[Music]
lives remembered is our
series about people who have died of
cover 19
in washington so we wanted a way to
show people who was being lost and the
toll that this was
taking it was scary to see the range
of people when you can't identify any
commonality
you think this could happen to me you
might see someone
who resembles you or your grandfather or
your uncle or your friend
in these stories i have gone through
obituaries every single
week of the pandemic to find people who
died of copa 19 and there are some that
stand out not because of
uh the sadness but because there's
a comedy or there there's something uh
light about it
so i came across one for thomas dupar
senior
and he sounded like quite a character
after four marriages that ended in
divorce
in four bankruptcies he kept many aba
members gainfully employed
he had lived a wonderfully colorful life
and i don't think anyone was really
sad that his life was coming to an end i
think it was more the circumstances
you know that we weren't able to be
there with him i have a calendar
reminder you know call grandpa because
my dad's always been really good about
call your grandparents you know and so i
just can't like bring myself
to delete that from my calendar you know
like call grandpa
um and so it's kind of funny now because
when that reminder pops up on my phone
every week i can sit there and i can
have a conversation with him i know
exactly how it would go
you know it's like hey sweetheart how
you doing and he would always mix up my
name
katie with um my cousin sadie's name
so he'd be like oh hi sadie how you
doing you know and like halfway through
the call
it would be like oh you know he realizes
it's me
he was such a character you know and he
wasn't for everybody but he was our
character
you know in lieu of flowers please raise
a glass of
cheap sheep scotch two fingers measured
with pinky
and index and they wrote to honor mr
dupar
raise your glass with cheap scotch so
i've come back to that obituary many
times just when i
when i need a laugh because through all
the sadness there are
there is laughter it's so easy to be so
overwhelmed
by the sheer numbers americans are
essentially living
through a mass casualty event every
single day
and that's very overwhelming but when
you
go to the specific person and look at
the individual lives
that can help and when you speak with
their loved ones
perhaps writing a story about their
loved one will help them
with their own morning another colleague
wrote about a
grocery store cashier someone sent me a
message
saying thank you for the series he was
my cashier i had wondered what happened
to him
so thank you so much for memorializing
him
so knowing that we have a responsibility
to our community
is part of what keeps me going working
on this lives remembered series has been
very difficult but i consider it an
honor
to be let into the lives of
these family members during some of the
most difficult
parts of their life