This is Part 2 of the two part story detailing Karina’s experience of losing her father to Covid. For Part 1, click here.
On April 2nd, 2020 my father succumbed to COVID. That day, and the days that followed, I was an overwhelmed, numb mess. I couldn’t comprehend his passing, and I couldn’t stop blaming myself for not being there. I felt like I failed my family and my father, especially. Sobbing into the closet floor I would shut myself inside so my kids wouldn’t see. I didn’t want to face this new scary world. I prayed that maybe, when I stepped out of the closet, this had only been a horrible nightmare. Those days were a special kind of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Like a lot of folks during that time, we didn’t hold a funeral. Reasons included not wanting to infect other loved ones, not wanting family members to have to figure out travel in the midst of a growing pandemic, and the general panic and chaos occurring around the world. The chaos going on within our family was also, still, out of control even after my father’s death.
Too Many Bodies
First of all, there was no guarantee on when we would be able to access my father’s body. It was stuck in a horrific limbo between an overcrowded hospital and a backed up funeral parlor. I would get sick watching the refrigerated trucks on the news holding the overflow of corpses, wondering if one of them held my father’s body.
First of all, there was no guarantee on when we would be able to access my father’s body. It was stuck in a horrific limbo between an overcrowded hospital and a backed up funeral parlor. I would get sick watching the refrigerated trucks on the news holding the overflow of corpses, wondering if one of them held my father’s body. The bodies of loved ones, the body of the incredible man that was my father, could be laying there like the corpse of a fucking stray animal and it was too difficult to bear. I didn’t trust anyone would care enough to take care of his body, or any of those bodies. It took weeks after his passing for the funeral parlor to confirm they had his body and could proceed with cremation.
“He wanted to be cremated. He told me.” My mother said that soon after he passed. At least we were doing that for him as he would have wanted.
As if keeping tabs on my father’s body wasn’t stressful enough, my mother’s slight cough, the one I heard in the background when she put my father on FaceTime in his last days, was worse. Immediately after his passing, she wasn’t eating or drinking water. She experienced hallucinations of hideous demons taunting her. Of course, after seeing what a failure the virtual doctors had been for my father, she wanted nothing to do with them. Either way, she wouldn’t have told them about the hallucinations out of a combination of fear and shame. (Months later it was confirmed that hallucinations were a Covid side effect.)
Fears of Moving Far From Home
We felt let down by all of the services that surrounded him. Even in his death, the systems in place were still managing to fail him and taunt his family.
I was once again confronted by a family emergency on the opposite side of the country. I, in Los Angeles, was a five and a half hour flight away from Queens, NY. My sister, based in Rhode Island, was a four hour drive away. We needed to get mom to my sister’s home to quarantine there, and fast. Between the potential COVID and the incredible trauma of my father’s passing, she needed one of us in person. We researched and called everywhere for drivers, locating a long distance driving service that was somehow still operating. For around $600, we were able to transport her in a car to my sister’s home. Thank goodness we were in a financial position where $600 was not an issue to save my mother’s life and we were technologically savvy enough to research and find options.
Once she was in Rhode Island, my sister was able to get her tested and get care. While Covid was in the community in Rhode Island, it wasn’t affecting the area at the levels New York was experiencing in April 2020. It was significantly easier for mom to get access to care and tested for Covid. While we awaited her test results, my sister took very good care of our mother. Tracking her low grade fever (which was uncovered at my sister’s), calming her through her hallucinations, feeding her and giving her lots of water. Once the test results came in, they confirmed the obvious. My mother had Covid. We weren’t shocked but we were terrified.
It was entirely possible to lose my mother just like I had my father. No one’s family deserved that much pain, yet several people have lost multiple loved ones through the pandemic. Thank goodness she recovered, and though she exhibits several Long-Covid symptoms, she survived.
About a week after my mother’s Covid results arrived, we received my father’s results. Negative. I realized that even if the test was received on time, it was useless anyway. Our entire family was furious. We felt let down by all of the services that surrounded him. Even in his death, the systems in place were still managing to fail him and taunt his family.
Managing the Finances in Crisis
First of all, I’m never in the fucking mindset to organize finances.
While all this was happening, life didn’t pause. It never does, right? The kids still needed to be cared for, and because schools were closed they were home during the worst of it. The bills also still had to be paid. I was back at work after about three weeks post my father’s passing. As much as I could, I accepted life changed drastically and I stepped in to help mom. I committed to organizing the finances. To say I had no idea of how complicated and emotionally taxing that commitment actually was is a fucking understatement.
Prior to my dad’s passing, my parents financial systems consisted of a lot of band-aids holding things together. My father kept it all in check by being very hands-on, so for them it worked. I was hoping I could just step in where he left off, maybe sign a few things and everything would be under control. Of course, I was naive to the burden awaiting me.
First of all, I’m never in the fucking mindset to organize finances. Financial conversations make me extremely uncomfortable. Most of the time I rather not deal with finances at all, whether for myself or my family. It’s a combination of growing up where every dollar had to be counted and we were constantly aware of what we had and didn’t have. I also assumed that in the future, maybe in my 50’s, some type of financial knowledge would just naturally find its way into my brain and I would be able to sort out my parents affairs as well as my own.
