One Million

[0] My husband, Morty Wallitzer, was a psychologist who loved jazz and cooking.

[1] He died on April 11, 2020, when we were in separate hospitals with COVID.

[2] We were both 90 years old then and had the great good fortune of 68 years together.

[3] But the end was difficult and surreal.

[4] We didn't have a chance to say goodbye, and he was creed.

[5] with no one who loved him to see him off.

[6] He seemed to have just vanished.

[7] Now, almost two years later, I've come to acceptance, but I still sleep on my own side of the bed, wearing one of his t -shirts, and sometimes I listen for the sound of his footsteps in the apartment and his voice in the morning.

[8] My uncle Terry, who was also my godfather, died of COVID -19.

[9] on May 2nd, 2020.

[10] Michael Manlow was my uncle.

[11] My mother, Nydia Lopez.

[12] Eleni Potamianas, my great aunt.

[13] He was an Air Force vet and a firefighter for decades.

[14] He was my godfather.

[15] And the person who introduced me to Nirvana.

[16] He was also Notre Dame Cathedral Latin's number one fan of all time.

[17] And grunge and rock and roll.

[18] and Elvis Costello.

[19] He attended virtually every baseball and football practice and game.

[20] And light sparkled from him.

[21] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro.

[22] I lost my uncle.

[23] My brother, Ed Ryan.

[24] Michael Ware.

[25] Died in April of 2020 at the age of 79.

[26] He was the first person to really show me that adults could be silly and have fun.

[27] In the coming days, the number of Americans.

[28] Americans who have died from COVID -19 will reach one million.

[29] Mark Mulckel -Shend.

[30] Dominic Petrella.

[31] Myra Molina Lopez.

[32] Bob Green, Melva Klebinoff, was my dad.

[33] He was my father.

[34] She was my older sister.

[35] Today, on the Daily.

[36] She was only 42 years ago.

[37] We hear from listeners.

[38] about the people they lost.

[39] He taught me how to fly a kite when I was a kid, and he was really good at it.

[40] You could never leave her house without her giving you something, like food or some kind of present.

[41] He was a fighter, and he loved Gandalf.

[42] And what it's like to grieve when the rest of the world is trying to move on.

[43] My mom and I often had a contentious relationship.

[44] He had a troubled side, a generated anger.

[45] He was a good father.

[46] I miss him.

[47] I miss him every day.

[48] She was very wonderful.

[49] Just miss him every day.

[50] I loved him.

[51] I miss you, Frank.

[52] It's Friday.

[53] May 13th.

[54] My father, Joshua Suzuki, died of COVID at age 76.

[55] After the disease swept through the nursing home, he was living in just outside of Seattle.

[56] The night before he died, the hospital called me to tell me that it was, time to come in to say goodbye.

[57] I want to believe that it was some professional courtesy because he had been an OBGYN and he delivered many babies at that hospital, but it's just as likely that the hospital was offering this kindness, this chance to say goodbye to everyone that they could.

[58] We didn't know as much about COVID back then.

[59] So the hospital put me in this hazmat -looking outfit.

[60] And my dad was never conscious during my visit, but the moment I leaned over him and started talking to him, hey, dad, it's Ken. How are you doing?

[61] All the equipment that he was hooked up to started alarming really loudly.

[62] and of course I freak out.

[63] I'm holding my dad's hand and shouting in my helmet for him to hold on and I'm yelling for the nurse.

[64] The nurse comes over pretty calmly and it turns out that I accidentally disconnected some wire and he had it all back connected within five seconds and everything was quiet again.

[65] and after I had a chance to gather myself, I chuckled to myself because I knew that my dad would have been laughing his butt off if he'd have seen what just happened.

[66] And the next day, he died.

[67] My mother, Carmen Dolores Nietzsche, succumbed to COVID -19 on May 14th, 2020.

[68] Margaret Connolly.

[69] mother.

[70] Regina Parsons.

[71] Judy Chabitowski.

[72] She was elderly.

[73] She was going to pass away someday, but COVID's a terrible way to die.

[74] And those last few days were just horribly painful.

[75] She was depleted and struggling for air.

[76] And the sound of her gasping still haunts me. I didn't get to be there to hold their hands.

[77] I could not hold her hand on this final journey, even though I was only a few miles away.

[78] I didn't get to be there to say goodbye.

[79] I had to say goodbye over the phone.

[80] Me and my siblings never truly got a chance to say goodbye to our mother.

[81] We had to do it over FaceTime.

