Text messages capture heartbreaking goodbyes of COVID-19 victims

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/text-messages-capture-heartbreaking-goodbyes-covid-19-victims/


Text messages capture heartbreaking goodbyes of COVID-19 victims
Daughter: “Just wish I could see you in person.” Mother: “I wish that more than anything in the world right now.”
Sisters Dana Cobbs (on left) and Darcey Cobbs-Lomax lost their father and paternal grandmother to COVID-19 last spring, the deaths occurring only a week apart.
By Katie Sanders
Photographs by Celeste Sloman
PUBLISHED January 13, 2021


Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 375,000 American families know firsthand the grief of losing a loved one, many in conditions that restrict bedside goodbyes. These circumstances—piled on top of the many unknowns of COVID-19—layer enormous pain, guilt, and grief on top of the already-traumatic process of saying goodbye to someone we love.

“We expect that we’re going to be able to communicate with our loved ones, to be there in times of tragedy,” says clinical psychologist Therese Rando, founder and director of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Loss in Rhode Island.

The experience of being with someone in their dying moments deeply impacts the way people process trauma, Rando says. What does it mean to say goodbye from a distance—through a hazmat suit, via Zoom, or by text message? Six families that lost relatives to COVID-19 in 2020 share their stories, along with some of the text messages they exchanged in the final days of their loved ones’ lives.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/text-messages-capture-heartbreaking-goodbyes-covid-19-victims/

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brianna-keilar-covid-19-text-messages_n_6002aef8c5b6ffcab9649a4f

CNN’s Brianna Keilar Overcome With Emotion Reading Final Texts From COVID-19 Victims
“Each one of these numbers is a story, it is a loved one,” the “Newsroom” host said as the U.S. endures its “deadliest” stage of the coronavirus pandemic so far.