Virus victims remembered
At memorial ceremony held by Heart Hospital
Ayear to the day after the first person in Kern County tested positive for COVID-19, a group of about two dozen residents gathered outside Bakersfield Heart Hospital on Thursday evening for a special memorial ceremony.
Standing in the parking lot, ringing cowbells to thank health care workers and remember those who had been lost, they represented a small fraction of the 105,222 residents who have been diagnosed with the disease and countless more family and friends who have worried and mourned alongside. As of Thursday, 1,026 Kern County residents had died from the virus, a figure that would have been hardly imaginable just a year earlier.
“This is the worst experience I’ve had,” said Gus Garza Jr., who lost both parents — Gustavo and Lucy Garza — to COVID-19 days apart from each other in late January and also contracted the virus himself. “You don’t know until it hits home, and that’s the problem.”
Garza showed up to Thursday’s event with his sister Mari Breceda and Lucy’s siblings Fernando Bravo and Caroline Rivera.
“It’s kind of sad. It was so sudden,” Bravo said, describing his emotions before the event started. “We really didn’t expect it until she was complaining of shortness of breath.”
The story of Gustavo and Lucy has echoes in many families in Kern County and across the world, from loved ones who contracted the virus even though they did everything right to health care workers who bravely showed up to crowded ICUs day after day.
Thursday’s event had the tone of finality, as if the pandemic that first showed up in Kern a year ago was on the way out.
“We go into health care to save lives. Unfortunately, with COVID-19 we didn’t get to
save very many,” said Director of Respiratory Therapy Brian Pasqua. “Let’s hope this is the end of this.”
But nobody at Bakersfield Heart Hospital or the broader health care community in Bakersfield is counting out the virus just yet. Hospital levels have only recently returned to manageable after the winter surge. With variants and COVID fatigue lurking, most are well aware another wave could sweep across the county.
Thursday was a day for remembering and congratulating. And the hope that everyone keeps looking for appears to be growing.
Heart Hospital CEO Michelle Oxford said 10,000 doses of the vaccine should be distributed at the hospital this week.
Throughout Kern County, 208,691 vaccines have been given out.
“This year, certainly, we’ve had a number of dark moments, actually many of them,” said Bakersfield Mayor Karen Goh. “But even during the darkest of moments, in our community, there has been so much light.”
The light shined brightly at Heart Hospital on Thursday. In the coming months, many hope it will shine brighter still.