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As Sesma cried, the mariachi music cut through the silence. “I’d rather be asleep than awake because of how much it hurts that you’re not there,” the group said in Spanish.
She buried her mother last week in South Los Angeles. But she had to say goodbye in a parking lot.
There the coffin has been placed in a corner, under a pop-up awning – with flower arrangements and photos all around. The chairs were spaced in the parking spaces.
It was the only safe space, where people could socially distance themselves by crying, that Calvary Chapel – located near the Sesma family in south Los Angeles – had available.
“While waiting to bury him, it looked like torture,” Sesma told CNN. “We were worried about his appearance.
She said she feared her mother’s body would warp and start to decompose before she could see her face for the very last time.
At the funeral, Sesma stood in prayer. Her faith, she says, is the only thing that sustains her after such a loss.
Sesma’s family contracted Covid in December
Sesma said she quit her job as a real estate agent to live with her mother and stepfather due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Her mother, a retired machinist, had lung disease. Her stepfather was a handyman with asthma and diabetes. His brother lived next door with his young family.
In December, she said they had all contracted Covid-19. Her parents found themselves so sick that they had to be admitted to Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles.
The state-of-the-art hospital – which is teeming with patients – is a haven of peace in what has long been a healthcare wasteland in the city’s heavily black, Latino area.
“Our emergency department was designed to treat 40 to 45,000 patients per year. In 2019, before Covid, we were seeing 110,000 patients per year, ”said hospital CEO Dr Elaine Batchlor. “This is in large part because of a lack of access to quality care in the community.”
Now with the coronavirus there are even more patients everywhere, she said.
Los Angeles reported 12,617 new cases on Monday, bringing the county’s total number of cases to 932,697, as the county nears the grim milestone of one million cases. An additional 137 new deaths were reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 12,387.
‘Don’t let it be you’
Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital normally has a capacity of 135 beds, but now treats more than 200 people inside, according to Batchlor. More than 60% are patients with coronavirus.
Batchlor said the hospital is seeing some of the sickest patients in the city and state.
“Diabetes is three times more common here than in the rest of California. Mortality is 72% higher. Life expectancy is 10 years shorter here than in the rest of the state,” Batchlor said. . “It all has to do with the fact that this is an underfunded and underserved community.”
And that means what happened to the Sesma family tends to be the norm, not the exception.
“We have been unfortunate enough to see this disease cross families and, all too often, take several members of the same family,” said Dr Jason Prasso, who cared for Sesma’s mother and stepfather.
The pain of the losses for the doctors and nurses rests on their shoulders like a dull weight that will not escape. For families, losing someone to Covid has devastating consequences.
“We lost my mother and my stepfather to the coronavirus,” Sesma said. “Don’t let it be you. If you truly love your loved ones, don’t let it be you. Keep taking all precautions, take extra precautions, overdo it if necessary.”
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