Son’s obituary for his father shares Raleigh family’s COVID grief. ‘He deserved better.’

Larry Katzin last saw his father getting loaded into an ambulance, knowing that he’d been sick with pneumonia but nothing more.

Jerry Katzin was 88, an almost fanatical walker in Raleigh, so much so that many knew him as “the mayor of the greenway” for the hours he spent circling Shelley Lake in his oversized orange coat.

No one suspected COVID-19. His daughter, Betsy Katzin, followed the ambulance to Rex Hospital where, still talking and conscious, her father agreed to the ventilator — even before his COVID-19 test results came back positive. She touched her father’s hand as he went under sedation, and she felt it go ice cold as they parted.

Two days later, on Dec. 14, Katzin died of the virus — one of 337 fatalities in Wake County since the pandemic first struck in March.

So his son typed out a long and deeply personal obituary, venting the family’s anger. It appeared Sunday in The News & Observer.

“Jerry Katzin died on Monday evening, December 14, alone in a COVID-19 ICU ward, accompanied only by the ventilator tube that was delivering oxygen to his lungs,” he wrote. “He deserved better.”

Staying silent felt wrong

The obituary has since been shared hundreds of times by people who never knew Gerald Katzin, a longtime physics professor at N.C. State University.

“No one should die alone,” a nurse posted on Twitter, having read it.

Not everyone chooses to grieve so publicly. The Boston Globe reported in April that some families feel a stigma from loved ones claimed by the pandemic.

The feeling is common enough for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address, noting its tendency to increase isolation and depression.

“Stigma hurts everyone by creating more fear or anger toward ordinary people instead of focusing on the disease that is causing the problem,” the CDC reports.

This never occurred to Larry Katzin. For his family, now in quarantine, unable to hug and share photos with each other, let alone say goodbye, staying silent felt wrong.

In the obituary, Larry Katzin listed the survivors who missed their chance to hold a hand and offer final comfort.

“He was not surrounded by his loving wife of 62 years, Judy Katzin,” it read, “his loving children, daughter Betsy Katzin (Jim Comen) of Raleigh and Larry R. Katzin (Jim Grimes) of Denver, Colorado; his loving grandchildren, Carson Merenbloom, Benjamin Merenbloom, and Noah Merenbloom of Raleigh, and Julia Katzin of Denver; or his loving brother, Larry F. Katzin (Linda Scher) of Raleigh.”

His grief, vented to the world, presented a poor but necessary substitute.

“It was kind of raw anger at the time I wrote it,” Larry Katzin said. “I didn’t want it to be preachy and try to get into a political divide about some people who may be under the false notion that COVID isn’t serious.”

And while the family takes some comfort from strangers’ sympathy, their obituary also highlights the confinement that follows death during a pandemic. As the obituary notes, Jerry Katzin’s graveside service is postponed by the family quarantine. On Monday night, they held a Zoom service, where Betsy Katzin delivered the eulogy.

“We’re Jewish,” she said. “Our normal practice is we bury 24 to 48 hours after a death. People come over to the house. You’re just surrounded by people and food. As each person comes in, there’s a new set of tears. We haven’t had that.”

Katzin was a theoretical physicist who specialized in curvature collineations — the stuff of general relativity.

Hard to grieve alone

His obituary paints a homier portrait of a man raised during the Depression who preserved old toasters and vacuum cleaners, keeping one collection in a box labeled “strings too short to save.”

A fitness enthusiast, he jogged the outer track at Carroll Middle School well into his 50s, lifted weights and water-skied until back trouble turned him into a greenway walker.

The family lovingly nicknamed his exercise routine “Jerobics.”

“As kids we had to drink skim milk and eat our peanut butter and jelly on Roman meal,” Betsy Katzin wrote in her eulogy, “while the other kids drank whole milk and ate lunches made on Wonder bread.”

As a family, they find it hard to grieve alone. Larry Katzin didn’t know his words had reached so many people, and the knowledge is cathartic in a way.

But the anger remains, both at the timing and manner of Jerry Katzin’s passing. The pictures, the food, the hugs and tears will have to wait — like so much else.

This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 1:09 PM.

Josh Shaffer

The News & Observer

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Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.