My First COVID Loss

These past two weeks were already difficult enough to deal with emotionally, with the coup attempt on the capitol coupled with the passing of the 300k daily case threshold, over 4,000 deaths in one day, and over 400k Americans lost to the virus. Hundreds of thousands of people are dealing with COVID loss.

Having to process all of that while my grandma was in the hospital, losing her own battle with Covid was a whole other level of emotional turmoil and exhaustion. I had to compartmentalize everything, or I would have had a mental breakdown. Writing about the experience helps me cope with her loss and the situation.

My grandmother went into the hospital on Christmas day due to fatigue and shortness of breath. That was also the last day I got to speak with her. She was having a hard time speaking, and you could barely understand what she was saying.

They put her on a ventilator. She started having liver and kidney issues, but those got better. When they tried easing her off the ventilator, she could not breathe independently and would go into distress.

After speaking with the doctors of a conference call, my uncle – following my grandma’s wishes of not wanting to be resuscitated – planned to take her off the ventilator morphine and let her pass in peace. We were going to do a video call with my uncle and say our goodbyes to her beforehand.

My grandma had plans of her own, though. It seemed that she wanted to go out on her own terms and not leave the weight of the decision to rest on my uncle’s shoulders.

Just as my uncle suited up (to prevent contamination) and went to her room, she went into cardiac arrest and passed away.

He called to tell us what happened and that she didn’t look like how we remembered her; it was probably for the best that we didn’t see her like that, especially now that she had already passed. I am thankful that I didn’t have to see her like that.

Preparing for COVID Loss

That week leading up to everything, I didn’t even want to think about her being in the hospital. My uncle updated us every couple of days, but I didn’t talk to anyone outside my immediate family about it.

Part of me hoped that if I just didn’t talk about it or think about it, she would get better and make it out of the hospital. We learned that that wouldn’t be the case at the beginning of that week. So I had a few days to prepare for her passing mentally, but it didn’t make the loss more bearable.

When she passed away on Saturday, January 9th, I was with my mom and sister, waiting for the video call. After receiving the news of what happened, we let our tears flow and shared stories of her. We also laughed a little at her ever-apparent yet always admirable stubbornness to make her own choices in life.

Grandma Joan – An Amazing Woman

She was an exceptional, self-made woman. She was stern, blunt, hardworking, straight to the point, and always spoke her mind. She gave birth to my mom by herself in her apartment and was discharged from the Navy for refusing to give her up for adoption. With that in mind, I feel privileged to have known her.

Her Passions

She was a nurse, an amazing cook, and played piano, up until her arthritis didn’t let her anymore.

She loved to travel and loved the ocean and sailing. She even had a small yacht and was proudly part of a yacht club out in Long Beach. Every year she would make candy, cookies, and sometimes gingerbread houses for the children at the yacht club. Helping her make them was one of my earliest memories.

She also loved to try new things, especially when it came to food, and always pushed us to step out of our comfort zone, even if we resisted a little.

She loved her cats. Mr. Hobbes, an old orange tabby cat, was the one she had for most of my childhood. Later on, she adopted a couple of feral farm kittens – Tigger and Cisco, who were also tabbies.

Her Lessons and Care

She taught us how to be frugal and the importance of earning and valuing money – paying us to clean the pool or crush cans when we came to visit. It was always fun challenging my sister to see who could crush more cans or crush them the fastest. Swimming in the pool was always one of our favorite things to do, along with hiking in the mountains up the street from where she lived.

She loved to take us shopping for clothes, and Ross, Kohl’s, and Marshall’s were our go-to spots. We always had new clothes for the school year or new semester, which really was nice since we were a low-income family. I still shop at Ross to this day because of her.

Her Strength

And she was strong. She cared about her health and was very on top of taking care of herself. When she had a nasty fall a few years back, she worked really hard to do her therapy and get better, even though she never got back to where she was before the fall and had to retire. My uncle came to live with her and took care of her until a couple of years later when she sold her house in Glendale and moved with him to live in Virginia to care for her there. Even then, she loved to dress up and go out, so he brought her to shows, the coast, out to eat, sightsee historical sites, and more. He took great care of her.

My Memories of Her

I will always cherish my memories of her when I was growing up and as an adult.

We used to go to her house nearly every time we were on a school break, and she would take us to all sorts of amazing places – museums, the zoo, the beach, Griffith Park, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, Six Flags, and even took us sailing to Catalina Island one summer. She was incredibly active, keeping up with us all day around the amusement parks and everywhere else.

My last real memory with her was Christmas 2019, when she, my uncle, his fiance, and her son came up from Virginia to visit. It was lovely to have spent that time with them, especially right before the pandemic started.

She would have been 84 this year. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had lived to be 100 were it not for COVID.

Dealing With COVID Loss

Because of the pandemic, we won’t be able to have a funeral for her. Instead, we’ll do a memorial service later on when it’s safe to gather again. She’s being cremated, and at some point, we will release her ashes out to the ocean.

It’s sad to think that it’s also because she’s no longer with us because of the pandemic. I try not to think of how things might have been different if our country responded to the crisis better and if we’d actually addressed it appropriately and seriously.

I don’t know if I just process grief quickly or repressed the feeling in my compartmentalization of the situation. I feel sort of numb about it, honestly. Like not apathetic, but more so exhausted. This was the closest person ever I’ve lost, and the first person I’ve personally known who has lost their life to covid. It also happens to be the third January in a row where I’ve lost someone close.

And I just feel empty about it. I cried when I was told she wasn’t going to make it, and I cried when we were told she’d already passed away. Now, there doesn’t seem to be much emotion left.

Part of me feels guilty about that, but I try to remind myself that everyone processes grief differently. I like to think that maybe I just have a really good defense mechanism for this type of thing.

Whatever the case is, there’s always the possibility of the emotions resurfacing a few months down the road. Especially with everything going on right now this year specifically, it just sets a bad tone for the rest of the year. If I dwell on the thought too much, it starts to give me anxiety and depresses me. So I just try not to think about it.

I can only hope that I don’t have to experience this again this year (or next January, for that matter). I don’t think I could handle another loss anytime soon.

For now, I am channeling my grief and everything else into my work as I move forward and try to stay positive and stay focused on the future.

Rest in peace grandma.

To end this, I will remind everyone to please wear a mask, limit how often you leave the house as much as you can, don’t go out to eat, and please stay safe in general.

I know the pandemic exhaustion is getting to people, but until we’re all vaccinated, we have to keep being as safe as possible and do our part to protect one another. We’ve lost too many people already.