CT families still grieving ‘unimaginable’ COVID deaths

Emily Volpintesta keeps photos of her father on her dresser and the pictures he painted on her walls. She feels his presence when she sees a butterfly in her car, finds pennies or dimes, or hears someone whistling like he always used to.

It’s been over a year since her father, Dr. Edward Volpintesta, died at 76 of complications from COVID-19. He was a celebrated primary care physician from Bethel.

“It doesn’t seem real yet,” said Emily Volpintesta, 45, his youngest daughter. “It’s very weird. Even though, it’s been a year, you can’t know when its going to hit you.”

Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, families who have lost someone due to COVID continue to grieve, still wracked by the shock of the death, their inability to say goodbye and the void their loved ones left behind.

“It’s very hard because there’s this sense of disruption on the grieving process,” said Shane Murphy, psychology professor at Western Connecticut State University. “The challenge for each individual — and they have to find it in their own way — is how do I grieve? How do I make some sense of this?”

He knows this well from personal experience. His mother-in-law, Rose Mary Infantino, died at 88 from COVID in April 13, 2020. She was a former teacher and had two children and six grandchildren.

“It was really horrendous to see our family go through that under those circumstances, at that time, when everything was really shutting down at that point,” Murphy said. “Everything about it was just enormously difficult.”

Meanwhile, Debora Simon is still grappling with being unable to say goodbye to her brother, Fred Simon, 71, who died from COVID complications on April 8, 2020. He worked as a chef for more than 40 years and adored his nieces and nephews.

“It was the way that he had to pass, by himself,” his 66-year-old sister from Danbury said. “I couldn’t see him before. I couldn’t see him after.”

For Russell Pagano, the grief is more raw. His partner of 14 years, Kelly Lucas, died at 52 this past Valentine’s Day from COVID complications. She worked in the restaurant industry for many years and loved music and dogs.

“This is a hit,” Pagano said. “I’ll never recover from it. I know that already.”

No goodbyes

Debora Simon spoke to her brother on the phone shortly after he arrived at Danbury Hospital, but couldn’t speak to or see him once he was moved to the intensive care unit. That was so different from her other brother and her mother’s deaths, where she got to say goodbye.

“I don’t know what he was thinking — that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t care,” she said.

“We’re all going to die, but to die alone is possibly the worst thing you could go out with,” she added.

Due to loosening of visitation restrictions at hospitals, Lucas’ family, however, saw her in the hospital.

“That was huge because right before they weren’t letting anybody in,” Pagano said.

Edward Volpintesta sent his family sent text messages while he was in the hospital. His family was allowed to see him just before he died, donning hazardous material suits in the intensive care unit. Even still, he was intubated and couldn’t talk to them, his daughter said.

The Volpintestas had a funeral, but attendance was limited and people couldn’t stick around after the burial to talk.

“A funeral should be a healing thing, but we couldn’t even come together and grieve and heal and celebrate,” Emily

Volpintesta said.

Debora Simon had a small burial for her brother, but had envisioned holding a larger memorial later. However, many family members live around the country, so she doesn’t want them to have to fly during the pandemic.

Murphy and his family’s final memories of Infantino are through Zoom, where her children, grandchildren and other relatives watched her in the hospital bed surrounded by health care workers.

“The grief I saw from my wife and her father and brother just — it was almost unbearable at that point,” he said. “They felt their mother and their wife deserved the send off, the goodbyes, the religious practices that everybody deserves. And the fact that that was not possible hurt very deeply.”

At the cemetery where Murphy’s family buried Infantino, each family was only permitted five people at the site and they had to stay in their cars. There was a long line of hearses at the cemetery that day, he said.

“It was just such a surreal experience,” Murphy said. “You really felt disconnected from any sort of grieving process that (you) had gone through before.”

But Emily Volpintesta hasn’t grieved in isolation. So many people in the community knew her father, so she’s been approached by patients who say he helped them or saved their lives.

“It is healing,” she said. “It makes me feel good and proud to be his daughter.”

Yet, she wonders if it’s “weird” that she feels comfortable talking about her dad.

“Maybe should I be feeling a different way?” she questions.

Debora Simon has grown frustrated with people who say COVID isn’t real or who think they are invincible

“It just drives me crazy when I talk to people like that because it was real, and it is real, and people do die from it,” she said.