The last time Pamela Addison saw her husband alive, on April 3, she managed to say the words ‘I love you’ to him before the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance.
Martin Addison, 44, a speech pathologist, could not respond. He was struggling to breathe when he tried to recover from Covid-19 at home for two weeks after being exposed in hospital where he did swallow assessments on patients. While holding her 6-month-old son, Graeme, and her 2-year-old daughter, Elsie, and watching the ambulance drive away, she still held on hoping that her husband, healthy and in his best time, would recover. quickly. After all, the news reports at the time suggested that the victims of the pandemic were predominantly elderly or those with pre-existing conditions.
He died 26 days later.
Addison was left alone with their two young children, and had to be physically separated from friends and family in her home in Waldwick, New Jersey. Because she was diabetic, she had to be careful to protect herself to make sure she would be there for her children. Addison looked like Martin, despite his sacrifice as a front-line health worker, had become a different statistic in the rise of Covid-19 death reports.
“All my friends had their husbands, they were healthy. I just knew me,” said Addison, who turned 37 on Monday. “I thought, ‘Oh well, no one else is going to understand what I’m going through – and that was a very different part of my sadness. ‘
Addison months later found a way to share her grief and honor her husband’s memory.
Addison, a reading teacher, was inspired by a sympathy card she received from another widow, a stranger whose husband died under similar circumstances, and wants to support others like them. Addison is setting up a Facebook support group, Young Widows and Widowers of Covid-19, for others who are struggling as single parents in the isolation of the pandemic.
Less than two months after the launch on November 7, the group has 84 members (and counts) from across the country, as well as from the UK.
This is a start: there are plans for eventual meetings with Zoom and, once a vaccine is readily available, also for personal gatherings.
“A lot of young women lose their husbands to this, and they think they’m alone,” Addison said. “We need to come together and support each other, because Covid-19 is like a different kind of death.”
The fatal sympathy card came from Kristina Scorpo, 33, a postpartum nurse and mother of two young boys, who is now an administrator of the Facebook group. After she lost her husband, Frank, a police officer in Paterson, New Jersey, to the virus on Easter Sunday, another police widow sent her a ticket to confirm that she was not alone in her grief. The sender also wrote that Scorpo would one day answer the gesture by sending a card to another woman in pain.
The day came earlier than expected after Scorpo read the story of Martin Addison on a GoFundMe page for his family posted on social media by a mutual friend. Her own grief was fresh, but Scorpo had a two-week lead on Addison to uncover the unique challenges of raising her sons, Francesco, now 5, and Santino, now 15 months, as a single mother in the era of social distance.
‘I read that she had a 2-year-old and a new 5-month-old when her husband passed away, and that I had a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old, so I was “she’s the one I’m going to send the card to,” Scorpo said, “because we were in the exact same boat. We lost our husbands to exactly the same thing.
“And I’m glad I did.
Both Addison and Scorpo were no longer alone.
Although they had not yet met in person, the two women became close friends and regularly texted and talked to each other to support each other. They talk about the day their children can finally meet, with a bond in their shared loss that cannot be understood by their other young friends.
“We did not plan on this,” Scorpo said. “We did not intend to become a widow at 36 or 33. We did not intend to raise our children without our partners with whom we saw our lives, and we saw a future.”
But with Addison, “it was like we knew exactly what the other one would say, because we’ve been through all the same things, and it’s really a wonderful thing that life has brought us together,” she said.
When Addison realizes she’s not alone, she writes a blog post outlining her story, which was published in October by the NJ.com newspaper New Jersey. When other women who were recently widowed by Covid-19 commented on the report, she decided to set up the Facebook group where they could share their stories.
The shared connection is critical. The unique low stressors of the pandemic are unprecedented in our lifetime – the potential for illness and death, economic worries, isolation, distance education and political chaos among them – and decades of research show that support groups can benefit those suffering from general trauma , said Dana Rose Garfin, a psychologist.
“Everyone is trying to help, and no one knows what to say,” said Garfin, an assistant professor at Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing at the University of California, Irvine. “But when other people have had the same experience, there is a degree of empathy and understanding that can be deeply comforting.”
Emma Charlesworth, 39, found a lifebuoy with these women on the other side of the Atlantic in Kent, England. The pain is universal: her husband, Stuart, a 45-year-old financial officer, died on April 19 after a three-week battle with Covid-19 in hospital, leaving her suddenly single mother to their ten-year-old daughter. . , Rebekah.
“The group is so important to me because it’s comforting to talk to people who get it despite the geographical distance,” Charlesworth said. “Who understands the pain and suffering of losing a spouse as a result of Covid-19.
“It’s a club and opportunity to bond where none of us asked or wanted to join, but are so grateful to have it.”
One of the recent additions to the group is Diana Ordonez, 34, a New Jersey widow who lost her husband, Juan, on April 11, five days before their daughter, Mia, turned 5 years old.
Juan Ordonez, an information security analyst at UPS, fell ill on March 13, days before there was even a lockout in New Jersey. In the early days after his death, Diana was visited by her pastor and his family, who, like Covid-19, came with her but recovered, and virtually supported her parents and siblings in other states.
“When I became a widow, you heard almost no young widows, especially since all of the cases reported were elderly or people with underlying conditions,” said Ordonez, a product manager and marketer. “I remember looking for someone to talk to because no one else really understood this loss, because it was so unique and different.”
As the weeks and months passed, Ordonez struggled to virtually work and school her daughter at home, struggling to process a loss that was difficult enough for adults.
“For the first few months, Mia did not go to bed alone in her bed because Dad went to the ‘hospital while she slept’ in the middle of the night and did not return, ‘Ordonez said. ‘So, she was afraid that Mom would also die in the middle of the night.
“It was difficult for me because it was the night to try to process me and be alone and mourn or try to rely on other people,” she said.
The group helped share the emotional burden, but it is not always easy for her to participate.
“On a certain level, it’s also a bit unleashing,” Ordonez said. “It’s been eight months, and you feel like ‘OK, I’ve healed.’ But then you have to be mentally prepared to read something, because it can take you back to where you were. ‘
Ordonez said she was grateful to have joined the Facebook group Young Widows and Widowers of Covid-19 just before the holidays – a time that had special meaning for her and Juan. Nine years ago, he introduced her on Christmas Eve; the anniversary of their first appointment is January 2nd.
Addison said it was many weeks ago for many members, and several encouraged each other to honor their deceased spouses by keeping the traditions alive and keeping continuity for their children.
“We are all in different stages of sadness. Some people have just lost their husband when it feels hopeless, as if there will be no happiness or joy again,” Addison said. “And then there are others. Several of us are in the ‘April group’.
“I feel we can help them,” she said. “Even if they are not where I am now, I can support them. And it heals me, too.”