Who I Lost
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I lost my baby,
my daughter Clarissa.
It’s still a nightmare.
Clarissa was a happy girl.
She loved to dance, she loved to sing,
and she was full of life.
One day, she called me “Mom, Mom,” so I went to the room
and she said, “Look!”
And she showed me her pregnancy test is positive.
But she was suffering from brain cancer.
And she got Covid and she was hospitalized.
And she passed.
It’s not fair.
She had the baby,
she had her family.
And we loved her.
We did everything we could — everything.
When she passed I told her,
I’m sorry I couldn’t be here with you.
They didn’t let me be here with you.
I’m sorry my daughter.
I love you.
And we’ll meet again.”
To be able to take care of Sai
it's like taking care of her.
Only Sai can give me a little bit of relief
from this pain.
When I see him growing, when he calls me,
“Mom, Mom,” it’s like, you know, Clarissa,
used to call me all the time, “Mom.”
That’s like, you know, for me, a prize.
We go with the day, we go with the day, one day at a time.
I miss my daughter, I miss her a lot.
One out of 670 Americans has died of the virus. Millions of Americans are adjusting to a new reality without their loved ones that would have been unimaginable only a year ago.
Oh how I will miss him communicating with me through music. He might not have always had the right words, but he always had the right song.—Mary Helen Bobo, Mr. Winterrowd's girlfriend
For the bereaved, just as they are trapped in the pandemic, they are trapped in their grief.
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I met Ashlie working as a CNA
in one of the long-term care facilities here in Minot.
We were helping change
a resident, and this individual pooped,
and I ended up catching it in my hands as there, you know,
there is no brief to go into and
that’s how our friendship took off.
I have one older brother, so I set Eric and Ashlie up.
I just knew that they were going to be really
good together, and they were.
He was getting married to my best friend
and I got a big sister.
I was very happy —
cheesing ear-to-ear crying.
But her life was cut short.
I wrote her obituary and picked out her outfit.
She was buried actually in one of my sweaters,
but that’s not uncommon considering
how often we traded clothes.
After Ashlie died, my brother, he lost his life.
It’s like he’s starting back over from square one.
He’s just got to keep moving forward.
I was trying to be strong for him,
but I still definitely have my moments where I just
break down and cry.
There’s so many times I wish I could just call her
and text her and I can’t.
I look at that wedding dress,
and I just remember us.
All of our good happy times and …
… never in a million years
did I think I’d be sitting here talking about my sister-in-law.
I think it’s safe to say that never
take for granted the time you have with people.
The young have lost the old, parents and grandparents who could have lived for decades more.
He loved driving his truck. When I pass a box truck now, I think of him driving or me and him driving around in it.—Alex Narain, Mr. Narain’s son
You wake up and the first thing that’s on your mind is, ‘Hey, your dad’s gone.’ I can’t sing music with my dad in the car. We can’t talk tennis. Anybody that comes into my life — the person I marry, friends I make — they’re never going to know my dad. I’m moving to live with my mom for a while. I feel him there, but I also know he’s not there.—Jourdan Mission, Mr. Mission's daughter
Gone is their loving presence, their wisdom, their comfort.
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“Mom’s love for me was unconditional.
There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me.
And there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
I bought this house for my mom.
I was tired of her moving around every two years.
We were living together here about a year
and a few months.
She would tell me sometimes,
‘Can you keep your music down today,
I got to take a test?’”
“Graduating class to the Morgan State University.”
“She received her degree in speech communication
on May 16, 2020.
Of course it was virtual, so we did it in the living room.
We did a whole photo shoot and we put all this stuff up
on the wall.
And she just had a ball.
That was
one of the most happiest days I’ve ever seen that lady.
She had reached a lifelong goal that
she had been talking about.
Just always said,
‘I’m going to get a degree.
It’s going to be the last thing I do.
I’m going to get a degree.’
And it was.
It was.
I thought my mom would die of old age, such
a faithful woman.
I just knew she would be on this earth
until she was old and gray.
On my mom’s death certificate it
says Covid.
So any time I hear that, I automatically go to her,
and I’m thinking about her.
It’s just, it’s a trigger.
The heaviness of grief is very unpredictable.
It comes out of nowhere.
There are a lot of reminders — just coming
home, being in here, this room that I’m in was hers.
The first few months,
I didn’t really touch anything up here.
I couldn’t — it was rough, smelling her scent,
just being in her dwelling.
Just walking in this house even now, sometimes …
… I hate it.
I hate that I bought this house.”
Many families have suffered unthinkable blows, losses that went beyond a single person.
I miss my mom and dad calling me. I miss them bothering me. I miss their voices. I still listen to the voice mails that I have from them on my phone. ‘Where are we going to go out to eat?’ ‘Are you going to come over? I miss you.’—Cathrine Solomon, the Solomons' daughter
A household of five with only one survivor. The loss is immeasurable, traumatic and completely devastating: not being able to say goodbye; having them all in the I.C.U. at the same time; no one to comfort them when we had to tell them of the others’ passing. To have them all die so close together has been traumatic. Terrifying.—April Cruice, a family member
More than half of the deaths have occurred since November, and for many, the grief is achingly fresh.
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Karl’s been gone a little over a month today.
We were able to bring him home,
here to the ranch, on the Navajo Nation.
I talk to him daily, I tell him
I miss him, and I love him.
We met through rodeo, that was the love of our lives,
both of us.
He just was a genuinely kind person.
He loved everything about raising cattle.
His cattle, his horses, you could tell they
knew that he was gone.
They just weren’t themselves.
We’ve been married 39 years, and I just don’t know,
you know, I was 19 when I got married,
so I don’t know what to do.
My kids were really shattered because he
had such a close relationship with them.
He was really
a good dad.
I feel cheated.
We were all cheated, especially my granddaughter.
She just loved her grandpa
so much,
and he loved her.
I keep praying that I can go on
because my whole purpose was our family,
and this is all up to me now as both a mom and a dad,
and that’s really difficult.
I think the hardest part, too, was the pain
he went through, the fear.
He spoke Navajo and he had a hard time, sometimes
understanding, especially at that type of environment
where things are chaotic and you see death all around you.
I could imagine he really needed somebody to talk to.
Just to think about what he was going through mentally.
It’s so unnecessary, it was so unnecessary.
By early March, Americans were lining up in all 50 states to be vaccinated. Deaths across the country have slowed.
There is hope that the pandemic has finally loosened its grip.
But for those who have lost someone, their own lives are permanently redrawn.