“Well, it doesn’t look good for COVID,” my mom said to me on a cold December morning while President Joe Biden was on TV talking about measures the U.S. would be taking to combat the new Omicron variant. 

It’s been almost two years since COVID-19 first ravaged the world, and it’s been a year since my Grandpa Rich, my mom’s dad, died of COVID. He contracted it at a small Christmas party, and on Jan. 6, the day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, he was hospitalized. He had already survived stage three lung cancer and a heart attack so my brain told me there was no way this could kill him — nothing else had.

He died Jan. 24, 2021, in his hospital bed in Phoenix, Arizona, a few weeks before he turned 84. I didn’t get to see him, and my family had to wait three weeks to cremate his body because the crematorium was so backed up with COVID deaths. Half of the people who were at that Christmas party got sick and four were hospitalized. Only my grandpa died.

The last time my grandparents visited us in Reno was July of 2020. They wanted to stay the whole month but thought it was boring and didn’t like that they had to wear masks in public, unlike in Arizona. I had to sadly wave goodbye when they left after just a week (I didn’t even get to hug him because we were being cautious about COVID).

Grandpa was incredibly gentle and kind. He cried easily. He kissed everyone on the lips. He loved wearing “Life is Good” T-shirts. In his younger days, he was a volunteer sheriff in a small California mountain town where he also played tennis religiously. He was the son of immigrants from El Salvador and Sweden, served in the Army in post-WWII Germany helping with end-of-war efforts, and always made sure the fringe on the throw rug was straight.

He was a very patient man, especially with me, a hyperactive kid. When I was little, he would sit in his car with me for hours while I played rocketship, pushing every button and turning every knob. When we were visiting my grandparents in the mountains in winter, we built snowmen together. We also erected pillow forts and made race cars out of boxes and assembled drum sets out of pots and pans.

My grandparents were avid Fox News consumers. I remember my grandparents complaining that the detained children in cages on the border had crossed illegally and how not enough people were talking about that. It was always hard for me to reconcile when they would say things like that because they weren’t hateful people. My grandpa wanted to talk to every waitress or waiter we ever had and hear their life story. He loved my brother and my cousin unconditionally when they came out as gay, even though his church didn’t preach a level of tolerance that the LGBTQ+ community deserves. He never spoke ill of anyone he knew; every meal was the best he’d ever had, and every acquaintance was a close friend.

My grandparents went along with COVID protocols when they were around us, but they weren't going to let “a flu” stop them from hanging out with their many friends in their retirement community outside of Phoenix. I know they didn’t wear masks around their friends, didn’t try to keep six feet apart and my grandpa was probably still kissing everyone to greet them.

I don’t know why, but when my mom got a call that my grandparents were both sick and that my grandpa was in the hospital, it surprised me. My grandparents denied it was COVID at first, but later it was evident. My mom drove down to Arizona with her brother and sister to take care of my grandma. 

When they arrived, my grandma couldn’t stand and had called 911 twice, but they couldn’t take her to the hospital because of capacity issues. She wasn’t sick enough. My mom and her siblings wore gloves and put garbage bags over their bodies along with face shields and masks. They stayed in a small guest house separate from my grandparent's house, and scrubbed clean every time they left the main house. They didn’t get sick (this was before vaccines were available to the public).

I’m really glad my mom and my grandma got to see my grandpa one last time on the day he died. The hospital let them visit. When I talked to him on the phone the day before, the last thing he said to me was “I’m going to get better.” I think about that a lot. The eternal optimist. It breaks my heart. I remember saying “I love you” on the phone over and over while I heard the sound of the machines pumping air into his lungs.

Before he died, my grandpa told my mom he had no idea COVID was this bad. The news was on in his hospital room, and for the first time he was watching a news station that was different from what he normally watched. He didn’t know. That makes me angry, and it also makes me feel so powerless. It didn’t matter how much we told my grandparents that COVID was serious — Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity had said it was being blown out of proportion by the liberal media, that it was just a way to control people. 

This event, more than any other, really showed me how powerful messaging from the media can be, and how it can be so hard to convince people something is serious when they are being told over and over that it isn’t — when they are being lied to and manipulated. How are we supposed to beat COVID when so many people feel attacked by the idea that they have to wear a mask or respect people’s social boundaries? 

Even now my grandma denies the severity of the pandemic. She told us once that she wasn’t sure COVID was what really killed my grandpa. I can hear the weariness in my mom’s voice when she talks to my grandma on the phone.

The death of my grandpa has strained my mom’s relationship with her mom, but it’s the aftermath that has really added to the stress. Without my grandpa, my grandma needs a caretaker, but she refuses to move closer to her children. And with any family relationship, things are complicated. My mom was very angry for a while, and still is from time to time, but now she mostly just sounds exasperated. I showed this piece to her while writing it and she said that the nuances that follow a parent’s death, especially in the time of COVID, are far greater than those who have not experienced it can imagine.

There is a lot of good in the world. I know this because a lot of people are doing the right thing by wearing masks, listening to the experts, getting vaccinated and getting booster shots. But there is so much anger and divisiveness, too.

I don’t have a solution. I don’t want Fox News watchers to feel attacked. I don’t want to make people feel badly for not taking everything the media says at face value — I think it’s good to have a healthy level of skepticism, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to end up grounded in fact. And there is in fact overwhelming evidence that the vaccine helps reduce the severity of COVID.

I wanted to share this story in the hope that it will make readers think about how the pandemic has affected people's lives. I lost my grandpa, someone I was extremely close with, someone who helped raise me and showed me how to love the world and how to receive the world's love back.

The Omicron variant, like the Delta variant before, is serious. More people are going to get sick and more people are going to die. Just be aware of it. I’m not perfect in my prevention efforts — I sometimes get drinks with friends; I’ve been to weddings; I’ve gone to birthday and holiday parties and taken my mask off. But I got vaccinated, I got my booster, I wear a mask in the store, and I respect people's boundaries. I hope one day COVID-19 becomes a regular part of the flu season and is not as deadly. But until the doctors and experts tell us otherwise, I’ll be following guidelines.

I don’t want anyone else to go through what I have, but the sad truth is that people have and are going through much, much worse.

Here’s a passage I wrote in my journal from the evening Grandpa Rich passed away:

Because I’m in Reno and not down in Arizona it almost doesn’t feel real. In some ways, I’m glad my last memory of seeing him was this summer when he was healthy, although I wish I could have hugged him…

Grandpa, if you can read this, I love you so much and I’m sorry this happened to you. I hope you’re at peace and in a good place. One day I’ll see you again.

Love,

Joey

Joey Lovato is the multimedia editor at The Nevada Independent.