COVID Killed My Dad, and I Can’t Even Cry about It.
On May 23rd, 2020, I got a call from a 919 area code that I didn’t have in my contacts. I was sitting on a patio with some friends, and I’d’ve usually ignored it, but that day, something was just different.
“Hello?”
“Is this Jennifer?” an urgent-sounding female voice asked me.
“Yes, ma’am? This is she?” I asked, my confusion sounding like an identity crisis.
Rustling sounds pierced the line and then a man’s voice came on. I didn’t recognize it at all, and the gasping, horror-movie raspiness of it scared me. By now, I’m pacing a downtown Memphis alleyway straining to understand what’s happening through a phone whose speaker long since needed replacing. It took me nearly a full minute to realize that this was my father’s frustrated, dying voice.
Instantly, I’m a child again.
“Daddy?!?” I squeezed out around the knot blocking my throat.
“I’m sick…” he barely gets out with a desperation I can still hear in the middle of the night.
“Close my accounts…” and he launches into a checklist of things he wants me to handle as his Power of Attorney. He can’t even get full words out without lapping up air he can’t actually breathe, making his sentences broken and hard to understand. I can barely make out what he’s asking me to do. I can’t even process what’s happening.
“Dad! What’s going on? Where are you? I don’t understand.”
Although, in hindsight, I did.
But he can’t hear me. I hear him tell the female voice that he doesn’t have his hearing aids. He’s frustrated, and I can tell he’s giving up on the phone call. I still worry that he thought I wasn’t concerned about this last communication with me. I hear her say something to him about the call still being connected. I’m near-screaming that I’m still on the line and begging to know what’s going on. People are looking at me in the street, wondering what my damn problem is, but apparently he waived off the call because no one ever resumed the line. She just hung up.
As I stood there in the alley staring at my phone trying to process what had just happened in that whirlwind 3 minutes and 48 seconds, it hit me that that was the last time I’d speak to my father, and we didn’t even get to say “I love you” to one another. We didn’t even get to say goodbye. I have no words to explain the depth of that pain.
“This call is from an inmate at a federal prison.”
If you’ve ever gotten one of those, you might even hear her voice in your head: “This is a prepaid call. You will not be charged for this call. This call is from …. Hang up to decline the call. To accept, dial ‘5’ now.”
And then I was on the line with one of my father’s friends from the inside, wondering if I’d heard from dad. I was very careful with what I said, knowing I was probably being recorded, because I didn’t want to ruin that 3m 48s opportunity for anyone else.
He told me my dad had been taken out on a stretcher the morning before and he hadn’t seen him since. He was hoping I had news, but he knew more than I did. I’d later learn that when they wheeled my dad away, the two looked at one another, and despite being cellmates for nearly 8 years — best friends, really — they were unable to hug or say goodbye. He told me that with the way my dad looked at him, he knew he’d never see my dad again. It’s funny how sometimes you just know.
At some point in all this, I’m back and forth on the phone with my sister, telling her what’s happened, bracing her for what we both know is next.
No official from the prison ever contacted my family to tell us our dad was even sick.
Another call from the inside on Sunday. No, I haven’t heard anything yet, either. I’m not sure what’s going on. No one’s called me to even tell me he’s been taken out. No, I have no idea where they took him.
Monday morning. Another call from the inside. Dial “5.” Same thing. Sorry, I don’t know where he’s at or what’s going on. Thank you for loving him so much and checking in. Thank you for loving us.
And then my sister calls me.
Apparently, the one phone call the prison decided to make was to her. It was a chaplain, not my father’s, but someone tasked with the job of telling us that on Monday, May 25th, 2020, at 1019 EST, my father passed from COVID-19 related complications. A Memorial Day death for the Special Forces Army Veteran with multiple Purple Hearts and a green beret and chest ribbons with shiny bits hanging from them. Appropriate.
From here, I don’t know where this story is supposed to go because that’s when it all went to hell.
On that exact same day, George Floyd also spent his last moments gasping for air.
I’d just finished a semester of crash-course online teaching and successfully helped 137 kids earn college English credit from my kitchen counter. It was officially summer break. I delved into finalizing my father’s VA paperwork, and I invested the rest of my time in the growing energy and outrage underpinning the Black Lives Matter movement. I devoured news and updates about COVID-19 while simultaneously immersing myself in the BIPOC history that’d been omitted by my state’s white-washed curriculum.
Mostly, I was just mad.
And I still am, honestly. I’m mad at all the people who dismiss the experiences of Black people with their “all lives matter” retorts. I’m mad at all the people who think COVID-19 is a “hoax.” I’m mad at all the people who are able to wear masks but choose not to because, all of a sudden, “my body – my choice” finally makes sense to them (but, of course, only applies to them in this isolated situation).
Sigh.
And then I was mad at the push to reopen schools, which felt like another example of political posturing at the expense of health and lives. People pointed fingers and told me that I was overreacting because I lost my dad to COVID, but it didn’t have anything to do with my dad. People wanted to dismiss me because they wanted their own narratives, so they looked at the science and found some chart somewhere they thought supported their opinion. We all suffered.
Some more folks died.
The simplest things — wearing a mask and acknowledging the suffering of others — became political battles. How is being a decent person a political platform? I got called names for wanting to see justice brought to all these people who’d been murdered and for being outraged at the systemic flaws in our society the pandemic continued to expose.
I wanted justice for my dad, but he was just a number no one cared about, his death used to inflate some sort of conspiracy to overthrow elections or whatever the hell ploy someone was after that day. The idiocy I’ve heard around all of these things is baffling. Even the smart people in the room are acting dumb.
Now, I’m mostly just disappointed.
It’s taken me almost a year to complete this blog entry, which I don’t feel is actually “complete” at all. It’s the most disjointed thing I’ve written in a long time, yet somehow that’s fitting. I kept walking away from it in the hopes I’d process the emotions I feel around 2020, the things I’ve lived and seen. Like so many others, I’m nowhere close.
I had more faith in people. I believed that people were innately good and would look out for one another, and while I’m blessed to have many of these people in my life, 2020 showed me that this is not who most people are at their core. When we needed each other most, we were more divided than ever. Disgusting.
And I still haven’t really processed that my dad’s dead. I miss him in his little USPS box on my counter, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with his ashes.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about his death. I’m mad, sad, glad, indifferent, disappointed, relieved, nostalgic, detached. I can’t manage to drag myself to the storage unit where his few remaining belongings on this earth are lying around half forgotten. He was supposed to get it all back one day. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with it.
Despite being a veteran, apparently something went wrong in his paperwork and there was no life insurance to wrap those things up for him, so I’ve just been paying the storage bill to keep his things there because that’s all we’ve got left. It’s so ridiculous. It’s just stuff. Doesn’t bring him back.
Long sigh.
Life is so confusing right now. Some of us are finding the motivation to start a new business or master a hobby, while some of us are barely remembering to shower. One day, I’ll find the time and motivation to process living through a pandemic, to process my dad’s death from it. Maybe I’ll even cry finally.
For now, I’m off to get my second dose of Moderna, and I’m just going to hit “Publish” and call it a day, a year, on this post. Maybe it’ll all make sense later. Until then, here’s to making the most of it, even if all that means is you washed your hair today. I’m proud of you.
Have a story you’d like to share about the past year and what you’ve been dealing with? Please share it with us in the comments below.
