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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and as some of you know the Brian Lehrer show and others here at WNYC are putting together a time capsule to remember this strange and difficult year. Here at the show, we've been having various segments call-ins to gather your stories of the pandemic in the pandemic, your racial justice experiences this year, and what you've learned yesterday, what you learned about democracy and elections through the 2020 election process, so much about that was new to people and how it got challenged.

Today, well, and when we're done with all of this, where we're going to store these time capsule call-ins safely with our transmitter at the top of the empire state building, literally physically store it with our transmitter, in addition, to digitally, of course, and we're going to open the time capsule in 2030, whoever's around for that to open the time capsule and hear what this year sounds like in a retrospect, 10 years hands.

Hopefully, we will have learned some things. Today my invitation to you is sad and simple. I hope it can help people right now, as well as, whatever people look back on a decade from now when the time capsule was opened in 2030. The question is, how did you cope with losing a loved one to COVID-19 when you were unable to be with that person in-person at the end? How did you cope with losing a loved one to COVID-19 when you were unable to be with that person in-person at the end 646-435-7280, if you're willing to share a story like that, 646-435-7280.

Unfortunately, thousands of Americans every day right now are having that same experience. One of the main reasons we're doing this is I think it will be helpful for people to hear how you made the awfulness of that as bearable and as loving as it could be under the circumstances to help others, the tragically thousands of Americans a day who are going through the same thing right now.

For our time capsule and as advice to people experiencing this right now and over the coming months, how did you cope with losing a loved one to COVID-19 when you unable to be with that person in person at the end? Anybody call up, a few of you call up and share some of your experiences about that. We realize that this is not going to be fun to relive, but I really think it can help people who were about to experience that in our area, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

How did you make that experience as awful as it was as bearable and as loving as it could be for your loved one who was dying, for yourself, experiencing pain, not being able to be with your loved one or for others around you? 646-435-7280. How did you say goodbye to that person even with the restrictive and scary circumstances of the pandemic? Of all the heartbreak and all the injustice of this past year, I think that so many people were left to die alone is maybe the worst of it.

The most haunting it's been a necessary evil. I guess you could call it a necessary evil simply because the crisis has been so dire and the virus is so contagious that hospital staff oftentimes didn't allow visitors, and early on in the pandemic, there wasn't enough protective gear, even for hospital staff let alone loved ones.

I know this is hard, but I'm asking you to call in if you want to, if you're willing to, to tell us, you can say the name of your lost loved one out loud, save that for the time capsule, say the name out loud of the person you lost to COVID-19, who you were unable to say goodbye to in-person before they died and help people know what's the best that you were able to do to make it as bearable as possible for you and for them and maybe that will help others. 646-435-7280 and we'll take those calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to our time capsule question for today, but also a call-in for advice for people confronting the horribleness of losing a loved one to COVID while you can't visit them at the end. How did you cope with losing a loved one to COVID-19 when you were unable to be with that person in-person 646-435-7280. Carol in Manhattan, You're on WNYC. Carol, thank you so much for calling in. I know this takes courage for anybody who's participating. Hi.

Carol: Hello.

Brian: Hi, Carol, you on the air.

Carol: Hi, this is Carol.

Brian: Hi, we got you, Carol.

Carol: Okay, thanks I'm calling about my husband, his name is Richard Kramer. He was an artist and a professor of painting at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He died on April 1st from COVID and the way I have been coping is through my iPhone, I have a daily text message thread with my friends and family, it goes all-day from 6:30 to ten o'clock at night, and we just text anything that comes up that we want to talk about something funny, something sad, something beautiful and it's been my lifeline.

Brian: What you bring up is even a different aspect than what I specifically framed in the intro and I'm so glad that you did, and that's coping afterwards, when you can't be with people in the normal ways for bereavement. On ongoing text threads--

Carol: Yes, while it was happening, it took 10 days for Richard to die in a hospital where I couldn't be, and the same thing, I was by myself in my apartment and it was connection with family that helped.

