Someone very dear to me died with Covid-19 on Friday.
Any of you who have read my posts on here probably know my thoughts on Covid and all the lockdowns and mandates that have been used to try to stop the spread. If you don’t, I’ll summarize: I thought that all of the lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, sports cancellations, quarantines, and everything else has been a huge mistake and are doing little to nothing to save lives. As a matter-of-fact, I thought that there was a growing body of evidence that shows that the measures being employed to stop Covid have and will take way more life years than they will save due to lost jobs, isolation, etc. etc. Now that I have lost a loved one, I’m even more convinced of my previous position.
You see, my loved one and his wife did everything they were supposed to do. They masked up whenever they went out. They stopped going to church, didn’t see kids and grandkids nearly as much as they usually did, and almost completely stopped seeing friends. They stopped going to the grocery store and running errands like they had always done. In short, he and his wife almost completely isolated themselves. Nevertheless, they both got the virus.
For her, it was not much more than a cold with a low-grade fever for about 10 days. For him it was obviously much more serious. He had a couple of serious underlying conditions and was 81, but both my wife and I noticed how much he regressed from the beginning of the pandemic up to the time he contracted the virus. Was that due to the underlying conditions he was dealing with? Maybe. But both of us think that the isolation had a lot to do with his decline. He was the type of man who relished in his family, especially his grandkids. They were the apple of his eye and he would go to as many of their events as possible. He lit up talking to them and was so proud of each and every one of the 18 that he had.
If he hadn’t had to isolate and would have continued to have those human interactions that were so important to him, would it have made a difference? If he maintained those connections, would his health have remained good enough that he would have been able to fight off the virus when he got it? Had he not isolated, would he have contracted the virus earlier before his health declined and been able to fight it off? Although he did not go out often, did the mask he always wore give him a false sense of safety that it didn’t actually provide that led to him contracting the virus? We’ll never know.
What we do know is that he did miss out on a lot of things he loved in what came to be the last six months of his life. We know that he did everything that he was supposed to do according to the experts and still ended up catching the virus and dying. We know that he spent the last two weeks of his life in a hospital where his family couldn’t come and visit him. By the grace of God, we were able to get the hospital to allow a priest to come and give him the Sacrament of the sick and allow his wife to be with him at the end. The only reason they allowed her in is because she had had Covid, recovered, and was out of her quarantine. If that had not been the case, he would have died alone. I shudder to think how much more difficult this would be if those two things had not been allowed to happen. I feel anger and pain for all the patients and their families who were not allowed to be together when the end came. That is a grave injustice.
In the end, our days are numbered by our God. That doesn’t mean that we should live recklessly and tempt fate, but it also doesn’t mean we should sacrifice living life under the false notion that we can control everything, even death. So, we will soon bury a good man who lived a good life. However, I can’t help but wonder if he had the last 6 months to live again, he wouldn’t have made different choices.
Any of you who have read my posts on here probably know my thoughts on Covid and all the lockdowns and mandates that have been used to try to stop the spread. If you don’t, I’ll summarize: I thought that all of the lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, sports cancellations, quarantines, and everything else has been a huge mistake and are doing little to nothing to save lives. As a matter-of-fact, I thought that there was a growing body of evidence that shows that the measures being employed to stop Covid have and will take way more life years than they will save due to lost jobs, isolation, etc. etc. Now that I have lost a loved one, I’m even more convinced of my previous position.
You see, my loved one and his wife did everything they were supposed to do. They masked up whenever they went out. They stopped going to church, didn’t see kids and grandkids nearly as much as they usually did, and almost completely stopped seeing friends. They stopped going to the grocery store and running errands like they had always done. In short, he and his wife almost completely isolated themselves. Nevertheless, they both got the virus.
For her, it was not much more than a cold with a low-grade fever for about 10 days. For him it was obviously much more serious. He had a couple of serious underlying conditions and was 81, but both my wife and I noticed how much he regressed from the beginning of the pandemic up to the time he contracted the virus. Was that due to the underlying conditions he was dealing with? Maybe. But both of us think that the isolation had a lot to do with his decline. He was the type of man who relished in his family, especially his grandkids. They were the apple of his eye and he would go to as many of their events as possible. He lit up talking to them and was so proud of each and every one of the 18 that he had.
If he hadn’t had to isolate and would have continued to have those human interactions that were so important to him, would it have made a difference? If he maintained those connections, would his health have remained good enough that he would have been able to fight off the virus when he got it? Had he not isolated, would he have contracted the virus earlier before his health declined and been able to fight it off? Although he did not go out often, did the mask he always wore give him a false sense of safety that it didn’t actually provide that led to him contracting the virus? We’ll never know.
What we do know is that he did miss out on a lot of things he loved in what came to be the last six months of his life. We know that he did everything that he was supposed to do according to the experts and still ended up catching the virus and dying. We know that he spent the last two weeks of his life in a hospital where his family couldn’t come and visit him. By the grace of God, we were able to get the hospital to allow a priest to come and give him the Sacrament of the sick and allow his wife to be with him at the end. The only reason they allowed her in is because she had had Covid, recovered, and was out of her quarantine. If that had not been the case, he would have died alone. I shudder to think how much more difficult this would be if those two things had not been allowed to happen. I feel anger and pain for all the patients and their families who were not allowed to be together when the end came. That is a grave injustice.
In the end, our days are numbered by our God. That doesn’t mean that we should live recklessly and tempt fate, but it also doesn’t mean we should sacrifice living life under the false notion that we can control everything, even death. So, we will soon bury a good man who lived a good life. However, I can’t help but wonder if he had the last 6 months to live again, he wouldn’t have made different choices.
Last edited: