My post from yesterday was not an attack on anyone, definitely not on any family member. My intention was to help clear the paranoia around COVID-19. If people were in my situation, they could help their loved ones without panicking. I wished I had this information when I had to face COVID-19.

I took the COVID-19 tests because I wanted to and no one forced me to. Of course, I wanted my family to be safe. I do, however, have a few regrets on the choices that I made out of fear of COVID-19. I did not know when my mother was contracted, but I could have intervened as soon as my sister tested positive. I did not know if it would make any difference since she was already coughing badly, but I could have helped in any way I could.

I had insensitive thoughts about my sister early on. I had not told her directly, but they were on my mind. I can still hear the pains and the regrets in her voice every time someone asked about our mother’s death. Her reply had been, “She got it from me.” No one wanted this to happen and we should be more thoughtful, compassionate, and kind to the people involved. It is totally understandable to protect yourself from this deadly virus and distance yourself from people, but don’t panic and overreact. Even if you show your support, don’t be thoughtless and insensitive.

Sure, the safest way is to lock yourself in your own room for months and not be in contact with anyone. If you can live that way, more power to you, but that is not necessary. COVID-19 is contagious, but we now know enough about it to understand how it spreads. You can still go to the grocery store with a mask and to keep distance from others. You can still talk to others with a mask on and from a distance. You can still take care of a COVID-19 victim if you take all the precautions.

I am not being preachy and I definitely don’t think I am better than anyone else. I just hope that people are not overreacting and panicking. If you take that as an attack then you don’t know me. When I attack, I don’t beat around the bush. I will call you out. I have done that plenty of time before.

To ease everyone’s paranoia, I took another COVID-19 test yesterday. I have not shown any symptoms. I am 99.9% sure that I haven’t been contracted, but I want to wait for the official result before I go home. I missed my wife and kids terribly. I have been away for a whole month.

Both my sister and my nephew have been recovered. Although they had been out of the contiguous period, we still wear masks around the house, eat separately, and keep distance from each other. When I rollerbladed at the trail, which was empty most of the time, I still wore my mask. I rather took off my foggy glasses than my mask. At the skating rink, I kept my mask on the entire time. The rink was restricted to 50 people, but only around 6 people were there at 10 am in the morning on weekdays.

When my mother passed away, I didn’t want her body to be embalmed. We would have the visitation with a closed casket instead of the viewing with an opened casket. The owner of the Snyder funeral home explained to us that if we didn’t do the embalming, they would simply place the sealed bag with her body inside, which was how she came from the hospital, into the casket and that was it. No cleaning. No dressing. Nothing.

Because she had COVID-19, they wanted their staff to be safe. He explained the embalming process. They would get her cleaned up and get rid of COVID-19 in her body. If we wanted to we could schedule a dressing time the day before the funeral service. Families had made a ritual out of it and we could have as much time as we needed with her. He let us think it over and to give him the answer the next day. If we decided to embalm her, he would also waive the $750 fee.

We made our decision on the spot and scheduled a time to dress her. My two sisters, brother-in-law, two nieces, and I went in to dress her. It was such a wonderful opportunity to get to see and touch her for the last time. We put on a cream sweater with a black jacket over her. We also wore a long, black skirt on her. Other than a bruise on the right cheek and on her upper lip caused by the tubes from the ventilator, she looked beautiful. They didn’t put on any makeup for her. They didn’t even cover her bruises. She looked just like when she was alive. At that point, we decided to have the viewing so that our family members get to see her for the last time.

At the funeral service, everyone was required to wear a mask and to maintain social distance. Our mother was free of COVID-19 at last. As long as everyone took all the standard precautions, such as wearing masks, maintaining social distance, washing hands, refraining from shaking hands or hugging, we should be fine.

I understand that people are terrified of COVID-19, especially if they have never come close to it, but it would be more helpful if they stayed calm. I know they meant well, but don’t make it seem like we’re a bunch of COVID-19 superspreaders. Although I have been in contact with COVID-19 patients, I have tested negative. How many more tests do I have to go through before I can see my kids? Do I need to get tested every time I go to a grocery store? Of course, I wanted to be safe rather than be sorry. I have taken every precaution seriously. I don’t mind getting tested again, but the paranoia is not helping.

