The loss of a husband, the death of a sister, and taking in an elderly mother with dementia: This has been a year like none other for Dr. Rebecca Elon. The 66-year-old Elon has dedicated her professional life to helping older adults. But her experiences over the past year have taught her what families go through when caring for someone suffering from a serious illness as nothing has before. “Reading about caregiving of this kind was one thing. Experiencing it was entirely different,” she said. Were it not for the challenges she’s faced during the coronavirus pandemic, Elon might not have learned firsthand how exhausting end-of-life care can be on both a physical and emotional level—something she understood only abstractly through her previous experience as a geriatrician. And she might not have been struck by what she called the deepest lesson of the pandemic: that caregiving is a manifestation of love, …