Brian: Carol, thank you so much for starting us off. We really, really appreciate it. Here is Eileen calling from St. Petersburg, Florida. Eileen, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Ivine: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a longtime fan. To contribute to the capsule. I was able to get through the difficult time because dad was able to be with mom who passed away in April from Alzheimer's and that was something that he wanted to see through to the end. He received exceptional care at the VA Hospital de Pines in Florida. He fought for three weeks and had been on and off a ventilator. He had told his physician, Dr. Bach, that he was ready to let go and he was at peace with that. That's how I was able to cope and my family, my siblings, and extended family.

Brian: That's a brave thing to be able to communicate to a doctor under any circumstances. When he was on the ventilator you couldn't even speak to him on the phone, were you able to communicate with him in any way in those last days?

Ivine: He came off the ventilator and he was fully cognizant. In fact, he had said that he wanted to get out of the hospital so he could donate plasma, but his body just couldn't fight it off and he did not want to be kept alive unnecessarily and he didn't want to-- If his body was just not capable of fighting it, he was at peace with that. We had hoped, it was a roller coaster of up and down and by the end, we all just had to let him go.

I will say that the hospital staff did let my sister and in to see him in full PPE so that we could at least see him for a minute, he wasn't technologically savvy. The only time we got to see him or talk to him was when the doctor used her personal phone, so we could talk to him. It was really hard because we had just lost our mom, but we also know that we weren't alone.

Brian: Your father was so dedicated even with what was going on with him to try to see her to the end. Did you say your father's name? Do you want to say it out loud?

Ivine: I would, his name was Thomas F. Stevens Jr. and he was just one of the best people ever. We all miss him terribly.

Brian: Ivine, thank you so much. I think this will be helpful to other people to hear some of those stories. Thank you. Evelyn in the Bronx. You're on WNYC. Hi, Evelyn. Thanks so much for calling in.

Evelyn: Hi. Thanks for giving me this time. My grandfather passed away. His name was Pedro Flores. He passed away on April 14 and my grandmother had just passed away in January and he was having a hard time with her loss. He took care of her to the very end, he was our champion.

He was such a wonderful positive person. We miss him very much. I was the only one really available to be of support to him and during that time, I tried to check in on him as much as possible because he was grieving my grandmother so bad and then in April he got sick and he went to the hospital and got COVID-19 and I got to speak to him a couple of times in the hospital and they allowed me to visit him the night before he passed away. He was on a ventilator and he wasn't responsive at all.

I took a video of me talking to him for the family. The way we coped is that we kept in touch group texts and video calls and a lot of conferences with the doctors and then when they explained that he was on life support, really, his body was just like not able to fight this so we had to make the hard decision of letting him go.

The way we coped was that the hospital had the priest call us and they did a prayer service, also the cremation where they handled his body also offered some grief information that helped us via email, and then just recently this organization did a memorial that I also attended in the family we're all in different parts. I'm in New York City, but they're in Texas and Rhode Island, and Florida.

The way we coped was just being in touch through texts or video calls and so we also had the priest pray for him at the end of, I think, it was this summer when we were able to finally bury his dashes. It was a long journey and hard, but this is the way we coped and we're still dealing with it. We're still staying in touch and remembering him [unintelligible 00:13:22].

Brian: Evelyn, thank you so much. It's a beautiful story and thank you for saying his name as well. If you're just joining us, we have a few minutes more to take people's calls on how you're coping with losing a loved one to COVID-19 when you were unable to be with that person in person at the end.

We're doing this for two reasons. One, for the 2020 time capsule that we're putting together to be opened and listened to in 2030, hopefully, there will not be a lot of going through this experience after 2020, or at least after 2021, and also to help people who are going through it right now or going to be soon as thousands of Americans continue to die from COVID every day and can't be with their loved ones in person. This is an advice call in for others as well as a record for the time capsule. Let's go next to Philip in Howell, New Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hi, Phillip.

Philip: Hi Brian, how are you doing?

Brian: I'm doing all right. How about you?

Philip: I'm fine. Thanks.

Brian: Your mother. Sorry, your phone quality just deteriorated.

Philip: How about that?

