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This is the best use of an interactive layout I've ever seen, just incredibly affecting.
This is the best use of an interactive layout I've ever seen, just incredibly affecting.
Link to tweet
OPINION
1 Million Deaths, 13 Last Messages
By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer
Ms. Wittmeyer is a senior staff editor in Opinion.
When my partner’s father died of Covid-19 in April 2020, what I found my thoughts lingering on, in the numb days and weeks that followed, were his text messages. ... “I have the. Virus” is how we first found out he’d gotten it, a phrase whose typos and solemn tone initially struck us as both ominous and funny, but which later became almost unbearable. I couldn’t stop thinking, too, about the texts that had preceded that one, in which his father had aired his doubts about whether California’s emergency measures were over the top, and my partner had warned him to be careful. I hated that when Doug looked at his last exchanges with his father, he’d have to see those.
And I thought about his father’s very last messages. Later, during his weeks on the ventilator, we’d discuss these texts with other family members — how hard it had been to respond to his message about being intubated. “I didn’t know what to say,” one said. “I just sent a heart.”
There was something both poignant and very strange about these exchanges. In a way, it was reassuring to have a record of these moments to turn to — they were tangible and accessible in a way that last words exchanged in person would not be. But they were also horrible; these were records that existed only because Covid-related restrictions meant that Doug’s father had to die alone, without family around to comfort him.
Almost two years later, as colleagues and I were preparing for the day when the United States hit the grim milestone of one million Covid-19 deaths, it occurred to me: My family was almost certainly not alone in carrying around these strange artifacts of a terrible time. Perhaps readers would submit their own final text messages from loved ones lost to Covid? They did, by the dozens; we’ve selected 13 to present here.
{snip}
1 Million Deaths, 13 Last Messages
By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer
Ms. Wittmeyer is a senior staff editor in Opinion.
When my partner’s father died of Covid-19 in April 2020, what I found my thoughts lingering on, in the numb days and weeks that followed, were his text messages. ... “I have the. Virus” is how we first found out he’d gotten it, a phrase whose typos and solemn tone initially struck us as both ominous and funny, but which later became almost unbearable. I couldn’t stop thinking, too, about the texts that had preceded that one, in which his father had aired his doubts about whether California’s emergency measures were over the top, and my partner had warned him to be careful. I hated that when Doug looked at his last exchanges with his father, he’d have to see those.
And I thought about his father’s very last messages. Later, during his weeks on the ventilator, we’d discuss these texts with other family members — how hard it had been to respond to his message about being intubated. “I didn’t know what to say,” one said. “I just sent a heart.”
There was something both poignant and very strange about these exchanges. In a way, it was reassuring to have a record of these moments to turn to — they were tangible and accessible in a way that last words exchanged in person would not be. But they were also horrible; these were records that existed only because Covid-related restrictions meant that Doug’s father had to die alone, without family around to comfort him.
Almost two years later, as colleagues and I were preparing for the day when the United States hit the grim milestone of one million Covid-19 deaths, it occurred to me: My family was almost certainly not alone in carrying around these strange artifacts of a terrible time. Perhaps readers would submit their own final text messages from loved ones lost to Covid? They did, by the dozens; we’ve selected 13 to present here.
{snip}