The coronavirus crisis in the United States has claimed nearly 200,000 lives, the young and the old, those living in dense cities and tiny towns, people who spent their days as
The loved ones left behind are trapped in an extraordinary state of torment. They have seen their spouses, parents and siblings fall ill from the virus. They have endured the deaths from a distance, through cellphone connections or shaky FaceTime feeds. Now they are left to grieve, in a country still firmly gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, where everywhere they turn is a reminder of their pain.
That aftermath has been uniquely complicated, and cruel. In dozens of conversations, people across the United States who have lost family members to the coronavirus described a maelstrom of unsettled frustration, anger and isolation, all of it intensified by the feeling that the pandemic is impossible to shut out.
Many are bitter over the government’s handling of the pandemic, which has brought bleak milestones since the first announcement of a coronavirus death in the United States in late February. By May 27, more than 100,000 people in the country had died from the virus. Less than four months later, nearly 100,000 more people are dead, losses captured in the flags, crosses and photographs at memorials that are popping up around the country.
Some survivors have felt a stigma attached to their loved ones’ deaths, a faint suggestion by acquaintances that their relatives were somehow to blame for being infected. And they have been particularly distraught by the constant mentions of it in conversations and in the news, inescapable reminders that resurface their own losses like a pinprick.