I voted in general elections, but I was not passionate about politics until Barack Obama ran for president. He was an inspiring candidate and an outstanding president. He made significant accomplishments, including healthcare, marriage equality, and Dodd-Frank, in his two terms in the White House.

In the first volume of his presidential memoir, A Promised Land, he reflected on difficult decisions he had to make from domestic to foreign policies. He was thoughtful, analytical, and decisive. As a gifted writer and a natural storyteller, Obama delved into the details of his strategies. His decision to take out Osama Bin Laden, in particular, was bold, precise, and tactical. If the mission failed, it could have caused him his re-election, but he took the risk. If Obama was still in charge when COVID-19 broke, I strongly believed we would be in a much safer situation than we are today. Remember N1H1? He took care of it. He even put together a pandemic team in place to deal with this kind of catastrophe.

Although the book was an excellent read, I was already fed up with politics by the time Joe Biden won his 2020 presidential election. I was no longer interested in politics. I love the first 200 pages where he talked about his grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, wife, and two daughters. The rest 500 pages dealt mostly with policies. The book ended on his vivid account on hunting and killing Bin Laden. I am not sure if I will read the second volume. I probably will, but won’t be my top to-read priority. If you are into policies, however, give this book a read.

Thank you for following me through the 20 bleakest days of my life as my mother fought and lost her brutal battle against COVID-19. I wish I didn’t have to go through it. I wish I didn’t have to write about it. By sharing my experience, however, I hope that people will take this deadly virus seriously. The pandemic is far from over. In this last post on COVID-19, I would like to share the lessons I have learned. God forbid, if it happens to you and your loved ones, I hope you can use these tips to help you navigate the crisis.

If you think you have been exposed to COVID-19, quarantine yourself. Do not do anything for your parents, especially if they are in their 70s and 80s. Ask someone else to take care of them. That alone can save their lives. If you think your parents have been exposed, get them tested. If they tested positive, started coughing, with oxygen level below 92%, bring them to the hospital to start the treatment immediately to prevent them from getting pneumonia. Once they have pneumonia, they will be in serious trouble.

If you were not infected with COVID-19, you could take care of your infected parents and still keep yourself safe. Just stay calm and take all the precautions. Wear double masks (N95 inside and blue mask outside), face shield, latex gloves, and a trash bag over your clothes. To keep your immune system strong, take Vitamin D3 and Zinc. If your parents were too weak, help them put on their mask. My physician advised that I could only stay with my mother no longer than 15 minutes in her room, but that was impossible. Every task took 30 minutes to an hour. She coughed on me when I tried to get her to sit up on her bed and I couldn’t let her go. In addition to being close contact with my mother, I lived in the house with two other COVID-19 victims. I worried that I put myself at risk, but taking every measure worked. I tested negative. If you have to take care of your parents with COVID-19, do it safely. They need you.

If your parents have to be admitted to the hospital, contact your family members or friends who are in the medical field. Having an expert on your side helps you make better decisions for your parents. I was fortunate to be able to tap into a family member and a few friends who were willing to help. When speaking to your parents’ attending doctors, have your “family medical advisor” listening in to help ask medical-related questions or clarifications. Ask your “family medical advisor” to explain the latest treatment developments such as Remdesivir, Dexamethasone, Convalescent Plasma, and proning. Ask your “family medical advisor” to explain the pros and cons of the mechanical ventilator as well as tracheostomy. My “family medical advisors” even came up with a list of questions for me to ask my mother’s attending doctors:

1. Can we get a list of her medications?
2. Was she on Remdesevir or Convalescent Plasma? For how many days?
3. Is she still taking antibiotics?
4. What are her labs (white blood cells, inflammatory markers, etc.)?
5. Is it still possible to keep the ventilator going? Why or why not?
6. Is she uncomfortable? Is she suffering?
7. Does she require high pressure and can’t keep her level high?
8. Does her brain get enough oxygen?
9. Does she have multiple failures? Liver, kidney, heart?
10. If you think that you have done all that you can for her, can you help us transfer her to another hospital that willing to treat her?

The last question was just incase we needed to transfer, but most of the hospitals were also overwhelmed. If you know physicians working in the hospital where your parents admitted, reach out to them. When we changed our mind and wanted to put my mother on the ventilator, I could not get a hold of her attending doctor at 11 pm. Luckily, when I reached out to a friend’s spouse who worked in the hospital, she happened to be covering my mother’s unit that night. She took care of transferring my mother into the ICU immediately. She read her chart and told me about my mother’s condition. She also notified me that my mother had refused to take Remdesevir (more on this later). Although she thought it wouldn’t help, she said, “It is fair to give the ventilator a try so that you won’t regret it.” I wish she was my mother’s attending doctor.

