Despite modern, instant communications, it was almost four months before we learned of the death of the beloved senior member of our still close-knit Peace Corps family. She was a registered nurse who never married, and she was by almost 20 years the eldest of the 52 volunteers who traveled together to South America in 1961. Her handwritten notes last year told of illness, hospitalization and home care. We didn't phone because of her deafness, but we were not surprised that we got no responses to our get-well cards, Christmas greetings or the annual newsletter I send out each February. A former volunteer in Chicago did worry and investigated. He learned she had died in November at the age of 87 with her only niece at her bedside. Tom, who mourned her loss as a friend and as his
Evadna Bartlett writes: Despite modern, instant communications, it was almost four months before we learned of the death of the beloved senior member of our still close-knit Peace Corps family
E-mail way to maintain contacts, share condolences
by Evadna Bartlett
For the Daily Mail
Despite modern, instant communications, it was almost four months before we learned of the death of the beloved senior member of our still close-knit Peace Corps family.
She was a registered nurse who never married, and she was by almost 20 years the eldest of the 52 volunteers who traveled together to South America in 1961.
Her handwritten notes last year told of illness, hospitalization and home care. We didn't phone because of her deafness, but we were not surprised that we got no responses to our get-well cards, Christmas greetings or the annual newsletter I send out each February.
A former volunteer in Chicago did worry and investigated. He learned she had died in November at the age of 87 with her only niece at her bedside. Tom, who mourned her loss as a friend and as his daughter's godmother, shared the news and obituary with the rest of us.
Coincidentally, it was also last week that an e-mail arrived from a high school classmate who has maintained the electronic communications established months before our 50th reunion in 2007.
"I have time to continue sending out brief updates, but I don't want this communication to turn into an obituary column," he fretted.
He attached the obituary of a popular coach.
He's right, I suppose. But e-mail also provides an avenue for class members and former volunteers spread across the globe to maintain contacts and share condolences as the years and losses mount.
I have come to appreciate obituaries.
I had served in the Peace Corps with my nurse friend, Peggy. I had read reports of her work in more than 50 newsletters during our service and since. We've also had reunions every five years.
But there was much I didn't know or didn't remember. In her obituary I read of her service as a lieutenant in the Navy's nurse corps during World War II, of her advanced education, of her final position as director of Chicago's visiting nurse service and of a multitude of volunteer activities in retirement.
There's no newspaper delivery to our rural retirement home, but technology allows us to check obituaries on the Internet. We scan them not only in the Daily Mail, but also in our hometowns and the communities where we lived before moving to West Virginia three decades ago.
And, yes, I remember the jokes about folks who turn first to the obituary page.
Other news draws me first.
But as my classmate observed in his e-mail, in 2009 most in our class hit what he called "the legendary three score and ten."
I believe we have come to terms with death as a reality of living rather than a subject of fear.
A couple of doctors say that is more a factor of age than of changes in society.
"Researchers have shown that older people have less fear of death, approaching it more openly than their younger fellows," Hampton Roy and Charles Russell state in "The Encyclopedia of Aging and the Elderly."
"Family members and friends may prefer to avoid the open discussion of death initiated by older people, but an accepting attitude would prove more helpful," they state.
Perhaps it also would help in dealing with the dismaying death of the young. I don't know. That my brother's children can't even remember their father is still hard to accept. The oldest was 11 when his plane crashed.
But I do have and treasure good memories and the obituary that summed up a too short, but meaningful life.
Contact Evadna Bartlett at eva...@dailymail.com
