The cost of grief
From rent to hospital charges and cremation, families struggle to pay the bills after COVID-19 kills loved ones
Until they can raise the money to pay for her cremation, Alicia Small will picture her mother’s body in a freezer.
Her mother was not supposed to die. Up until it happened, she knew her mother would pull through. Rosie Guevara had raised six children and just welcomed her first great-grandchild. She loved to dance and belted karaoke, off-key every time. No one was ready for her to die alone at 59 of COVID-19.
Instead of mourning, Small and her siblings are trying to scrape together enough money for the funeral. The siblings put together a GoFundMe for $5,000. It won’t be enough: They’ve been quoted $12,999 (plus tax) to get their mother cremated and buy a headstone. If they don’t pay for her stone all at once, they’ll be charged more. Instead of sleeping, Small calculates the bills in her head. Death is expensive.
“My mom’s life was worth so much more than $5,000,” said Small, 38. “It hurts my heart. We should be able to grieve properly without worrying about something like that.”
The costs of the coronavirus go beyond America’s economic collapse, a narrative told in GDP, unemployment figures, retail sales and stock prices. They are exacted in impossible choices and im
measurable losses. Virus survivors leave the hospital behind on the basics (rent, groceries, utilities) with looming new medical costs (inpatient bills, home health aides, take-home oxygen masks). The families of the dead are left with funeral costs they didn’t budget for.
As the city becomes a hot spot, Houstonians have increasingly made personal appeals on the fundraising site GoFundMe. Leonor Quiroz, whose husband, Valentin, died on the 10th anniversary of the day they met, is trying to offset more than $20,000 in funeral costs. Alexandra King lost both grandparents, two uncles and a greataunt. Her immediate family must pay for her grandparents’ funeral costs. They asked for $3,000 on GoFundMe.
Because their GoFundMe account will not be enough, Small — who lives in Galveston — talks on Zoom with her five Houston siblings every night: praying, crying, strategizing. They decided to host a barbecue fundraiser. They haven’t cleaned out their mother’s house yet, because they don’t know when it will be safe. They debate whether it’s worth spending $700 to print their mother’s name on an urn.
“They were like, ‘We won’t put her ashes in this stone till you pay the full amount,’ ” Small said. “There was no time. I think people start thinking, planning at 70, 80, 90. She just turned 59.”
The living
Billy Cortez’s mother came back from the hospital in need of an oxygen mask she couldn’t afford.
Marilyn Cortez spent 30 years as a food service worker at the Spring Independent School District. She’s uninsured. She lives in a north Houston mobile home with four family members. All five got the virus.
Marilyn’s brother started a GoFundMe. Billy, who lives in the Rio Grande Valley and works as an analyst for a medical nonprofit, pays the bills he can. One grocery bill came to $124.63; another, $215.88. He paid for their COVID-19 tests ($350). He labeled one bill for $120 “Mom’s Oxygen Mask.” Marilyn is 62, too young for Medicare.
“The whole family is out of work,” he said. “We had to help with the essentials.”
Her first hospital bill will be due on Aug. 17: $1,898 for “emergency evaluation and management.” On Aug. 4, a letter arrived from Houston Methodist: She owed $36,830.50.
Diane Martinez has to pay for the living and the dead. She spent the week before her father was taken off the ventilator that kept him alive researching the cost of his death. One funeral chain quoted her $1,295 for cremation alone. She doesn’t have it. She’s been paying the bills for her brother and sister-in-law, both sickened with COVID-19, both out of work while they recover from the virus.
Her sister-in-law, a home health aide, got sick first. Then her brother, who works as a professional mover. Then her father, who lived with them in Houston. Martinez has learned to speak with a doctor’s fluency about oxygen levels.
Martinez manages three Houston apartment complexes. She’s used up her savings balancing her own bills with her family’s. She keeps a journal of her expenses: $200 out of their $1,138.23 car note, $107 for cable, $180.36 for renter’s insurance. Their energy bill came to $159.62; the phone bill, $105. At the end of the month, she wrote their rent check: $860.
“I know they say that God won’t give you more than you can handle, and I’m like, ‘God, this cup is full and it’s tipping,’ ” she said. “Their light bill is due and I gotta figure it out. They can’t, ’cause they’re sick.”
She went to see her father after the doctors told her his odds: 80 percent of people in his condition didn’t make it. He was in a medically induced coma. His hands and feet were swollen. His head lolled to the side, his mouth open and slack. Plastic tubes snaked from his mouth to machines.
She wakes up at 3 a.m., crying. She can’t go back to sleep until 5 or 6. She used to call her father first thing every morning. He raised her and her brother alone: Their mother was diagnosed with dementia when Martinez was 9. He worked two jobs and sold tamales out of their house to make ends meet. People begged him for his recipe. He never gave it up.
Barbecue for a burial
Fifteen days after her death, Rosie Guevara’s children held a barbecue benefit so they could afford to bury her.
They set up at her son Eddie’s house near Channelview, a tent and three barbecues on the lawn. Her brother-in-law resliced brisket (“Mijo, they cut it in the wrong direction, so I stopped them”) and turned chicken wings in the smoker. They had presold as many plates as they could: Chicken and sausage plates for $10, brisket and sausage for $14. Rosie Guevara hated waste.
The family had cooked all Friday night and early Saturday morning. The entire island indoors was covered with tin containers of food. Alicia Small, always in charge, ticked off orders in her notebook: 14 briskets to Galveston County (her daughter would drive), three for her sister’s friends (chicken), and did anyone know where the cupcakes were?
Her sister, 32-year-old Marcia Cordova, darted from the island to a high table assembling plates. Their mother’s older sister, Janie Guevara, watched the oven.
“I had a dream about Mom last night — did I tell you?” Cordova said.
“Really?”
“Tia, we were dancing,” she said. “I ran around the corner and I chased her and I was like, ‘You’re not supposed to be here!’ She didn’t say anything. We were dancing.”
“She danced to everything.” “Me and my mom were dancing in my dreams. She loved to dance. I know she loved to dance.”
Small counted the money at the end of the day. They’d raised $4,795 in sales. With donations — including dollars left in a jar with a picture of their mother taped to it — they got nearly $5,000.
They had thought, for a while, that Guevara would pull through. When she was sick at her home, her son, 37-year-old Tommy Gomez, came by with soups: caldo de pollo one day, cowboy soup the next. The last meal he ever dropped off for her was tortilla soup. The next day, she called 911 for herself.
Gomez dropped off his mother’s phone with the hospital. The family called so much that the nurses asked them to stop: Their mother’s oxygen levels were dangerously low.
Guevara died in a medically induced coma. A card from her children addressed to “Mommy” will be cremated with her. Before they sedated her, the hospital staff let Gomez call his mother on FaceTime. She told him she’d see him later. She asked to see her granddaughter. Slowly, she pointed at her eye. Then her heart. Then the screen. I love you.