It is absolutely crucial to be cooperative with the medical team in the ICU. Your parents’ lives are in their hands. Even if they strongly advised you to pull the plug, you don’t have to be combative with them. You don’t have to make your decision right away. Just take in all the information they provided to you and think it over with your family. If you feel that they were giving up on your parents, get the palliative care involved. Just remember that whatever decision you made for your parents, you came to the conclusion based on your love for them. Don’t beat yourself up if the outcome came out the same. You had done all you could for your parents.

Your goal was to help your parents understand clearly what they were getting themselves into so they could make their own decisions. This is a challenge during the pandemic because you can’t be with them and it is even more challenging if your parents don’t understand English. Yes, they have interpreters, but interpreters’ job is to interpret what the doctor said, no more no less. They were not there to explain to your parents about her condition. In my mother’s case, the doctor wanted to start her on Remdesevir so he asked her if she wanted to take it. He warned her that this drug could harm her liver and kidney; therefore, she refused to take it. If I were in the room, I would explain to her that if she doesn’t take this drug her lung will fail and she will die. Her liver and kidney would be useless if her lung failed. I didn’t know she refused this drug until my friend’s wife who was covering her unit told me. She asked me if I still wanted my mom to get started on Remdesevir, but it was too late. She was no longer qualified as her organs started to fail.

It is absolutely crucial that you request to have you included in all of your parents’ decisions, especially if your parents’ English is limited. Initially, my mother refused to get on the ventilator and I honored her wish until later on I found out that she did not fully comprehend her condition. She told me that she wanted to go home, eat some hot food, get some rest, and she would recover. I had to explain to her that was not the case. If she were to go home without an oxygen machine, she would suffocate and die. The reason they didn’t discharge her from the hospital was that she could not breathe on her own without the Vapotherm and the Vapotherm was already maxed out. I explained to her that either she was going to die slowly on the Vapotherm or moving forward to the ventilator. She agreed to move to the next step.

In retrospect, she might have made the right decision based on her own knowledge. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. We took the chance and she fought on until there was absolutely nothing left. She held on as long as she could for us. I was proud of her and she will always be my hero.

2020 kicked off just fine. I started skiing for the first time in my life. I loved it. I spent 12 hours almost every Saturday in the winter with my sons, Đạo and Đán. We bonded over skiing, Gatorade, and sushi.

As we wrapped up the winter, the pandemic hit the U.S. Each day, the numbers of COVID-19’s cases and deaths escalated. The lockdown began. Although we struggled, we managed to keep ourselves isolated and safe. My wife and I worked 100 percent of our time from home. Both of our jobs were even more productive at home. Our two older sons, Đạo and Đán, switched to online school. We pulled our third son, Xuân, out of daycare. Our mother-in-law and our fourth son, Vương, already stayed home. The house was always chaotic, but filled with love.

To keep us and the kids active, we started doing more outdoor activities like biking and boating. My sister-in-law and her husband bought four kayaks and a canoe. We went boating three or four times a week. Then we started rollerblading, which had become my favorite exercise. I often dragged the kids out with me to the skate parks or bike trails to rollerblade. When we went out, we maintained social distance and enforced masking for all of our kids. Although we made a drastic change in our lives, we adjusted just fine. I thought we could ride this out until 2021.

In the summer, I spent my vacation redoing our deck. The woods had been in bad shape for years, but I knew it would cost a fortune to hire the professionals. With my wife’s meticulous planning and calculating, we replaced wooden boards with composite boards within three weeks and saved ourselves $12,000 or more.

One of the positive outcomes of the lockdown was that I spent lots of time with my kids, particularly the younger ones, Xuân and Vương. It was fascinating to witness their growing and progressing day by day. Because I didn’t have to get up early to get the kids ready for school and to drive to work, I spent early mornings and late nights reading and blogging, my two personal passion activities that kept sane during the lockdown.

June rolled around and my mother fell while taking a shower. She broke her bones and was hospitalized. Mid July she came home after being in rehab for a week. Everything seemed fine. I spent a few days with her. We talked, reconnected, and did some physical therapy to help her walk again. The outside world continued to collapse with the staggering increases of COVID-19’s new cases and death tolls. We were disheartening, but our family members were still safe.