[82] It was awful to lose my mom without the ability to be with her.

[83] I cling to the hope that in those final moments, Mommy heard me saying, I love you, lady.

[84] It was a really awful time for a funeral in mid -April of 2020 because the pandemic was so new and everybody was pretty scared about it.

[85] We had a funeral mask and a Zoom celebration of life.

[86] And while beautiful, that came up short on closure for me. We could only have 10 people at her funeral, and we all had to sit space apart.

[87] That was the first time I wore a mask in public.

[88] I didn't get to grieve with family.

[89] It was incredibly painful to carry around the pain of losing someone and not having honored them.

[90] You're afraid now of getting it and passing it to someone else in your family and losing them.

[91] I didn't feel I had permission to really experience joy or celebrate events for other people.

[92] I didn't even hug my family because we were so scared about everything.

[93] I didn't even touch my grandmother in the coffin because, you know, I was scared.

[94] You know, I think about that a lot.

[95] I wish I had.

[96] My loved one was named Paul Cooper.

[97] He was my husband.

[98] He died at age 69 on March 3rd, 2021, one month before he was eligible for a vaccine against COVID.

[99] Owen Heading was my grandfather.

[100] Salvador Ramirez was his name.

[101] Catherine Meddawa Warner.

[102] Lloyd Smith.

[103] Joyce Priggerson.

[104] William Peters.

[105] April Marie Dawson, my first born.

[106] He was my dad.

[107] My father.

[108] She was my mother -in -law.

[109] She was my beautiful daughter, 43 years old.

[110] Both of my grandparents received their email saying they were eligible for the vaccine about a week after they went into the hospital for COVID.

[111] He went into the hospital on the 21st of December and by the 25th, that was it.

[112] He was aged 25 and 51 weeks.

[113] weeks when he died.

[114] He was days from celebrating a 72nd wedding anniversary.

[115] About four weeks before vaccines became available.

[116] And weeks from being eligible for her vaccine.

[117] When she fell ill with COVID, I was so angry.

[118] It was right before.

[119] It was really angry that he missed the vaccine because it came out in January.

[120] Just right before a vaccine was going to be available to her.

[121] And we all just had this terrible feeling of regret.

[122] We'll be right back.

[123] My grief has been complicated by the fact that he most likely contracted the virus through members of my family who are unvaccinated for religious reasons.

[124] My dad died right before the boosters were approved and he was double vaccinated.

[125] Mike was vaccinated and boosted.

[126] But clearly he was around someone who was carrying a heavy viral load.

[127] But unfortunately, the people around him weren't.

[128] Because the doctors said his virus presented like he was never vaccinated.

[129] and brought COVID into his home knowingly and never said anything.

[130] You know, when COVID first happened in America, I never really took it seriously.

[131] I always thought it was just elderly people who had passed away from it.

[132] But to know and realize that it took away someone who was important to me so quickly and out of nowhere, then it became a real scary thing and that this wasn't a joke and it was something that needed to be taken seriously and I feel like if I would have just been more responsible when it came to wearing a mask and following those rules, then my sister would still be alive today.

[133] We let our guard down and went shopping on Christmas Eve, Eve, to one's door.

[134] I didn't take precautions when I got home.

[135] I killed my daughter.

[136] And I have learned nothing from loss.

[137] This aspect of it, that they died when maybe they didn't have to quite yet.

[138] The things around that loss become extremely sensitive and emotional.

[139] Being in the room with someone who was dying from COVID, watching them gasp for the last breath is the most heart -wrenching, gutting, anger -inducing feeling you can ever have because it didn't have to be this way?

[140] When he passed, I was...

[141] I'm angry.

[142] Furious.

[143] I'm just so angry.

[144] And this selfish world.

[145] I would say anger was at the top of the list.

[146] I was so angry because his passing was avoidable.

[147] It was that feeling that...

[148] If people were...

[149] would have stayed home if they were sick, if they would have followed the guidelines.

[150] If people had followed the guidelines that we were given.

[151] It breaks my heart to know that my dad died after he followed the roles.

[152] After we spent two years apart being locked away, waving through windows and holidays, not sharing them together, making memories.

[153] I hung on to that anger for so long.

[154] I hope that one day I get to remember Mike in the way that he changed me. and in the way that he loved me. But for right now, I'm just so angry at the people that took him away.

[155] I'm already crying.

[156] Okay, so my grandma, meet to Joseph.

[157] Born in 80, died of COVID December, 2021.