Brian: Oh, much better.

Philip: Oh yes, I was on speaker, I'm sorry.

Brian: Go ahead. It was your mother-in-law who you lost?

Philip: It was who died on June 14th and she was our rock, she was my maid of honor at my wedding. She made her own dress and made all the flower girl dress. Anyway, she put all the teenagers to shame when she would come here, from sun up to sun down she was active. Anyway, that's how we were remembering her. Towards the end, we couldn't see her and the very last day they said we could come. That's how we coping by honoring her memories.

Brian: Did you put on full PPE to go in that day?

Philip: Our son had a medical emergency that very day, so we couldn't be there. That's heartbreaking.

Brian: I see, yes. How are you connecting in bereavement with others who are mourning the loss of your mother-in-law since you can't get together in-person? I don't know if you're able to have a funeral per se, how are you managing to connect?

Philip: We were able to have something at a funeral home, of course, because churches weren't operating, we worked with-- We had police come in and we were able to drive to the funeral home.

Brian: You were able to do that. Do you want to say your mother-in-law's name out loud?

Philip: Rose [unintelligible 00:16:33].

Brian: Philip, thank you very much and I'm sorry for your loss. Nora in Bloomfield. You're on WNYC. Hi, Nora.

Nora: Hi Brian. I live in Bloomfield where I grew up in Montclair with a large group of friends that I'm still friends with. Early on in the pandemic, we were all exposed and one of them Orlando died on March 19th. We were all in quarantine, obviously, because we'd all been exposed.

I hadn't left the house for a couple of weeks when I got a call from my friend, Donna, who was married to Orlando and she asked me to give her a ride to the hospital to say goodbye to him. They were going to take them off the ventilator. I said, yes, without even thinking about it. Then, as soon as I got off the phone, I was like, "Holy moly. I'm going to go out and be exposed to someone who was definitely exposed."

I put on a garbage bag and a mask and goggles and gloves and I went and I picked her up and I apologized for not hugging her. I took her to the hospital and she went in and as I was waiting for her, I got out, it was a beautiful day. I stood in the empty parking lot across the street, usually, you can't even get near the hospital. It was completely empty.

There was the COVID testing tent across the way and I just stood there and looked around. There was one other person I could see on the street and that's so unusual. Then I got back in the car and I played Ten Years Gone by Led Zeppelin, which was a song that Orlando and I both really loved a lot. Donna came out of the hospital about an hour later and I took her home. I actually got lost on the way home, which is ridiculous because I know the neighborhood the back of my hand.

Brian: Yes, that's how distracted you were.

Nora: How powerful it was. I got home and we were all so upset that we couldn't go see Donna and couldn't comfort her. I was speaking with another friend of mine and we were bemoaning that and they said, "Are you kidding? That's the best thing you could have done for her."

Brian: What's your best piece of advice for people who will go through this in terms of how to have contact either with the person as they're dying or with your other loved ones in bereavement?

Nora: Like a bunch of other people mentioned, we did have a text chain, which was really, really important, and just be careful, don't take the risk and add more tragedy.

Brian: I'm really glad you said that because it must be tempting. Because it's so important to people to be there in person at the end and yet it's doing exactly what you said. It's putting yourself, someone else at a risk that you don't have to take, and that might have tragic consequences itself. People need to give themselves permission, even if the hospital will allow it to not do that.

Nora: Yes. Well, he was infected at a dinner party. There were nine people at the dinner party. I was one of them, it was on March 1st. Of those nine people, seven people came down with COVID. Two of them died.

Brian: Nora, that two a lesson for people as they make their holiday plans. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I know it wasn't easy. Thanks to all of you for sharing those stories today. I know it wasn't easy for any of you. I hope it will do some good lesson for people as they make their holiday plans. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I know it wasn't easy. Thanks to all of you for sharing those stories today. I know it wasn't easy for any of you.

I hope it will do some good for some people who will have to go through this, unfortunately, coming up. This will be part of our 2020 time capsule to be opened in 10 years. You can learn more about our time capsule or add your voice @wnyc.org/time capsule.

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