My Story

At age 16, most people don’t have to think about life after losing one of their parents; but there I was, imagining the worst and trying to get through my day as my dad lay connected to an oxygen concentrator, just on the other side of a thin wall.

Of our “COVID experience”, the image that remained stamped into my memory was that of my dad, who used to be almost burly, coming out of the quarantine room a week later, almost emaciated. It was then, when I could see the outline of his ribcage, that I realized how the virus had ravaged his body from the inside out. I asked him what it was like and if it was true that the symptoms of COVID were similar to the flu, to which he responded, “No. Seasonal flu always feels like it passes over you; you feel sick for a short while and then it’s over. COVID-19 felt like it passed through me, as if it took pieces of me along the way with it.”