What About the Credit Card Bills?
About two months after my father’s passing, I forwarded my parent’s mail to my home address. Some of it was credit card debt, which had been increasing with additional late payment fees. A few family members advised me to pay these off quickly to get them current. Maybe a psychological trigger response because the concept of dying with debt evoked a sense of shame.
Since I couldn’t afford the payments easily I was hoping they were wrong. After some research I was glad to find I didn’t have to pay those debts. Instead, I just had to notify each creditor of his death and date of his passing. It seemed like an easy enough task, except because of the emotional toll that the whole ordeal had taken on me, I cried on the phone with every creditor I got on the phone. I couldn’t handle the task and gave up for a while.
It wasn’t too long before the creditors started contacting me. In the midst of handling affairs for my mom in her own health crisis with Covid, I unofficially became the executor of the estate for my dad. Or at least I thought I was.
“Hello, are you the executor of the estate for Fernando Roa?” said the creditor.
“Ummm. I don’t know. What is that?”
“What?”
“Executor of state. What does that mean? I don’t know if I am that. Can you please tell me what it means?”
“Oh. Ok. Well, the person who administers a person’s estate upon their death.”
“Ok. My mom is sick and not able to handle this. How do I know if I am what you are saying? The executor of the estate?” By now, I’m in whole tears, straight up sobbing.
“Well, if you are his only child and your mom isn’t able, it is possible you could be the executor of estate.”
“Ok, I am then. That is me. I am the executor of Fernando Roa’s estate”
While later I found out, I technically wasn’t, as that responsibility officially remained with my mom, I needed to proactively tackle all this. I returned to contacting the creditors, on my terms using Google to guide me. While the first call was unbearable, I did it. Each one was less painful than the last.
“I could do this,” I thought to myself–because if not me, who? I had to do this.
What Happens to the Mortgage?
What if I made a mistake? Or, worse yet, what if I ended up making a decision that my father wouldn’t have wanted.
Some responsibilities were easier to handle than others.
In New York, if a homeowner had Covid, they had the opportunity to postpone their mortgage payments. Obviously, without my father around, this was something that was advantageous to us while we figured out my mom’s situation. I called the mortgage company and the conversation went something like the following:
“Hello, I’m calling to postpone the mortgage payments for my parents since my father died of Covid.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. There is someone else on the mortgage though. Have you tried online?”
“Yes, my mother. But my father has passed, and we need to postpone the payments.”
“But your mother is currently responsible for the payments. Online you could…”
“My father is dead from Covid. My mother is currently sick from Covid and they obviously can’t make their payments. What do I need to do to postpone?!” I’m scream-crying into the phone.
“OK- that’s what I needed to hear to process this. Both names listed on the mortgage would have to be affected in order to postpone the mortgage payments. You can also do the process online if you’d like.”
That call rocked me to my core. There was a chance for me to completely screw things up for my parents. What if my mom didn’t have Covid, and I shared that information with the mortgage company. Would they have denied the postponement? I couldn’t afford their payments plus all my current expenses. What would have happened then? Could they have lost their house that they worked so hard for because I accidentally overshared information on the phone? The craziest part was, I did end up going online because I couldn’t emotionally handle talking on the phone anymore. The pressure was too great for me to stomach. The online form didn’t require the same info as the phone call. We postponed the mortgage, however the damage to my confidence in handling my parent’s affairs was done.
What if I made a mistake? Or, worse yet, what if I ended up making a decision that my father wouldn’t have wanted. Or a decision that put my mom in a bad situation? Every financial decision became plagued with doubt because I didn’t want to mess it up like I almost could have messed up the mortgage.
For the next two years, and still at the point of writing this, we are not done managing my father’s estate. We’ve moved my mother across the country and nursed her back to decent health, notwithstanding the issues she still deals with from Long-Covid. My family helped us empty the NY house. We rented out to tenants to maintain the mortgage. We’ve gotten access to my dad’s checking account–after two years because it wasn’t a joint account and didn’t list a beneficiary. There’s still more to do, but we continue to move forward, learn and share information so hopefully other’s don’t need to go through the same levels of pain and stress in an already difficult situation.
What I Wish For You
We all wish we could just do what our loved ones want. When they leave unexpectedly though you don’t have the chance to ask what they want. I still don’t know if I’m doing things the way my dad would have wanted.
As of writing this now though, I tell myself that he would have been proud of me figuring it out, and sharing all my learnings. If you go to Woodhaven, Queens, and ask the neighbors, or anyone that knew him really, my father was a man of character. The fact that his death represents a change in the tide to how we approach our finances personally, it would have been what he wanted. That we are pushing our learnings out to our community, makes me feel like we are building this knowledge base together.
I truly hope that when that inevitable time comes, where a loved one in your immediate circle passes, they have the opportunity to say their official goodbye so you are granted closure. On the chance that it doesn’t happen that way, I pray you could grieve them with peace and dignity. That you can allow yourself to feel the pain and say goodbye. Then, if it is your role, may you execute on their will and take pride in doing what they would have wanted–and take comfort in that process as well. I know that’s what my father would want for you too.
–