I lost my cousin Georgie to Covid 2 years ago, Feb 16th.

He was like my brother, a confidant, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He and I became very close when we both ended up in prep school together and we were only a year apart.

We were famous for our high school parties, the “George & Alexis” parties. My aunt and uncle, his parents, had moved away to Florida, so he was essentially living on his own in their home. When I think back on this now, I can’t believe they allowed this, but he was really responsible and such a good guy. We would have 30 to 40 people over and it was just an absolute blast with food and lots of dancing. He was an amazing DJ. We shared our love of R&B and funk music.

He knew that if he ever played the opening horns for “Funkin’ for Jamaica” by Tom Browne, no matter where we were, I would get up and dance. He would go on to do this throughout our adult life … on the radio, at weddings, parties, etc. because he KNEW I would get up and dance and he would join me. Anytime, I hear that song to this day I can’t help but smile and think of him.

As children, we were best friends, best buddies through our teens and young adult years.
We grew into adults with careers and enjoyed great successes in our lives. Even though I moved away from my home state, we were always in touch!

I moved to Florida to be with my now husband and George would often come visit us on his way down to see his mom. One weekend, he came to see my husband Kirk & I in our new home and was surprised to see that my husband didn’t have the correct tools to finish a project. The two of them left for Home Depot, came home after a few hours, and then worked in the garage for the rest of the day. I made a delicious steak and pilaf dinner for him and marveled about what they built in my garage and in just a few hours!! There was shelving, a workbench, and Kirk now had every tool he could possibly need to do tasks around the house.

Georgie was just the guy who could do just about anything. I called him often just to check in but also to ask silly questions. When I became a mother to my girls, I would always see him at Christmas, and he always had the most thoughtful gifts for my two little girls.

We come from a very close knit Armenian family so I expected to carry on this loving relationship until we were both sitting in rocking chairs, reminiscing about how much fun we had. Sadly, that ended two years ago in February and to this day, I still can’t believe he’s gone. I was texting with him while he was in the hospital & very sick and made him promise me to please get better and when he did, he would maybe work a little less and enjoy the fruits of his labor. He agreed to that as well.

Trust me when I say, I was determined to keep him honest about this and make sure he went somewhere fabulous to recuperate. Maybe even Jamaica. Unfortunately for me and our entire huge close knit Armenian family, that did not happen.

He never made it out of the hospital. I will miss him for the rest of my days on this Earth.

Pandemic Revisionism and Social Forgetting: Reflections and Intersections, January 26, 2024

Blind Willie Johnson’s lyrics, in quotes, to ‘Jesus is Coming Soon’, a 1920’s blues piece he wrote about the 1918 flu pandemic: (Thank you Dr. Nancy Bristow for inspiring me to look this up)

Chorus:
“Well, we done told you, God’s done warned you
Jesus coming soon
We done told you, God’s done warned you
Jesus coming soon”

“In the year of 19 and 18, God sent a mighty disease
It killed many a-thousand, on land and on the seas.”

“Great disease was mighty and the people were sick everywhere
It was an epidemic, it floated through the air”

Why wasn’t the 1918 pandemic part of my education?

“The doctors they got troubled and they didn’t know what to do
They gathered themselves together, they called it the Spanish flu…”

“Soldiers died on the battlefield, died in the camps too
Well, the captain said to the lieutenant, “I don’t know what to do.”

My grandfather was a decorated veteran of WWI. My grandmother was a pharmacist and physical therapist during the same era. Her suffragist activism and his war heroism represent the focus of American attention in the history books, not the hundreds of thousands of American pandemic flu losses, including the large numbers of soldiers whose flu deaths were not recorded with this as the primary cause.

Just over a hundred years later, their son, my father, died of Covid-19.

My first loss happened while the Covid-19 death count was still in the tens of thousands, early, not yet to the hundreds of thousands and continuing to well beyond a million American loved ones dead, each and every one precious the way my father was precious. How can we forget this many people? Yet, look at 1918.

Did anyone in my family suffer this flu? No one talked about it and I never knew to ask.

“Well, God is warning the nation, He’s a’warning them every way
To turn away from the evil and seek the Lord and pray”

Well, the nobles said to the people, “You better close your public schools.”
“Until the events of death has ended, you better close your churches too.”

“Read the Book of Zachariah, Bible plainly say
Thousands of people, they did die, on account of their wicked ways”

This new era of Covid-19 social forgetting is now personal, given my own losses to the viciousness of the virus and subsequent political responses to it, also vicious. Thanks to attitudes of American individualism, many of us suffer disenfranchised and complicated grief around loss without good-bye, missed stories not told at funerals that couldn’t happen, and new discernment about what is safe space to grieve.

Is the lack of historical education and awareness of 1918 doomed to repeat itself with the Covid pandemic? When I hear about projects like Rituals in the Making and WhoWeLost, which provide opportunities to tell our stories or otherwise express ourselves artistically, I am hopeful. I am thankful for the dedicated work of those who keep us informed on the public health issues and historical perspectives, through blogs like Dr. Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist, and Dr. Nancy Bristow’s historical research into the 1918 pandemic. With new perspective, I find a certain irony in the Covid myth, “Covid-19 really was like the flu”. Yep, in so many ways not meant by those who make this statement today. Big change begins with awareness, opportunity, and baby steps.

