Brother and sister lose both parents to COVID only hours apart
Two weeks ago, on Friday the 13th, Ed Pugh of Ceres — suffering with COVID-19 in a Modesto hospital — took his last tortured breath. Sixteen hours later, so did his wife, Retta. Both were 61.
I wish I could write something like, “This column isn’t about how they died; it’s about how they lived.” That’s what they often say at funerals.
But this isn’t a funeral. It’s a warning, a cautionary tale, a sad reflection on profound family love and lives cut short, and the pain that comes with knowing it didn’t have to end this way.
This is mostly about their deaths.
“I am just still understandably angry that this has happened to us,” their daughter, Courtney, said in an email. “It is just truly tragic and frustrating that our family is one of the thousands who had to lose someone,” despite taking precautions.
I did not know the Pughs. Like many of you, I “met” them on the obituary page of Sunday’s Modesto Bee a week ago, which is managed by advertising staff and not the newsroom. My attentive wife remarked how their obituaries were listed separately, without referring to each other.
“That’s odd,” I thought. I was more curious to read that both were killed by COVID complications; most families of pandemic victims omit or ignore that truth. That they died at nearly the same time made this all the more intriguing.
I reached out, and their adult children — Courtney and her brother, Derek, both of whom now live in other parts of California — reached back.
Their father, they said, had lots of medical problems, chiefly diabetes and kidney failure. Their mother was managing her less-severe diabetes well.
Both wore masks when they ventured from their Ceres mobile home park, their children said, and both appeared happy and relatively healthy in late October.
Quick and painful demise
Ed went to have his gallbladder removed — a fairly routine procedure. But the hospital ran a COVID test, and admitted him when it came back positive. Retta, undoubtedly startled and afraid, was hospitalized as well.
Ed’s last Zoom call with his grandchildren came on Nov. 6, and Retta’s, Nov. 7; he was intubated that day, and she wasn’t far behind.
On Nov. 12 — Derek’s birthday — he got the news that his parents were going downhill fast, and both were gone soon after.
It’s unknown how the Pughs contracted the virus, their children said. Their parents had assured them they were being careful, keeping their distance and wearing masks outside the home they shared with Ed’s 87-year-old father, who either did not catch the virus or got over it with little trouble.
“But could they have not worn their masks just one time, and that was the time that they contracted the disease? Could be. I honestly don’t know,” said Courtney, six hours away in Long Beach.
That’s one lesson that should grab us all by the collar, regardless of how inconvenient covering our faces might seem, or how much we want to believe the virus isn’t real.
“It’s real,” Derek said in a telephone call. “No matter how much you don’t want to (wear a mask), you need to — for the health of yourself and everyone around you.”
Courtney said, “I just don’t appreciate how wearing a mask and believing in the science of transmitting this virus has become a political issue. I feel like if wearing a mask hadn’t become associated with one political party or another, we would have a better handle on this pandemic in the U.S.”
Regrets can be legion when loved ones die like this, and may double when both parents are taken. If not for the virus, Ed and Retta might have lived decades more.
Ceres couple gone far too soon
“My mother did not have to die this young,” Courtney said. “My mother will not get to see me get married. She will not get to see her grandchildren grow up. I have been robbed of many future years with my mother because of the selfishness of others who refuse to wear masks simply because it is uncomfortable for them.”
It’s not easy for grandchildren — Derek’s children are 2, 5 and 6 — to process a loss like this. When they’re missing their grandparents, they hug Cassie, Ed and Retta’s chihuahua-terrier who has gone to live with the family at the Lemoore naval air station.
The romantic in me wants to seize on the thought that at least Retta and Ed died together. But that’s not exactly true. Both were intubated on different floors of the hospital and they were unaware that medical staff had subsequently moved them to the same floor. They didn’t know they were only yards apart when Ed died, followed shortly after by Retta, Derek said.
Another couple died of COVID on the same day shortly before the Pughs, but such has not been common in these parts, said Dr. Lyn Raible. Her job with Stanislaus County includes determining which of our 420 deaths, as of Tuesday, were linked to the coronavirus.
Courtney chose to keep her parents’ obituaries separate, she said, “to respect their individuality.”
Faced with whether to let the world know their true cause of death, Courtney chose transparency. “If stating in their obituaries that they died of COVID-19 can change the mind of one person and make them start wearing a mask and quarantine themselves at home,” she said, “then it was the right decision to make.
“This disease is real, it is still ravaging the country, and real people are still losing real loved ones every day.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
