The last time Pamela Addison saw her husband alive, on April 3, she managed to pronounce the words “I love you” to him before paramedics put him in the ambulance.
Martin Addison, 44, a speech therapist, was unable to answer. He was struggling to breathe as he tried to recover from Covid-19 at home two weeks after being exposed at the hospital where he underwent swallowing assessments on patients. While she held her 6-month-old son, Graeme, and her 2-year-old daughter, Elsie, and watched the ambulance leave, she still hoped that her healthy, full-aged husband would recover quickly. After all, news reports at the time suggested that the victims of the pandemic were predominantly elderly or with pre-existing diseases.
He died 26 days later.
Addison was left alone with her two young children, having to isolate herself at her home in Waldwick, New Jersey, physically isolated from friends and family. Because she was diabetic, she needed to be careful to protect herself to make sure she was with her children. It seemed to Addison that Martin, despite his sacrifice as a frontline health professional, had become another statistic in Covid-19’s growing crowd of obituaries.
“All my friends had their husbands, they were healthy. I just knew myself, ”said Addison, who turned 37 on Monday. “I thought, ‘My God, no one else is going to understand what I’m going through’ – and This one it was another part of my pain. “
Months later, Addison found a way to share her pain and honor her husband’s memory.
Having been inspired by a condolence card she received from another widow, a stranger whose husband died in similar circumstances, Addison, a reading teacher, decided to provide support for others like them. Addison founded a support group on Facebook, Young Widows and Widowers of Covid-19, for others who struggled as single mothers in the isolation caused by the pandemic.
Less than two months after its launch on November 7, the group has 84 members (and counting) from across the country, in addition to the UK.
It’s a start: there are plans for eventual Zoom meetings and, when the vaccine is available, for face-to-face meetings as well.
“Many young women are losing their husbands because of this and think they are alone,” said Addison. “We need to come together and support each other, because Covid-19 is like a different type of death.”
The fateful sympathy card came from Kristina Scorpo, 33, a postpartum nurse and mother of two young children, who is now the group’s administrator on Facebook. 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 card to say she was not alone in her grief. The sender also wrote that one day Scorpo would return the gesture by sending a card to another woman in pain.
The day came earlier than expected after Scorpo read Martin Addison’s story on a GoFundMe page for his family that was posted on social media by a mutual friend. His own grief was recent, but Scorpo had a two-week lead over Addison in facing the unique challenges of raising his children, Francesco, now 5, and Santino, now 15 months, as a single mother in the age of social detachment.
“I read that she had a 2 year old son and a new 5 month old son when her husband passed away, and I had a 4 ½ year old and a 6 month old, so I said ‘she is the only one I am going to send the card, “said Scorpo,” because we were in exactly the same boat. We lost our husbands to exactly the same thing.
“And I’m glad I did that.”
Addison and Scorpo were no longer alone.
Although they have not yet met in person, the two women have become close friends, exchanging text messages and talking regularly on the phone for support. They talk about the day when their children can finally meet, having a bond in their shared loss that cannot be understood by their other young friends.
“We don’t plan this,” said Scorpo. “We did not plan to be widowed at 36 or 33 years old. We did not plan to raise our children without our partners with whom we saw our lives and a future.”
But with Addison, “it was like we knew exactly what the other was going to say, because we went through all the same things, and it’s really great that life has brought us together,” she said.
Realizing that she was not alone, Addison wrote a blog post detailing her story, which was published by the New Jersey news site NJ.com in October. When other recently widowed women from Covid-19 commented on the post, she decided to create a Facebook group where they could share their stories.
This shared connection is critical. The single layered stressors of the pandemic are unprecedented in our lives – the potential for disease and death, economic concerns, isolation, remote learning and political chaos among them – and decades of research show that support groups can be beneficial to those who suffer a common trauma, said Dana Rose Garfin, a psychologist.
“Everyone tries to help and nobody knows what to say,” said Garfin, assistant adjunct professor at the University of California Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, Irvine. “But when other people have had the same experience, there is a level of empathy and understanding that can be deeply comforting.”
Emma Charlesworth, 39, found a lifeline with these women across the Atlantic Ocean in Kent, England. The pain is universal: her husband, Stuart, a 45-year-old chief financial officer, died on April 19 after a three-week battle with Covid-19 at the hospital, suddenly leaving her as a single mother to her 10-year-old daughter, Rebekah.
“The group is very important to me because, despite the geographical distance, it is comforting to talk to people who understand it,” said Charlesworth. “Who understand the pain and suffering of losing a spouse due to Covid-19.
“It is a club and an opportunity to create bonds that none of us asked for or wanted to join, but we are very grateful for that.”
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 her daughter, Mia, turned 5.
Juan Ordonez, UPS’s information security analyst, fell ill on March 13, days before there was even a blockade in New Jersey. In the first days after her death, Diana received visits from her pastor and family, who, like her, had fallen ill with Covid-19, but recovered, and received virtual support from her parents and siblings in other states.
“When I became a widow, you hardly heard of young widows, especially since all of the reported cases were elderly or people with underlying diseases,” said Ordonez, product manager and marketer. “I remember that I longed for someone to talk to, because no one else understands this loss, because it was so unique and different.”
Over the weeks and months, Ordonez struggled to work virtually and teach his daughter at home, who struggled to process a loss hard enough for adults.
“In the first few months, Mia was not going to sleep in her bed alone, because Dad went out in the middle of the night” to the hospital while she slept “and didn’t come back,” said Ordonez. “So she was afraid that Mom would die in the middle of the night too.
“For me, that was difficult, because the night was my time to try to sue and be alone and to suffer or try to trust other people,” she said.
The group helped to share the emotional burden, but it is not always easy for her to participate.
“At some level, it’s a bit of a trigger, too,” said Ordonez. “It’s been eight months now, and you feel like ‘OK, I’m healing.’ But then you have to be mentally prepared to read something, because it can take you back to where you were. “
Still, Ordonez said she is grateful to join Covid-19’s Young Widows and Widowers group on Facebook just before the holidays – a moment that had a special meaning for her and Juan. Nine years ago, he proposed to her on Christmas Eve; the anniversary of their first meeting is January 2.
Addison said it was a difficult week for many of the members, with several encouraging each other to honor their deceased spouses, keeping traditions alive and maintaining continuity for their children.
“We are all in different stages of mourning. Some people have just lost their husbands when there seems to be no hope, as if there were no happiness or joy again,” said Addison. “And then there are others. Several of us are in the ‘April group’.
“I feel like we can help them,” she said. “Even if they are not where I am right now, I can support them. And that is a cure for me too.”