Then one early morning in August, I received a phone call from one of my sisters in Việt Nam informing me that our father had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The doctors said nothing they could do for him. My brother and sisters in Việt Nam took him home and cared for him. I wanted to go back to Việt Nam to see him, but the Vietnamese government had suspended entry into Việt Nam to all foreigners. I was hoping that he could hold on until 2021 so I could see him in person, but he didn’t make it past November, 2020.

When he passed, I spent time with my mother and we watched his funeral service together through live steam. We were devastated, but we still had each other. We talked about his life and his legacy. As much as I loved my father, I didn’t have a strong connection with him because I had become accustomed to being away from him for so long. Although he was gone, his place in my heart remained the same. My mother probably felt the same way about him.

Because of his absence in our lives, my mother and I meant the whole world to each other. We consoled each other and tried to move forward. Even though my mother had trouble walking, she was still strong, both her mind and her appetite. We enjoyed eating sweet sticky rice together every morning. We even split up a bottle of Starbucks’ Frappuccino and filled up our halves with whole milk. We lay in bed and talked to each other. When she fell asleep, I read. I treasured those moments together. Before I went back home, I told her that I wouldn’t bring the kids to see her this Thanksgiving because of the pandemic and she understood.Thanks goodness, we weren’t here for Thanksgiving. I can’t even imagine if our family also got infected.

Although I lost my father, somehow I had a feeling that 2020 was far from over. When COVID-19 could not reach us, it touched the person closest to us. My mother tested positive on December 9, 2020. December 10, 2020 kicked off the darkest days of my entire life up to this point. I lived through guilt, pain, frustration, disappointment, rage, fear, regret, distress, shame, uncertainty, and hopelessness. On December 28, just three days away from the end of 2020, COVID-19 took away the love of my life. I was beyond devastated. I lost both of my parents within 42 days.

Without the strong support from family and friends, I didn’t know how I could keep myself together. When I hit rock bottom, true friends and family lifted me up. They showed up when I needed them the most. I learned the value of relationships beyond my little world. No matter what I had done or said in the past, no matter how little we interacted with each other, no matter how long I had neglected our friendships, they came through to lend their support. I made a promise to myself that I will become a better friend in 2021 and forward. I will do what they had done for me when I had to face the toughest challenges in my life.

As much as I wanted to move on and to forget, 2020 will forever burn into my brain. It has changed me in a profound way up to this point of my life. I don’t think I can ever go back to the old me prior to December 10, 2020. I now look at life from a different angle.

In my mother’s obituary, I wrote that she loved to live in America because she believed the U.S. has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. It might have the best medical technologies in the world, but it failed her on the level of compassion. Even though the outcome came out the same, it played by the codes instead of the cares.

I also wrote about her cooking process, which took so long because she washed everything over and over again. Washing hands for 20 seconds was not a problem for her. I watched her wash her hands for two minutes. She even rinsed clean bowls and utensils with hot water before each use. How ironic was that she had been so careful all her life, and yet she died from contracting the virus?

Life was unexpected and unpredictable. The line between living and dying was so thin at the critical moment. I hope I won’t ever have to make another life-and-death decision for the rest of my life. I read about death, wrote about death, understood the inescapable part of death, and yet, I could not deal with death when the person I have loved all my life was facing death. I could not imagine not hearing her voice over the telephone asking me if I ate already. I could not imagine not seeing her hugging my children and letting them kiss her on her cheeks. I could not imagine life without her.

Last night, I woke up around midnight and felt hungry. I went downstairs to grab some cereal and milk without turning on the lights. I glanced over to her room. The night light was glowing. Her pillows and blankets were still there. Her clothes and her walker were still there. She was not. I broke down and cried in silence. She will never return to this room. She will never return to the bed that I lay next to her just a month ago when we both grieved for the man in our lives we just lost. I held her hand and told her that everything will be OK because we still had each other. She stopped crying and squeezed my hand. The last time I held her hand, water seeped out of her swollen fingers. I told her everything will be OK. She didn’t squeeze me this time. Only a teardrop rolled down her right eye. Her heartbeat slowed way down until it stopped. She did not make it past 2020.

