As Americans near a cruel milestone of one million COVID deaths, personal obituaries written by family and friends tell the stories of the virus’ devastation, from isolated passings to family…
The obituary of Stephen Elliott, who died of COVID-19 on Jan. 5, 2022, rests in the hands of its author, his son Ryan Elliott, on May 4, 2022, in Palo Alto. Ryan and brother Jason tried and failed to persuade their dad to get vaccinated.
As Americans near a cruel milestone of one million COVID deaths, personal obituaries like Stephen Elliott’s, humble death notices written by family and friends, have become a heartbreaking historical record of the worst pandemic of our lives. ” And, ultimately, they often spelled out their loved one’s vaccine status, sometimes like the Elliotts did, and other times explaining that the relative had died “Now, America is left with a million deaths, a million obituaries and a million families searching for the right words to sum up a lifetime cut short and complicated by COVID-19.
When Stacey Silva’s mother died of cancer the year before the pandemic, the whole family had gathered around her bedside. Stacey had held her hand, apologized for those times she had been “a bad daughter,” and told her the family would be OK, that it was alright to let go. “I couldn’t say those last words to my dad. He couldn’t hear my voice. He couldn’t feel the comfort of me holding his hand as he took his last breath,” she said. “COVID didn’t just take my dad, it took everything surrounding his death for me.”
If the pandemic took away the final days of togetherness for loved ones, it brought a special kind of misery to nursing homes, where so many elderly Americans died after months of painful isolation. By early December 2020, county health officials were investigating a COVID outbreak and sending reinforcements to Skyline, where more than 80 people had been infected. Hospitals would soon be overwhelmed by California’s deadliest surge, but the delivery of the first COVID vaccines, which were to be expedited to nursing homes, was only weeks away. Jo-Anne’s family had hoped she would live long enough to feel their embrace.
The promise of a vaccine was immense. Even supporters of President Donald Trump in early 2021 cheered and waved American flags as the first batches were delivered to hospitals. When the delta variant spiked last fall, there was a general reassurance that if you were vaccinated, you might get sick from what we started calling breakthrough cases, but you wouldn’t die.
A picture of the late Valerie Romero-Lopez is part of a handmade memorial collage in her husband’s Pittsburg home. Her mother died Oct. 11, 2021, 10 days before the CDC widened the eligibility for the booster shot that would have included Valerie. Arthur Wilson was 87 and had survived two strokes, colon cancer, pneumonia and sepsis. He wasn’t afraid of COVID.“But Dad,” she told him, “God protects those who help themselves.”
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