided or fixed. It can only be lived, in all its devastating, enraging, world-altering ways.” The work feels slightly first-drafty at times; not every chapter is entirely on-topic (one about how Broadway reacted to Covid-19 feels particularly digressive), and the author quotes liberally from books and articles by others to pad her ideas. Even so, Noe is clearly someone who’s thought a lot about grief, and she provides readers with an opportunity to reflect on how much loss they, too, have likely experienced as a result of the pandemic.

An earnest look at the ways Covid-19 has complicated the grieving process.