Shelley Chambers
2/1/2024

Four years ago today I had never heard of Covid. We started to hear of the Corona virus someplace else but not in the United States. It was a joke, a virus named after a beer.

In two months from today you would be entering the hospital with Covid 19 and you never came home. How naive I was then.

When the Christmas candy goes on clearance, and I start to see all the Valentine candy overflowing from the shelves at Stop & Shop, I can only think of my friend, M, who I worked with for over twenty years.

As soon as Christmas was over, M would load a big bowl on the reception desk with candy hearts, the pastel kind, that used to be made by Necco. She’d scoop her hand (long ass nails and all) into that bowl and toss (yes, literally throw) the candy hearts at us or to us as we walked by on our way to our cubicles.

I can see her now: “UR SWEET, HUG ME, #1FAN, PEN PAL, THAT SMILE, THAT SMILE”. Sometimes, she’d read us the heart’s message as she chucked them toward us.

I miss her. When she died in the hospital after 6 days on a vent, part of me died too.

My brothers and I would wake up around 3 or 4 on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left. Dad and Mom would appear shortly after. As I look back, I can see Dad sitting on the sofa, his thinning hair disheveled from a short night of sleep. His eyes tired, a cup of coffee in his hands wearing his robe. Around us were the surprises carefully placed encircling the tree. I loved December then. The anticipation, the joy and the closeness of family. I loved lying under the tree watching the lights sparkle off the glass bulbs. Everything was as it was supposed to be then.

The 21st of December in 1997 was different. My husband and I were spending the evening with our three kids. We had brought in the tree and had the boxes of decorations spread out all over the floor. The Christmas lights were already on the tree and little hands were searching through the boxes for the right ornament to hang. I was enjoying the moment, when an overwhelming urge to go to my parents’ house came over me. There was no reason for it, but I had to go. I immediately left an unhappy husband and confused kids in the middle of a mess. When I arrived at my parents’, Dad was sitting at the end of the sofa. He looked uncomfortable and Mom’s face said something was wrong. Dad was quiet and fidgety. Then he was up pacing through the house with Mom suggesting we take him to the hospital. The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever, even though Mom was driving way too fast. I parked the car while she hurried him in. Dad was having a heart attack. The next couple of days were a blur. Doctors had placed stents in and saved him. I walked that hospital finding the Christmas display with the trains. Watching the choo-choo go, while my head was in chaos. Eventually, I found myself in the chapel pleading for my dad to be okay. I was overwhelmed with fear and despair at the thought of losing my father. Sitting in that softly lit chapel alone, with the candles flickering on the walls a peace came over me and a voice in my mind was telling me he was going to be okay. It was the first time I faced the real possibility of losing my father.

Christmas day 2010 would bring that fear to the surface again. After a day filled with family, food and gifts for the kids it was time to head home. Dad and mom had something to tell me first. I sat down at the kitchen table fully expecting to have them tell me they were going to take a trip. Instead, I was told that my dad had cancer. They had waited to tell me until the end of the day so my Christmas wouldn’t be ruined. I felt as the rug had been pulled out from under me. That overwhelming despair appeared again. Fortunately, Dad had surgery and the cancer was removed.

Right before Christmas 2020 my husband had developed a headache that lasted for a couple of days. We were cautious because of the pandemic and were wearing masks everywhere. As a precaution I wore a mask at home too and slept in a separate room just to be safe. On Christmas eve he called me at work upset. He had tested positive for Covid, and the doctor said for me to leave work immediately and quarantine. My husband was given the antibody treatment. and he developed a high fever. I was washing and disinfecting everything giving him the run of the house to try to keep him comfortable. Christmas Day we were told my dad who was in a healthcare facility due to dementia, had tested positive for covid too. Two separate exposures. My husband was able to recover but the virus hit my dad harder.

Mom made daily calls, but he was deteriorating. He was having trouble breathing, coughing and fever. All the worst of the symptoms. Dad never wanted to be kept alive by machines. So, the decision was made to make him as comfortable as possible. We hoped he would be okay, but his age was working against him. On the 4th of January Mom asked if I could call and check on dad for her. She just didn’t feel up to it. I was in quarantine. I didn’t want to make that call. I delayed making it until i felt i had to. After the phone rang and rang, a man answered. I told him i was calling to check on Alan Trobe to see how he was doing. There was this long silence on the other end and the voice sounded rattled. The reply was finally, ” umm, not very well. He just passed away.”

Unless you have experienced that grief, under similar circumstances, I can’t explain it to you. Every part of your being feels like the life has been drained from you. I was the one who had to tell my mother that the love of her life had died. I had to call and tell my brother that our father was gone. We could not have a funeral for dad, we would not risk putting any others through the devastation we were experiencing. When the immediate family went to the funeral home to say goodbye, I couldn’t go. I was positive for covid from being exposed to my husband and in quarantine. I would not take a chance on exposing my mom, even though she said for me to come anyway, I couldn’t risk losing both of them. I wasn’t able to say goodbye to my Daddy one last time.

December tried to take my dad away three times, but it took January to do it.