MAURICE’S COVID-19 FIGHT
NEW YORK RESIDENT AND GORTA DUBHA NATIVE MAURICE BRICK FACED UP TO COVID-19 – AND IT WASN’T EASY. BUT HE TELLS TADHG EVANS THAT HE’S COMING AROUND, AND TAKING IT DAY BY DAY.
“I LEFT Gorta Dubha, Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, 60 years ago,” says Maurice Brick, his voice muscling through our phone-line’s crackling. That’s progress: in the pits of battle with COVID-19, he mightn’t have been up to talking, never mind outgunning the static between New York and Lios Póil.
“I was seven years in London, and I’m here in New York 53 years. It’s been a journey – and the only thing I miss about the whole thing is Mary Ellen, my wife.”
It’s only days since the 77-year-old picked up her photo and asked her to take him. She didn’t listen – yet again, he jokes – so the journey’ll go on; he has an upper hand on COVID-19 now, lucky that his isn’t one of the 4,500 lives ended by a virus that’s lowered the volume in the city that never sleeps.
Maurice is gone from Kerry with over 50 years but remains popular here. He’s kept the green and gold in his life, primarily through New York’s Kerry Association, and when his journey does end, he’ll be missed in these parts – more than most who’ve long-since moved to a city an ocean away.
But his time isn’t now and, please God, it’ll be a while yet. The signs are positive, at least.
“I’m at home in New Rochelle, and I haven’t really gone outside for the past couple of weeks because that’s the only way to prevent this damned thing,” he says. “Every year I get the allergies; I thought that’s what it was. Towards the middle of March, the first leaves start to come out on the trees and, right away, they go for my nose!
“I had a runny nose and sore throat, but then I got very tired. I couldn’t do anything, and I said to myself ‘ there’s something more happening here’.
“I made a phone call to get a test done for the Coronavirus, and I stayed on that phone a whole hour before someone came on. I got my test on March 21 at a drive-through facility in New Rochelle, and there were at least 60 cars in front of me, even though I had been given a time – but you know what, I didn’t care as long as I got tested.”
His daughter Eilís logged in to check his results three days later, and it was up to her to tell him the allergies weren’t at fault this time. He felt bad at testing positive but worse that a loved had to break it to him.
Then listlessness took over as nightmares rocked his sleep; eating felt like hard work; rising from his chair sapped him.
“It also plays with your mind. You ask, ‘Oh my God, is this the way I’ll end up?’ I was feeling so down,” he says. “One morning I got up to take a shower, I thought I’d feel better for it. But I had to get out halfway through, dry myself, and go back to bed.
“But my family and friends at home and abroad, including those in the Kerry Association, they pushed me. They’d ring me up and tell me to eat, to stay hydrated. And then I started to come around, and I actually wanted to eat.
“Those around me were important. Anything I wanted was left on my doorstep. I didn’t want for anything.
“And I’m doing much better now; this time last week, I wouldn’t be able to stay on the phone this long.”
He has no clue where COVID got him and isn’t too pushed in any event. He got it, he fought it, and he’s just happy to be coming around. He stayed away from the city’s hospitals as they tend to other positive cases – many serious, many gravely so – and he’ll consult a GP about leaving his home again.
When he does venture out, it’ll be to a quieter New York than the one that he’s known for 53 years – but for now, that’s how he wants it to be. COVID is there, and it would stay if the city stuck to its old routine.
“You hardly see anyone at all on the streets, and it’s so unusual; New York is always crowded, day and night. Not nowadays,” he says.
“I know all these politicians here and in Ireland, they had the power – but the power now is with us. We need to stay home and not gather about. It’s a very serious illness. I was very careful; when I went in to do some shopping, I’d take a look inside to see if there were a lot of people, and I’d go back another time if it was too busy. And I still got it.
“I get a lot of calls from the Kerry Association, and I know a couple of them who have the virus – not seriously, though – and they’re battling through at home, same as I did. We can’t have a meeting any more, we can’t meet in the Kerry hall, but that’s a small price for now.
“It’s a great association, the support they gave me was so important, and we’ll make it through this. Because you can deal with this, you can come through it like I did. All you hear nowadays is bad news – and, yes, people are dying each day. But there are hundreds of thousands who are coming through this, getting well again.
“The late Danny Mac Síthigh from Baile Eaglaise used to say: fan inti; stay in there. That’s what we’re about to do – and we’ll get rid of this plague.”
IT PLAYS WITH YOUR MIND. YOU ASK, ‘OH MY GOD, IS THIS THE WAY I’LL END UP?’ I WAS FEELING SO DOWN.