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| The journal of Providence
PROVIDENCE, RI – Holly Susi has embarked on what appears to be an endless battle with COVID-19.
First her 86-year-old mother contracted the disease, then her father. And then she got it – followed by her husband, brother, and wife.
When her mother, Janet Gingras, passed away on Sunday, all Susi wanted was to reunite her family for a real start. She was stunned when she read that only five people could attend an open-air funeral, so she wrote a letter to Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo to express her dismay.
“People can shop at Target, get their hair cut in a salon, eat indoors at restaurants, but we can’t have a socially distant funeral for my mom?” His seven grandchildren can’t attend? Her older great-grandchildren can’t say goodbye? How can that? ”She wrote.“ It’s not just unfair. It disrespects my mother who has already suffered so much and is inflicting yet another pain on her family.
COVID-19 has inflicted one hit after another on Susi and her family over the past two months.
Her mother had a pulmonary embolism in late October. After being released from the hospital, she caught a cold and then chills. Soon her father, Richard, 89, started to feel sore and feverish.
By the end of the week, Susi knew they both had COVID-19.
A few days later, on November 4, Susi called 911 and her parents were hospitalized.
Both developed pneumonia. Susi’s mother originally improved – and she went to a rehabilitation center in Massachusetts because centers in Rhode Island did not accept COVID-19 patients – but her condition worsened and she was rushed to hospital again, Susi said.
“My mom was really, really sick,” Susi said. “We had to decide to give him some comfort measures and it was a heartbreaking decision.”
Both parents had been very clear: no fans, no extraordinary measures.
“She hadn’t spoken,” Susi said. “One day she opened her eyes and said, ‘Thank you, my God, for answering my prayers.'”
Gingras had prayed to see his family once more.
A week later, Janet was transferred to Hope Hospice in Providence, where Susi spent every day by her side. She died on Sunday.
Susi’s dad beat COVID-19. But he was sent to a rehabilitation center in Massachusetts, where he was placed in a locked-down dementia ward. There, isolated and without human contact, he began to languish.
“Now he has hospital delirium,” Susi said. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I haven’t seen him since October. He doesn’t understand why he’s here. I don’t know if he will ever come back.
Susi said she has now lost both parents in different ways.
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During this time, the virus has affected more family members: Susi’s husband, her nephew, her brother’s son and daughter, and their two children.
“I am a rules follower,” said Susi. “I kept a contact tracing book from mid-March. I kept my bubble very small. It was the first Thanksgiving because it was just my husband and I. We have done everything that was asked. “
“We know what COVID can do,” she continued. “So I said, ‘let’s have his funeral outside.'”
Susi wanted to invite between 16 and 18 members of her family. Everyone would wear masks and stand out. But we told him no.
Susi lives near a local restaurant in Providence and says there are easily over 18 people working there at a time.
“I can have 150 people in … a big church and that’s 25% of the capacity,” she says. “My family has been overwhelmed on so many levels by COVID. To add to our grief, we can’t even do what we thought was absolutely the best for our family. “
The Rhode Island Department of Health said churches, unlike open-air burials, are structured: they’re allowed to be 25 percent of capacity, with parishioners sitting six feet apart. The challenge with outdoor services is that that same structure is often not in place, DOH spokesperson Joseph Wendelken said.
“Ensuring mask wear and social distancing is much more difficult, and not having a common entrance makes it more difficult to screen people for symptoms,” he wrote. “For this reason, during this time when we are seeing such high transmission rates, tighter restrictions have been put in place on corner funerals and other gatherings.”
Susi does not buy it:
“This is not the way we should treat grieving families. The funeral and the revival are for the living. We take the opportunity from people to celebrate a life, the opportunity to comfort themselves. “
Susi said Gingras was a spitfire. This is what prompted her to make this situation public.
“She would be proud. She would have liked to fight against that. People want the opportunity to rest their loved ones in the midst of their family.
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