[158] She was 87, but, like, she was completely healthy.

[159] And, like, it happened really, really, really, fast.

[160] Like, she, like, passed out.

[161] And it's got to the hospital.

[162] And when the doctor found out she wasn't vaccinated, he was just like, well, it is what it is.

[163] And, like, obviously, like, yeah, like, she should have been vaccinated.

[164] But it's not like we didn't try.

[165] My grandma, like, she was, like, bound to her house.

[166] Just not because she was old just because of, like, I don't know, like, Alzheimer's and stuff like that.

[167] But, again, like, she was fine.

[168] Like, she remembered, like, most things.

[169] and we scheduled someone to come and, like, give her the vaccine, like, twice, and they never came.

[170] And this was the summer of 2021.

[171] And she died in December, and it sucks.

[172] And it's, like, it's hard to talk to people about because we're like, oh, well, she wasn't vaccinated, too bad.

[173] And it's like, she was still a person.

[174] Like, she used to have people who loved her.

[175] Like, yeah, I don't know.

[176] Brooks, my husband.

[177] He was 42 years old at the time of his death.

[178] He died August 16th, 2021.

[179] Our daughter was four months old at the time.

[180] All he had ever wanted was to be a father.

[181] He was a great father.

[182] He was a former police officer and an army veteran and he was unvaccinated at the time of his death.

[183] I miss him every day.

[184] His name was Gary Newman, Timothy Perkins, my uncle on my mom's sign.

[185] Spencer Cox, who was my first boyfriend.

[186] My uncle was unvaccinated.

[187] Ironically, he was also an emergency preparedness.

[188] We have food in the pantry that won't go bad for 25 years, but he wouldn't get a vaccine to be prepared for this.

[189] It's a different kind of acceptance, knowing that this was an avoidable death and that misinformation contributed to it.

[190] So having lost this person to something like COVID, which they made a very vocal political stand against doing anything to protect themselves, that's been very difficult.

[191] And it's still very much his fault, but it doesn't feel right saying that about somebody who's passed away, but it's the truth.

[192] When I got there to see her, she was asleep.

[193] I think they had given her some type of like, drugs.

[194] And like, oh, God, she looks so tiny.

[195] And I was like, you know, can you guys put a blanket on her?

[196] Like, like, she has like this little thin little blanket.

[197] It's December in New York City.

[198] Like, come on.

[199] The woman is frail, like visibly shaking.

[200] So then, like, this doctor comes in.

[201] Dude.

[202] He is so rude.

[203] Like, so rude.

[204] He's, like, trying to, like, almost pressure me and my sister to sign the do not resuscitate forms.

[205] And I was just like, hey, like, we're not here for that.

[206] Like, we're just here to say goodbye.

[207] Like, can you get the blankets?

[208] Can you fix the mask?

[209] And he's like, well, you know, she's old.

[210] She should have been vaccinated.

[211] Like, if she was vaccinated, we probably wouldn't be here.

[212] And I'm like, dude, I got tears in my eyes.

[213] Like, can we not go there?

[214] But you could just tell he was being so dismissive about the fact that, you know, she wouldn't be here.

[215] She was vaccinated and there's nothing to do.

[216] And if she was vaccinated, maybe.

[217] And I'm not shitting on health care workers.

[218] Like, I can't imagine working COVID stuff.

[219] But this man was on one.

[220] And I was just getting, like, so frustrated because I'm like, I'm literally just trying to say goodbye.

[221] And you're trying to do this guilt trip to me. Like, this isn't the fucking time.

[222] Anyway, so they give my grandma the blanket.

[223] They give her the mask.

[224] And, you know, we said goodbye.

[225] which I don't get into, but sucked, you know, it sucked.

[226] Yeah.

[227] So then I left.

[228] And, you know, she held on for the people that I think she wanted to see.

[229] And then on Monday, on that Monday, she went away.

[230] She passed.

[231] Yeah.

[232] On Monday, she passed.

[233] It has been really hard going through grief in a pandemic related to the pandemic because it's inescapable.

[234] This grief process in particular has been so much different than the other times I've had to grieve family members passing.

[235] Watching the news and hearing the death tolls rise is hard.

[236] It makes it very difficult to watch.

[237] Seeing all of these new COVID pills and COVID treatments that could have saved.

[238] my grandfather's life is hard.

[239] Watch the world struggle to continue to care.

[240] Logging on to Facebook and seeing people disregard COVID severity and spreading conspiracy theories about the vaccines is really hard.

