‘One million empty chairs': The US families torn apart by COVID
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- 18 May 2022
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The United States has become the first country in the world to surpass one million deaths from COVID-19.
The nation hit the tragic mark on Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, renewing a deep sense of grief felt by countless families that have lost loved ones during the pandemic.
Last week, President Joe Biden said the sombre milestone meant there are “one million empty chairs around the family dinner table”, while urging Americans to continue to exercise caution to prevent the virus from spreading. “This pandemic isn’t over,” he said.
Here, Al Jazeera shares the stories of some of the one million Americans who died due to the coronavirus, and the tremendous loss felt by their families and friends.
Tom Wilson, 69, Avondale, Arizona
Maureen Wilson lost her husband of 37 years, Tom, on January 16, 2021.
She says Tom, who had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, most likely contracted COVID-19 during a visit to the doctor’s office for a flu shot. He spent eight days in hospital but then his family decided to take him home because he did not want to be ventilated.
He died of a heart attack at home, not long after being discharged from hospital, but was only buried in March 2022, after the family could hold a proper funeral, Maureen says.
“I feel terrible – angry, so angry,” she told Al Jazeera of the experience of having a loved one in hospital but not being able to see them.
Maureen says she looks back fondly on her life with her husband, whom she described as a romantic who frequently wrote her cards and love letters. She recently went through some of their old correspondence.
She says he was her best friend and soulmate.
“I never thought I’d be loved the way Tom Wilson loved me – completely. No matter what I did or said or looked like, he loved me,” Maureen wrote in a message on a Facebook grief support group.
Peggy Rampersad, 89, Fredericksburg, Virginia
Peggy Rampersad died on January 20, 2022, a week after her 89th birthday. Her family says the matriarch, who was fully vaccinated but had years earlier developed kidney disease and had congestive heart failure, caught COVID-19 from her caregiver.
Born and raised in the small Virginia town of Fredericksburg, Peggy reinvented herself several times throughout her life, her daughter Gita Rampersad recalls.
At age 20, despite losing her own mother, Peggy followed her dream to study art at the renowned Art Institute of Chicago. Once in the big city, she met the love of her life, whom she was married to for 40 years. She later went from a promising artist to an accomplished intellectual, receiving a PhD from the University of Chicago.
“She was the type of person who believed in reinvention,” Gita, who is an only child, told Al Jazeera. “I saw my mother reinvent herself on multiple occasions throughout my lifetime.”
Over the past 25 years, Gita says she became “best friends” with her mother. The two spoke every day and travelled together often. “We enjoyed each other’s company,” she says.
She describes her mother as being “confident, opinionated but fair”, as well as “kind, graceful and sophisticated”.
“She was a remarkable woman,” Gita says.
Viola Faria, 76, Brooklyn, New York
Viola Faria died on December 29, 2021, in St Louis, Missouri, at age 76.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she worked for an oil company before starting her own home cleaning business. But at age 40, she quit her job to become the full-time caregiver for her then-five-year-old daughter, Christina, who has cerebral palsy.
“She was my full-time mom. She did all the things regular moms do, and in many ways, I had an idyllic childhood,” Christina, now 36, told Al Jazeera. “But along with that she also did my therapies every day, my breathing treatments, and basically [was] my arms and legs.”
For several years, the two lived in Hawaii, where Viola became an advocate for people with disabilities. Read More…
