This year I attended the Sixth Annual Lighting Ceremony at the Covid-19 Memorial Rami’s Heart in Wall, New Jersey.

Where did 6 years go? It seems like it was yesterday that people were making sourdough bread and complaining that they couldn’t go out while the remainder of us suffered in silence and in solitude.

There were 35,000 people who lost their lives in New Jersey and no one even remembers them. They used before Covid as a time that they had restrictions on them and had not had a loss so unbelievable that it changed them forever.

I was fortunate to be surrounded by people at the Memorial who understand it all — the 6 years, my heartache.

Ed and Marla drove together with me and it still takes your breath away to see all those stones in the yellow hearts.

How life can change so quickly and yet people forget that Covid even exists.

Today, Saint Patrick’s Day, my brother would have been celebrating his wedding anniversary, but he’s not here and I’m really pissed off about that.

It has been 6 years since my brother Johnny died of Covid-19 on April 11, 2020. I have so many fond memories of Johnny and me going to so many beaches growing up on Long Island from early childhood throughout adulthood. One of our favorites was Jones Beach known for its 6.5 miles of white sandy beaches along the Atlantic Ocean with a 2 mile lively boardwalk. It is one of Long Island’s largest and most popular beaches. It truly offered a quintessential beach experience for us and all our friends. It was our slice of Paradise catching rays of sun and riding big waves. I can still see Johnny catching a wave and sitting on top of the world as sung by the Beach Boys.

My brother Johnny and I had a wonderful relationship. We could look at each other and communicate without words. We were great supports for each other since we were toddlers together. We both made each other feel like we always mattered. We were there for one another throughout our lives and had unconditional love.

When Johnny died of Covid-19 almost 6 years ago, I felt a good part of myself died too. Yet I felt his loss happened to my mother, which of course it did, and felt like my pain and grief did not matter. I put myself on the back burner and so did everyone else. Yet I found a sibling death devastating. I discovered sibling grief, especially when older, is often ignored, overlooked, minimized and disenfranchised . Yet my relationship with Johnny, my only sibling, was the longest relationship I shared with anyone since my father had passed and my mother had significant dementia. I lost someone who shared our deepest and earliest memories and years together. I was now an only child struggling for 6 years to manage a very ill mother with dementia without my brother. I was relieved that mother always thought Johnny was still alive and I would go along with her belief. I kept appropriately protecting my mother and often neglecting my own grief. I also continued to feel guilty that I made the decision to place my bother in a nursing home for short term rehabilitation following surgery. My brother had no partner so I was his Health Proxy. However I did not know that Covid-19 was significantly present in this nursing home and no one had warned Johnny or I. I still felt responsible that I failed him and should have sent him home with an aide and home therapists. The worse decision I ever made in my life. I sent him into a lions den of death.

Now when I know someone who lost a close sibling I understand their loss and I am there for them. I make sure I acknowledge their loss, their pain and their grief so it is not put on the back burner and neglected.

There is a four-foot cherry wood dresser that sits in my mother’s bedroom. On the top sits a honey-colored jewelry box, with two drawers filled with tiny fragments of her life. Rings, necklaces and assorted items collected over a lifetime. Most were gifts from my dad, some from my brothers and me. Beside it sits a sea urchin lamp my mother made after one of our trips. Other nicknacks are scattered across the top along with a large eyed, cream and tan stuffed sloth. In the far corner of the top right-hand drawer, with a variety of clothing, sits a small bundle wrapped in a soft cloth and my dad’s old handkerchiefs. Carefully placed there by my mother’s hands.

If you were to lift that small bundle from the drawer and carefully unwrap the layers placed around it, nestled inside you would find my father’s wristwatch. It isn’t the one he wore the day they married so long ago, but the last one he wore before everything changed. It has a slightly worn golden-colored watch band that’s interlocking pieces gently stretched to allow his wrist to slip easily through. Scratches are sprinkled around its perimeter from years of wear on his left arm. The crystal is still clear with minute scratches, while the bezel still shines, allowing the reflections to dance across the ceiling and walls as it moves ever so slightly in your hands, catching the incoming sunlight just right. Although there was more than one watch, this last one continued the mission just as the ones before it had. In essence, carrying on, time uninterrupted.,

Those watches were there when his three kids were born and when he held each grandchild for the first time. For every walk with my mother, my grandmothers, or me, a watch always quietly hugged my dad’s wrist, silently keeping time. Always present for lessons in baseball or softball, basketball or shooting pool, skating and bowling. I can’t remember a day when there wasn’t one present, at least until his last two years.

The watch was there on dad’s wrist, as my arm encircled his and my right hand rested just above where it sat. In the exact same moment, he walked me to my future husband, while his watch recorded the time. It was there when each of my brothers married their wives and the days he said his final goodbyes to his father-in-law, his mother and mother-in-law. The watch that was placed so carefully in the dresser drawer, was the one he wore the day his oldest son took his last breath. It was on his wrist the day our world changed, and his mind just couldn’t tame the dementia any longer. That was when the gold-colored watch came off and was replaced by an inexpensive black one. He told everyone in the Healthcare Facility about it. In his mind it was a wonderful gift from someone who cared. At some point during the pandemic lockdown, his roommate ended up in possession of it. By then it didn’t matter to dad, he didn’t remember it. Dad’s watch was already gently wrapped, quietly sitting in a drawer.

Inside that dresser, where the watch sits so carefully wrapped, my mother’s wedding ring now joins it. My mother wore that ring every day for the fifty-seven years they were married and after dad passed away, until the metal was worn so thin, it was ready to wear through. Another ring is sitting on that finger now. Like dad’s watches, mom’s new ring is continuing the mission, uninterrupted.