I sat in front of the computer screen in my guest bedroom on April 21, watching Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's daily news briefing on COVID-19. I listened, as I do almost every day, as officials announced the number of people in Illinois who had died from the new coronavirus.
The count on that day was 119. One of them was my aunt, Carol DeWitt.
I've been covering the COVID-19 briefings from the start, at first competing with other reporters for a good seat in the Blue Room at the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago and later, as a safety precaution, from home. Each day as officials announced the number of new cases and deaths, I've tried to keep in the front of my mind that these aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are human beings. Lives at risk. Loved ones lost.
With Aunt Carol's death, those abstract feelings of empathy have turned painfully real.
Carol's life was too short, too hard and never fair.
In her 60 years, she struggled with a host of physical and mental health problems, including an intellectual disability and epilepsy. She'd also had respiratory issues, and I knew from listening to the daily news briefings that this heightened her risk from the coronavirus.
But Carol was more than a medical chart full of maladies and disorders.
She was the aunt who lived with us in my earliest years, who played "Thriller" on the living room record player and shot baskets with us on the bumpy driveway. She still gave my two older brothers and me handmade cards and drawings practically every time we saw her.
Carol had beautiful blue eyes. I see them sometimes when I look at my son.
Through all Carol's challenges _ the struggle to find a placement for her in the 1990s after she quit a program that helped her live independently, the never-ending process of trying to find the right combination of medications to keep her many ailments in check _ my mom, Mary, was there for her. She was her advocate. Her guardian, legally and in every sense of the word. Above all, her big sister.
COVID-19 changed everything.
In mid-March, the family was supposed to get together to celebrate Carol's 60th birthday, but new restrictions at her nursing home on Chicago's North Side meant she couldn't leave. Around that time, she lashed out and was sent to a behavioral health hospital, a more frequent occurrence in recent years. It's unclear if having to cancel our plans was the cause.
She was back at the nursing home for about a week before she was taken to Weiss Memorial Hospital on April 1 after having a seizure.
My mom sent my brothers and me a text the following Saturday morning to tell us Carol had been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, which Mom thought was different from the kind she'd been diagnosed with when they were kids. Mom called me a few hours later to say the doctors thought she might have the coronavirus as well.
They'd moved her to an isolated room on a COVID floor but had to rule out flu before testing for this novel virus, Mom said.
Within days, we knew. Carol had become one of the statistics I would hear at a news briefing. One of more than 1,000 new known cases that day.
The measures put in place to protect us all from this new threat meant Carol had to spend her last days in isolation. She couldn't see my mother, who'd watched out for her since they were kids. The rules meant no visits from my brothers or me, the nephews who were supposed to look after her if Mom went before she did.
We all understand why it had to be that way. We believe the experts and trust the medical professionals. That doesn't make it any easier.
My last conversation with Carol was on March 21, a day after she turned 60, weeks before she was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
She told me about how my brothers had called and she'd gotten to talk to my sister-in-law and my 2-year-old nephew. I said, "Happy birthday." We said we loved and missed each other. I tried to get my 2-year-old son to say hello on speakerphone. It went as well as you'd expect. After maybe a minute and a half, Carol said she had to go, and we hung up.
Mom did provide an update in the interim: Carol seemed to be enjoying the lovely view from her window, and other than a persistent fever, the COVID-19 symptoms seemed mild and well controlled.
And then she was gone.
On Saturday, there was a small wake, a funeral Mass and then burial at a Chicago-area cemetery. Limit 10 people, priest and funeral director included.
I wasn't there, though I was able to stream the funeral on Zoom. My wife and I are expecting our second child in August, and as the public health officials have reminded us, pregnancy is considered a high-risk category for COVID-19.
Carol wasn't always easy, especially for my mom, and taking care of her needs took its toll. But my mom never stopped fighting for Carol. Their love was unconditional.
That's what Carol was to me too. A source and a recipient of unconditional love.
If you were sitting next to her at a family gathering, she often would reach over, without saying a word, and squeeze your hand, her simple way of saying, "I love you," though she was never stingy with the words.
The night Mom called to tell me Carol had died, I went downstairs to the guest room, where hours earlier I'd watched the governor outline the state's effort to increase testing for staff and residents at long-term care facilities.
On the cluttered bed, I found the birthday card I'd bought for her before we'd had to cancel her birthday gathering. It's a pink card with shiny gold embellishments. On the front, it says, "You're an awesome aunt."
A trite greeting card sentiment, perhaps. But true.
