Any time it was on, you had to watch it. It was your favorite. You would tell me to sit and watch it with you. As a teenager I never did. I had no interest. Now, I’d give anything to sit next to you watching it. You were taken from me. Stolen. Gone with the wind.

During my last year of grad school my dad was working nights and we barely saw each other during the week. We kept a notebook where we wrote each other a daily note, whether it was encouraging, loving, a quick doodle or a funny memory.

One of my favorites from him was, “Happy Friday! I love you so much. We are blessed to have a daughter like you in our lives. I cleaned snow off your car. Please drive slow.”
Love always, Tata

Mom taught us many lessons. Most importantly is to have faith, hope, and love.

She was the most complicated woman we ever met. Not that we needed a reminder, but she often said “There’s not another one like me.”

She was right. There wasn’t and never will be. Mom was dealt a tough hand in life and was forced to be both our mother and father. She raised all 6 of us by herself.

God knows we were tough to raise and we pushed her well beyond her breaking point.
But she never gave up on us. She knew us inside and out. She knew our secrets, and never once broke our trust.

She poured her love into us. She knew every one of our buttons and she pushed every damn one of them. She fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.

Mom was a devout Catholic and the most faithful person we knew. When we were kids, she made sure we were at mass every Sunday.

With everything, she had her unique way of doing things. She arrived late but in time for the collection plate, and sat in the back of the church.

This way she could receive communion, listen just a bit longer, then beat the priest out the door. If she missed confession, she did not take communion. Especially if she thought about killing someone that week.

Mom, you were a good and faithful servant.

Covid has taken so much from so many people and if you weren’t affected by it then you want Covid to be over and to live your normal lives. But for many of us, our grief from the trauma will never be over.

However the one thing that Covid has done is bring those who lost someone together and allowed us to form inseparable bonds. Over Zoom calls, I have met such wonderful, caring people who understand my loss more than anyone will ever know. They get what it feels like to take your loved one to a hospital and never see them again. To not be able to have a funeral for them, to grieve alone in your house because no one will come over because they are afraid they may catch it. 2020 was a brutal year.

I would not have made it this far without the support of various Covid groups and true friendships. I was lucky to get a call in May 2020 from Marlene who lost her brother Johnny to Covid a few days after my husband Mike. She has such empathy for me and although she didn’t lose her husband she can’t imagine what her life would be like without her husband David and she has such compassion for me. I also met Ed, who messaged me when I was sick and couldn’t make the Brooklyn Bridge Covid Remembrance Walk.

I have never met either of them face to face but I know these bonds will last a lifetime. I just wish I didn’t have to meet them in these circumstances but I know I could call them at a moment’s notice and they will be there for me.

I sold my 92-year-old mother’s home on Long Island this week, the home that she’d lived in since 1955 — but I should not have had to.

My mother wanted to stay in her home but no longer could since her son, who always lived with her and was her caretaker, died of Covid in April 2020. Loss of a child may be the worst trauma a parent can experience. No parent should ever outlive their child. My mother has a big open wound that never heals and it is a pain she has to try and live with.

Johnny was in short term rehab in a nursing home following surgery and was due to come home and should have. Instead, he caught Covid because of New York Governor Cuomo’s decision to require nursing homes to accept Covid-19-positive patients when New York’s hospitals were overflowing in the beginning of the Pandemic. Then the data was hidden about the deaths of nursing home residents.

My mother and I have to live with deep grief and outrage that such very poor judgment resulted in so many needless losses. My brother was only 65 and hopefully had many years left. My mother is still sharp and constantly asks me — where is the accountability and justice in all this? I tell her we are still working on it, which is true.