For 25 years, visual artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg has comforted families in mourning as a hospice volunteer. And with each new family she’s consoled came lessons about the scope of grief, its impact, and the lack of spaces for people to express their deep sorrow.
Firstenberg brings those experiences to her latest work — a sprawling public art exhibition that honors the 684,400 people and counting who have died from COVID-19 in the United States. “In America: Remember” opened on Sept. 17 and runs through Oct. 3 on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The display features lines of white flags, evocative of the white headstones in Arlington National Cemetery. Each flag represents an individual who has died from COVID during the pandemic. Visitors are encouraged to dedicate flags to friends and family who died from the illness. People who can’t visit Washington, DC., can share details about their loved one online through InAmericaFlags.org, and volunteers will inscribe the flag and plant it in the exhibit.
Since its opening, Firstenberg has seen middle-aged men break down for the first time. One woman told her she finally realized, after seeing the exhibit, that she wasn’t alone in her grief. And those reactions point to a bigger problem, Firstenberg said in an interview with Evermore.
“We need to stop and realize that America is hurting badly,” she said. “We have to stop and find a way to heal America. And we have to find a way to learn how to deal with death and loss in our community.”
Amazing acts of caring’
For Firstenberg, it all started last year with outrage after some were discounting the deaths of older adults and people of color, who face higher rates of serious health impacts and death from COVID. In fall 2020, as the total number of COVID deaths climbed into the 200,000s, she opened a similar exhibit, called “In America: How Could This Happen,” outside RFK Stadium in Washington.
Photograph by Philip Metlin
“I realized that the number of people who we had lost in this pandemic had become so large that it became easy to ignore,” she said.
“I had to, as a visual artist, use my art to help people identify the enormity of our loss.
“I knew I wanted to do art that would help people visually translate the cumulative death toll into something physical and something they could experience.”
But outrage hasn’t sustained her; the deep expressions of care and emotion from the people who visited the original exhibit did. She remembers a director from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who traveled from Georgia to snap a picture of the display and share it with their team. And there was an ER doctor who wrote out the names of a dozen patients he had lost to COVID on flags and pushed them into the ground before he went on to his next shift.
“I began last fall with a great deal of outrage,” she said. “But when I did that art installation, so many people brought their caring and their grief and their respect and love for those they have lost, and I saw such amazing acts of caring.”
Grief on ‘America’s stage’
This time, the exhibit extends beyond DC in two important ways. People who can’t travel to the nation’s capital can share details online about their loved one, who will then be honored with a flag in the exhibit. The placement along the National Mall, Firstenberg said, is another critical difference when considering the pandemic’s reach across the country.
Photograph by Jonathan Thorpe
“This is America’s stage,” she said of the National Mall. “We have brought America’s lost to its most important space.”
Just like the original exhibit, “In America” encourages participation. It’s designed that way, Firstenberg said, because she knows from her work with hospice that action supports the grieving process. Planting flags in the ground for loved ones is a public way for people to express their grief. The action of walking through the immense field of flags is another way to trigger understanding, she said.
As visitors glance down to read the names and stories of COVID’s victims, no longer is the death toll a number, but a representation of individuals — like the 99-year-old man who eschewed a ventilator to save somebody younger, as one flag notes, and the people who loved him.
Photograph by Jonathan Thorpe
“Each individual flag represents concentric circles of grief — the family, friends, the neighbors, the co-workers, the members of their faith community, and those medical workers who fought so hard to save that life,” she said. “They grieve too.”
Finding hope
Until the exhibit closes, each day at noon, Firstenberg will push more flags into the National Mall as the COVID death count ticks higher. But, despite being surrounded by this sprawling representation of death and grief, Firstenberg is hopeful.
“I am hopeful because I see people walking through these flags and looking down at names and that means they care,” she said. “I really do believe that humanity is going to win out. We just have to highlight it, celebrate it and come to expect it. … And I’m hopeful that this will make people realize that we need to have a better relationship with death and dying. We have to incorporate grief into our understanding of daily life.”
