A woman has revealed her heartbreak after coronavirus forced her to say goodbye to her dying husband via FaceTime.
Marini Smith, from Michigan, was ordered to stay at home when she and other family members fell ill with symptoms of coronavirus.
This meant she could not be with her husband in his final hours - and was unable to attend his funeral when he passed away last month.
Marini, her father and her brother have all tested positive for Covid-19 in March and have been housebound ever since.
The last time Marini Smith was able to see her husband Rayshone Smith was on March 16 when he was admitted to Detroit hospital with a high fever.
“People in the family started displaying flu-like symptoms - no idea it was corona, nothing like that, just, ‘Hey, I don’t feel so good,’" Marini Smith told CNN. “My husband, his symptom was a high fever.”
During his treatment, a concerned nurse took pity on the family and offered her own phone so they could be in direct contact.
“The nurse felt so bad for my daughter and I, she used her personal phone and FaceTimed us, which I thought was really, really nice," Marini Smith said.
"So, she let us speak with him, and I asked was he scared? He said ‘Yeah.’ Everybody that know my husband know he’s not afraid of anything, but he was very, very scared.”
Just seven days after arriving at the hospital, Rayshone died from Covid-19.
Neither his wife nor his daughter could attend his funeral. Instead, they watched videos of the service recorded by another person who was in attendance at the funeral.
“I didn’t want him to leave here alone. I just feel like he was there for everybody, and I feel like he was alone. Nobody was able to be there for him,” Marini Smith said.
Marini Smith and her daughter are now waiting until the end of the pandemic to say their last goodbyes.
“I promised her when this is all over, we’re going somewhere, we’re going to scream and cry and hold each other and we’re going to go visit her dad,” Marini Smith said.
Coronavirus has killed 23,543 people in the United States and infected 583,990 making it the world's worst hit country.
