When the state turned to her in March, 67-year-old Joyce Babineau, an employee at the supermarket in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, was one of the many workers who provided for basic needs during the pandemic.
She feels proud to enter Stop & Shop at 6am five days a week. She was also constantly scared to know that she was endangering the health of her husband, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
At home after her nine-hour shift, she hurried to the basement to take off her work clothes and dump them straight into the washing machine and then scrub in the shower. Only then would she greet her husband, Paul Babineau, a 76-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, so kindly that she called him “the welcome wagon.”
Now, months later, Ms. Babineau a new routine after work. She walks to her fireplace mantel, lights a candle and talks to the golden urn holding her husband’s ashes.
“I talk to him and tell him I’m sorry,” she says. “Because I brought it home.”