When a child dies, what happens next makes all the difference. Evermore works to de-stigmatize the issues bereaved parents face and advise employers, law enforcement, schools and health care about what grief stricken families need to survive one of the worst traumas a human can experience. Photo by Jonatán Becerra on Unsplash.
Why we need to know more about the hardships parents, siblings face when a child dies
The repercussions of a child’s death extend far beyond the grief of their parents, siblings and family. It’s life altering, of course, but research shows it can even be life ending too.
Just look at the headlines.
In February, longtime soap opera star Kristoff St. John died from heart disease with alcohol as a contributing factor, according to an autopsy. The morning of his death, his ex-wife told Entertainment Tonight that the actor had called her and claimed he was seeing their son, who died by suicide in 2014. “He was just so depressed,” she said.
Hours after her adult son, a victim of the recent New Zealand mosque shooting, was buried, Saud Abdelfattah Mhaisen Adwan died from a heart attack as she mourned his death. A family friend told the New Zealand Herald that she “couldn’t put up with the sorrow and sadness of losing her son.”
And Jeremy Richman, 49, died of an apparent suicide in March, just more than six years after his six-year-old daughter Avielle was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
According to the Institute of Medicine, losing a child is one of the most significant and enduring stresses an individual can experience. Parents are more likely to face long-term psychological, spiritual, social and physical hardships, according to researchers.
And, with an estimated 400,000 American families grieving the loss of a child each year, these hardships, including family solvency and economic stability, have ripple effects for the entire country.
More depressive symptoms, earlier deaths
Grief might be silent, but it can quickly alter the mental and physical health of a parent whose child has died.
Researchers have uncovered a link between child death and the early death of parents. Danish researchers say the death of a child is associated with an increase in mortality from both natural and unnatural causes, such as accidents, drug overdoses and suicides, in mothers, and an increase in mortality in unnatural causes among fathers.
When a child dies, life for parents becomes an enduring struggle. Even 18 years after a death, bereaved parents reported more depressive symptoms, poorer well-being and more health problems, one study found. They also were more likely to experience depression and marital issues.
The fallout after the death of a child is more than just physical and emotional. Parents who are mourning their child grapple with on-the-job and money issues too.
Researchers are just beginning to examine the full financial impacts, but studies show those ramifications include higher medical expenditures, loss of wages or employment, loss of productivity and reduced future income.
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 allows covered employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition before they return to work. The law, however, doesn’t give parents the right to take time off to grieve the death of their child or even plan a memorial. And employers aren’t doing much better. They tend to give their employees just three or four days of paid leave when a child dies.
So it’s no surprise that one study found that the economic effects are “substantial,” citing costs associated with funeral and medical expenses, along with “presenteeism” at work. That’s when a person goes to work, but isn’t as productive because of sickness, injury, anxiety or, in the case of bereaved parents, grief.
Sibling impact is immense
Siblings also face an uphill battle as they process the death of their brother or sister and witness the grief of their parents. The Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping and Care says that siblings can experience “agitated depression, chronic illness, enduring and intense clinical reactions, such as guilt, and significant disturbances in self-esteem, job and school performance and interpersonal relationships.”
In fact, a study of more than 5 million people in Denmark found that when a sibling dies during childhood, their brothers and sisters face a stunning 71 percent increased risk of death from all causes. Those higher risks are especially predominant during the first year after a sibling’s death and among siblings of similar ages and the same sex.
And that’s just what we know.
Despite the profound repercussions to families and communities when a child dies, there’s no comprehensive review of child loss literature. No national data has been collected. No universal clinical guidelines exist to help those who are suffering. There’s not even an accrediting body or treatment standard for grief therapists.
We must do better
At Evermore, we’re working to raise awareness, money and support to address the difficulties families endure when a child dies. We look forward to highlighting the stories of researchers and groups who are effectively supporting families and spotlight areas where more help is desperately needed.