[241] Watch people continue to protest vaccine and protest masking.

[242] It's almost like watching my mom die in a car accident in front of my face over and over.

[243] And I feel like a lot of folks lack empathy and don't understand why still a year out that I am breathing my mother's death in such an open way.

[244] This journey has changed me for worse, unfortunately.

[245] Time keeps moving forward and the world desperately wants to move past this pandemic.

[246] But my mother, she's still gone.

[247] My best friends are no longer my best friends because of this.

[248] You know, people have said some of the most horrible things to me since he's died.

[249] Our loved one's deaths were politicized, and everybody has this feeling that they have a right to comment on how my loved one died.

[250] I can't leave the house without someone saying something insensitive.

[251] They would say something like, well, was it really COVID that he died from?

[252] Because, you know, the hospitals will lie about that to get more money or something.

[253] Continually bringing up that it's just like the flu or my mom didn't die from COVID, that I'm a crisis actor.

[254] Someone told me, you know, I'm sorry about your dad, but the world just has to go on.

[255] It will be a long time.

[256] It will be a long time before I'm on the other side of this.

[257] People think that this is over and it's not.

[258] For me, it's just beginning.

[259] When I started to accept that he was gone and that really there wasn't much I could do while he was still alive or afterwards to obviously change that, I think what started to help me was just remembering as many positive experiences as I could with him.

[260] And for me, I keep him close.

[261] by remembering him, because I remember hearing, we're only alive as long as someone remembers us.

[262] Our father immigrated in the 1960s to this country in search of a better life and a better education.

[263] He devoted his career to science, but his life was really all about asking and answering questions.

[264] His family and friends knew him as a man with an insatiable curiosity.

[265] about everything around him, from why a particular street name was selected to what the difference was between barley and wheat.

[266] He loved musicals, especially man from La Mancha, and he believed in the impossible dream in the fight against injustice.

[267] I also remember her having these really long fake nails that kind of scared me as a child.

[268] She owned a beauty salon in Florida, and she wore them long like that all.

[269] the time.

[270] One time she gave me a backscratch with her nails.

[271] I must have been about six or seven years old at the time, and it felt amazing.

[272] After that backscratch, I was not afraid of her nails anymore, and I thought they were kind of cool.

[273] Bob loved poetry and could recite dozens of poems by heart, especially Dylan Thomas.

[274] And you'd also do Robert Burns with a dick broke.

[275] I especially remember him at New Year's Eve, and I hear Bob's voice as he recited, for all langsine, my dear, for old langsine.

[276] We'll take a cup of kindness yet.

[277] For all langsine.

[278] When Frank and I met in Los Angeles in 1974, Frank was an angry Vietnam back.

[279] I was a lonely, peace -loving girl.

[280] We moved to New York in 1981, where I had grown up, to be near my family.

[281] And so Frank could try to become a commercial.

[282] she'll still like the tiger.

[283] Frank got his first camera while he was attacking.

[284] He was playing cards and he had the whole left.

[285] He was a good man. He was a great man. He wasn't ever scared about it.

[286] Every world.

[287] It was a little father.

[288] Without one.

[289] We love it.

[290] Every day.

[291] I'm missing my family.

[292] I miss my family.

[293] I miss helping me to print out photographs.

[294] I mean, school, I miss fighting with them in the car.

[295] It was a steady, safe time.

[296] I love the toys in the world.

[297] We'll be right this thing that is that I'm having a great person.

[298] We'll be right back.

[299] Here's what else you need to another day.

[300] On Thursday, President Biden marked the approaching milestone of one million deaths from COVID -19 by ordering all U .S. flags to be flown at half -staff, and by encouraging Americans to take time to grieve, honor, and mourn those who have been lost.

[301] As a nation, Biden said, quote, we must not grow numb to such sorrow.

[302] We must remember.

[303] Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson and Luke Vanderpluke, with help from Claire Tennisketter and Eric Kruppelke.

[304] It was edited by Larissa Anderson with sound design from Michael Simon Johnson, Alicia B. Etube, Marian Lazzano, and Dan Powell.

[305] It was fact -checked by Caitlin Love, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lazzano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

[306] Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of Wunderly.

[307] Special thanks to Julie Bosman, Monica Davy, Wendy Doer, Patricia Willans, Chelsea Daniel, Eliza Alphig Tigg, and Matt Ruby.

[308] That's it for the daily.

[309] I'm Michael Barrow.

[310] See you on Monday.