That was how my 2020 ended. I had been through hell and not quite back yet. So, to hell with 2020.

As children of Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý, we deeply appreciate your expression of sympathy through phone calls, emails, and Facebook.

Due to the pandemic, she could not say goodbye to her family and friends for the last time. With technologies like Facebook and the web, family and friends can find out more information about our beloved Mrs. Lý.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the special love you have for her. For her memorial visitation, which will be held on Monday, January 4, 2021, we will have a live stream courtesy of the funeral home. If you would like to tune in, please visit Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý’s obituary page from 9:00 am to 10:30 am (Eastern Time).

Dear family and friends,

A memorial visitation for our beloved Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý will be held on Monday, January 4, 2021, from 9:00 am to 10:30 am, at:

Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home
3110 Lititz Pike
Lititz, PA 17543

Interment will follow at:

Bareville Union Cemetery
74 Brethren Church Road
Leola, PA 17540

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to:

Buddhist Association of PA
202 Cherry Street
Columbia PA 17512

Sunday evening I called into the ICU to get an update on my mom’s condition. Her nurse said she was still the same. I asked her to set up Blue Jeans (a video conference app) so I can see and talk to her. This time, the nurse put the camera really close to my mom’s face. To my dismay, her face and neck were like balloons. I checked yesterday’s screenshot she was not swollen that much. I showed the video to my sister and both our hearts sank. We decided immediately, it was time to pull the plug. Since it was already late and the doctors weren’t around, we decided to wait until the next day.

I didn’t talk much with my mom because I wanted to give my sister some time to talk to her. I lay down in bed, but could not sleep. I could not get her image out of my mind. I tried to read, but it was not helping. I finally went to sleep around three in the morning. I woke up around seven and felt tired. I sat down at my laptop and revised the obituary I had written, with my wife’s help in translating to Vietnamese. Around 9 am, I called in to let the nurse know that we were ready to come in to take the tubes out. She immediately got a hold of the doctor to talk to me. That wouldn’t happen if I didn’t tell her I wanted to pull the plug.

We made an arrangement to come into the ICU at noon. When we arrived at the front desk, a chaplain came down to bring us up. She took us to the waiting area and went in to get my mom’s nurse. When they came back, the nurse told us that she would take the tubes out first before we could come to see our mom. I asked her if we can see her first before she removed the tube. For our safety, she claimed that she didn’t want us in the room because the coronavirus would come out of my mom’s mouth. If that was the case, we could stand outside and watch or take a quick look outside the room before she removed the tubes. The nurse was instructed not to let us in until the tubes were off.

The medical team really wanted to pull the plug and they took every measure to make that happen. They didn’t want to take the risk of us backing out after we see our mother. I was sad and disappointed that they still treated us that way even though we were the ones that made the request to remove the tubes. I could have told her that I would not authorize to pull the plug unless we get a chance to see our mom first. We could just walk out right at that moment and let my mom continued on the ventilator, but I was too distress and too hurt to put up a fight. I didn’t want my mom to continued to suffer. My sister was in tears trying to plead with them. I told her let them take out the tubes.

When we came in, our mom was all swollen up. I held her hand and water seeped out of her skin. I apologized to her that I had kept her suffering. I asked her to forgive me and to please let go if the pain was too much to bare. I let her know that she will always be in my heart. I thanked her for all the sacrifices she had made throughout her life to raise me. I appreciated all the love and joy she had given me. I reassured her that I have become a man now and I will be able to take care of myself. She didn’t need to worry about me anymore. Tears rolled down her cheek.

My sister also talked to her and more tears came out of her closing eyes. We both stunned. Despite all the distortions and deteriorations caused by the machines, she was still beautiful. Her skin was still shiny and soft. Her hair was still smooth and silky. The wrinkles on her face showed the passing of time. She had lived a long, hard-knock life.

Five minutes later, the machine beeped continuously. The chaplain came in to informed us her heart had stopped. She passed away at 12:46 pm on December 28, 2020. Although I was able to get the last words in, I told her that our conversations will continue. I will always be her son even in our next life. Get some rest now, mommy. You deserve it.

Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý, beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, wife, sister, and daughter, passed away at 12:46 pm on December 28, 2020, at the age of 83, following a brutal battle with COVID-19. Mrs. Lý was born on June 8, 1937, in Mỹ Tho, Việt Nam. She joined her oldest daughter Hương Ngọc Nguyễn and her family in Willimantic, Connecticut on April 11, 1990 then settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania a few months after to be close to her extended family.

