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Daughter of Bernie & Phyl’s founder grieves after exposing and losing her dad to COVID
For a year, Michelle Pepe awoke every day, recited the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, and kissed a photo of her father. And coped with her guilt.
“‘Dad,” she says, “I’m so sorry that this happened.”
“This” was COVID-19. In March 2020, just as the pandemic bloomed in the United States, Pepe traveled from Boston to Florida for her mother’s 80th birthday. She believes she gave the coronavirus to her father; Bernie Rubin died weeks later.
“At the beginning, people would say, ‘Well, how did he get it?’ From me. That’s how he got it — he got it from me,” Pepe says, sobbing.
“Nobody’s ever said, ‘This is your fault and you gave it to him,’ but I know it’s true. I know I couldn’t save him. It’s just something I’m going to have to go to the grave with.”
Hers is a common sorrow of the times. Around the world, countless people are struggling to shake off the burden of feeling responsible for the death of a loved one due to COVID-19. They regret a trip or feel anguish over everyday decisions that may have spread the disease — commuting to work, hugging parents, even picking up food.
Son’s grief, guilt become tribute honoring COVID-19 victims
NEW YORK (AP) — Though Brian Walter knows he tried to protect his parents from the coronavirus, doubts torment him.
Did he grab a wrong bottle of orange juice, one covered with infectious droplets? Did he get too close to his dad? What if he had worked a different shift — would things have been different?
Did he bring about his father’s death?
The New York City Transit employee was deemed an essential worker needed to keep the city running last year when it became the epicenter of the pandemic. He shared a meal for St. Patrick’s Day with his parents, then decided that he should stay away for their safety. They kept a sanitizing station outside their shared home where he would leave groceries that his mom would disinfect.
Still, they got sick. And he can’t escape the gnawing feeling that he exposed his father to the virus.
“I constantly feel guilty that I was the one going out every day,” he said. “I mean, I’m the only person leaving the house all the time. So you know, it almost seems logical that I was the one that brought it in.”
These are common questions in a world beset by a pandemic that has killed about 600,000 people in the United States alone. Survivors wonder whether small decisions they made had catastrophic consequences.
In the year since John Walter died on May 10, 2020, Brian has often returned to their last moment together, when he drove his 80-year-old father to a Manhattan hospital.
“I’d give anything to have it back, because there’s so many things that I didn’t say that I’d love to have that time again,” he said, choking back tears.
The family was unable to hold a wake. Instead, they buried John Walter’s ashes months later in a small ceremony at All Faiths Cemetery in Queens.
