Wrapping a blanket of serenity around family
Couple navigate grief after losing daughter to flu
Friends came from as far away as the Philippines, others from as close as next door.
They packed into the Termulo household. They were there for a novena — so many people at the Dallas home that they spilled out the front door and into the driveway.
The Catholic practice of a novena, or nine consecutive days of prayer, is a petition for divine favor. Friends, family and colleagues prayed, sang and held one another, asking God for strength and peace in the wake of the sudden death of Reese Termulo. She was just 16.
For those nine days in January 2020, loved ones came and went, wrapping a blanket of serenity around the Termulo family as they tried to come to terms with the final moments of Reese’s life.
Reese had contracted the flu and, just one day later, died of pneumonia that led to sepsis and organ failure.
For nine days, people brought meals and prayed, treading the path up the Termulo’s brick steps and through the doorway. Hundreds crossed the home’s threshold, passing pictures of Reese and her family and intricate crosses and images of the Virgin Mary.
For nine days, Reese’s parents, Cesar, a pediatrician, and Ana, a Montessori parent coach, and her two younger brothers and her friends cried and laughed. They shared stories of pranks played in the school hallways and of moments of joy between a daughter and her parents.
Although her family didn’t know it at the time, Reese had sewn
that emotional blanket of support, now draped around their shoulders after her death. Her family says that, despite her relatively short life, she had a lasting impact on her friends and her school, which in turn created a space for the people she loved most to heal after an unfathomable tragedy.
Two years later, Cesar and Ana are sharing Reese’s story because they want to encourage people to get vaccinated against the flu, especially as the flu makes its resurgence as people wear masks more infrequently. Reese was vaccinated, but that year’s shot was not formulated against the strain she caught.
In many ways, Reese fit the mold of an eldest daughter and grandchild.
She always looked after and worried about her brothers and 19 cousins, most of whom live overseas. When she outgrew her clothes, she’d ask Ana to send them to the Philippines.
When she and her mom were out shopping she’d point out gift ideas for her cousins.
Reese was neat and organized, and her parents never had to stay on top of her schoolwork or bother her to keep her room clean. Every winter break, she would deep-clean her closet, dividing old clothes into piles to donate or throw away.
After Reese passed, her grandparents helped to clean out her room and were shocked to find it pristine. “My dad said, ‘This is a teenager? My goodness,’ ” Ana said. “Her clothes are in line, properly folded.”
Reese kept detailed lists and notes in her diary and always had resolutions written out at the start of the new year. Her parents found pages titled “2020 Goals” and “Books to Read.”
While Reese was a diligent student, her intelligence carried beyond her studies. During the
summers, Reese would invite kids from the neighborhood to come to the house for a cooking camp, earning some spending money in the process.
Her brothers, John Paul, or JP, 15, and Joseph, 13, took note of every move Reese made.
“She gets her brothers to behave. That’s one thing I miss,” Ana said. “Sometimes I’d tell them to stop fighting but when she said ‘Didn’t you hear Mom? She said stop it,’ they would stop.”
Cesar is about as acquainted with the flu as a person can be. For the pediatrician, every winter before the COVID19 pandemic was filled with sick visits and runny, chapped noses.
That’s why it was no surprise to Cesar when Reese developed a fever on the morning of Jan. 9, 2020.
“We were having a ton of flu patients and so we brought her into my office and had her tested for the flu,” he said.
The test came back positive and she was prescribed Tamiflu, which can prevent or treat the flu if taken early enough. Reese went home and spent the day resting.
Before work the next morning, Cesar went in to check on his daughter. She complained of a cough and chest pain.
“So I examined her, I got the stethoscope and her lungs were clear,” Cesar said.
The chest pain appeared to just be from the coughing. She didn’t seem to have pneumonia.
Once at work, Cesar was pulled into a meeting to discuss how his office could fit in more appointments for flu patients. Ana was at home with Reese, reading her Bible verses and an article she’d come across earlier that morning about how time is a treasure.
They prayed together, and Ana suggested Reese offer her pain to others who were struggling. Reese kept praying while Ana went downstairs to make her soup.
By the time Ana returned upstairs, her daughter was unconscious.
“I didn’t know that she was already passing,” Ana said. “That she was truly talking to God.”
More than two years after her death, the Termulos are still learning how to navigate life without Reese.
Visitors to the home can see that Reese is still a crucial part of family life. She’s in nearly every picture in the house and a large, pink remembrance poster framed by a rosary made of dried flowers hangs in the center of the sitting room.
JP and Joseph don’t avoid talking about their sister. Recently, when Joseph was learning how to calculate the area of a circle, JP taught him a song to remember the equation just as Reese had done with him years earlier.
The grief comes in waves, sometimes unexpectedly.
Reese’s parents watch her friends experience all the milestones they had once envisioned for her. High school graduation was particularly hard for Cesar, who said he is often more outwardly emotional than his wife.
Tucked away in the Termulo’s house is a picture from what would have been Reese’s high school graduation, of Ana surrounded by her daughter’s friends donned in caps and gowns. A family had sent the photo as a gift to the Termulos with a message printed on the back.
“Reese’s light continues to shine in the hearts and lives of these incredible young women,” the inscription reads. “She guides them every day to be loved for who they are and to share their grace and kindness in this world.”