Resided in Lancaster city, she had done various odd jobs, including inspecting t-shirts at a few sweatshops and picking fruits at several local farms, before joining Sauder’s Eggs, where she worked as an egg packer for over a decade before her retirement. When not working, she enjoyed cooking traditional Vietnamese cuisine at home. Her priority was making sure her children and grandchildren were well fed. She was always lavish with food. She never cut corners. She had to have the best sources and her cooking process had always been meticulous. If her lunch took five hours to make, her kids would have to eat at 3:30 pm. The stomach-growling waits were always worthwhile.

Mrs. Lý was a strong woman who held her own. Although she lived half the world apart from her late husband Tỷ Hữu Hồ who passed away on November 15, 2020, their marriage remained intact in the past three decades. Each Sunday, they called to check up on each other. She raised her second daughter Nikki Thơm Nguyễn and her youngest son Donny Trương all by herself in the U.S. while her husband lived in Việt Nam. Despite her limited English, she loved her life in America. She believed the U.S. had one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

Mrs. Lý was loved by everyone around her and those who got to know her. She was generous, compassionate, and kind. When her niece Karen Huỳnh (the daughter of her oldest sister Anh Kim Lý) was seven years old, she did something wrong. Karen was afraid that her father would spank her. Her mother was always busy with the family’s business; therefore, she couldn’t come to her to intervene. Karen ran away from home. Mrs. Lý took her niece in and took good care of her like her own daughter. Mrs. Lý never made any judgment about her niece. She let her niece stay with her for three days until her brother-in-law cooled down and forgot all about the incident. Half a century later, Karen still remembered vividly how well her aunt had fed her and treated her. Karen recalled her aunt letting her roam free in her garden and pick out any fruits she wanted to eat.

Having lived through the war in Việt Nam, Mrs. Lý had always been a fighter. She would survive anywhere on earth, including living in a foreign country like America. She had overcome many financial hardships, personal obstacles, and health issues as she aged. She fought COVID-19 until her very last breath.

Mrs. Lý is survived by her oldest daughter Hương Ngọc Nguyễn, her second daughter Nikki Thơm Nguyễn, her youngest son Donny Trương, and her daughter-in-law Hải Dung Nguyễn. She is also survived by her grandson Lộc Nguyễn, her granddaughter-in-law Jennifer Delima, her grandson Christopher Nguyễn, her granddaughter-in-law Amy Phương Ngô, her granddaughter Samantha Trần, her grandson Eric Trần, her grandson Đạo Công Trương, her grandson Đán Công Trương, her grandson Xuân Việt Trương, her grandson Vương Việt Trương, her great-granddaughter Isabella Nguyễn, her great-granddaughter Angela Nguyễn, and her great-grandson Aiden Nguyễn. Finally, she is survived by her brother Anh Văn Lý, her sister-in-law Lụa Thị Lý, her sister Anh Lý Teitler, her brother-in-law Sidney Teitler, and her extended family living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

As her family members and dear friends, we loved her deeply. We will always remember her and will hold her in our hearts for eternity. Farewell for now, our love. May your soul rest in peace.

I am sorry, mama. I can’t watch you, from afar, go on like this. Let’s put an end to all the suffering and torturing. I was hoping for a miracle, but there’s no such thing.

I have come to accept the reality that I will lose my dear mother on earth, but I will always have you in my heart and spirit. We will continue our conversations just like we were having through FaceTime these past few weeks. Although you were sedated, I knew you could hear me. I saw you nod your head when I talked.

I knew death was part of life and I had been prepared for the day that you would have to leave me. I was not ready to see you go this way. I couldn’t let COVID-19 take you away from me so abruptly. The doctors told me to let you go, but I was still holding on every bit of last hope. It has come to the point that nothing on this earth could help bring you back.

I had shed so many tears alone in your room thinking about you. I knew crying wouldn’t change anything, but I couldn’t help it. Writing to you and about you helped me cope with the reality at hand. I know I can always reach out to you through my thoughts and my words.

I will miss you dearly, but I know you will always be beside me like you had always been throughout my life. Please let yourself rest, mama. You had been through so much all your life. It’s time to set yourself free. I will meet you someday. Please save a place for me. I love you!