‘A new level of pain’
One year later, young mom of two toddlers recalls husband’s death from COVID-19
“I love you guys with all my heart and you’ve given me the best life I could have asked for.”
A note Jonathan Coelho, of Bethel, left on his phone for his wife and children before he died of COVID-19 on April 22, 2020
It has been a year since Jonathan Coelho died of COVID-19, but for his widow, Katie Coelho, it feels like yesterday. She still remembers the 3 a.m. phone call urging her to the hospital. She remembers holding herself up, hands on her knees, as she saw her husband lying motionless.
She remembers the way his beard felt as she rubbed his face one last time and said goodbye, the way she placed her hand on his chest, desperately hoping it would start moving again.
Every moment, every detail of those last few minutes, has been seared into her memory, a waking nightmare she’s forced to relive day after day.
“I can close my eyes and know exactly what Jonathan looked like when I walked into the hospital room that morning, and looking back on it all a year later, it brings a new level of pain that I wasn’t expecting,” Katie Coelho said.
Before his death, Jonathan Coelho, 32, left a note on his phone for his wife and children.
“I love you guys with all my heart and you’ve given me the best life I could have asked for,” the note began.
Coelho, a probation officer at the Stamford courthouse, was among the state’s earliest COVID-19 cases and died on April 22. Since then, more than 8,000 other Connecticut residents have also died from the novel coronavirus.
But while Jonathan Coelho is gone, Katie Coelho, 34, said her husband’s memory awaits her around every corner.
The wall leading up the stairs of Katie Coelho’s new Southbury home is lined with dozens of pictures of Jonathan. There are pictures of him with the family’s firstborn, Braedyn, and photos of him holding younger daughter Penelope.
In the family’s living room, there hangs a wood carving with an imprint of the American flag and badge from the Probation Department in memory of Jonathan’s life and death.
His image lives on in their two children, 3-yearold Braedyn and Penelope, who is soon turning 2. In their movements and expressions, she sees glimpses of her husband staring back at her.
Samantha Nappi, Katie Coelho’s younger sister, said the past year has been the hardest year of the family’s life, but so far, she’s been blown away by her sister’s resilience.
“She’s just a one-woman wonder. She’s just stayed so strong for her and her family, even though this past year has been a nonstop challenge,” Nappi said.
When Jonathan Coelho went into the hospital with COVID-19, Nappi took time off work from a custom lighting company to help her sister. When her brother-in-law died, she quit her job to help full-time.
The decision, Nappi said, was “super easy.”
“My sister is my ‘ride or die,’ there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help her,” she said.
For six months, Nappi left her own home to stay with her sister. She helped the kids get ready in the mornings, and looked after Braedyn, who has multiple disabilities and requires constant care, when her sister was busy.
If it looked like it was needed, she was there with soothing words or heartfelt advice.
Friends from the probation office where Jonathan Coelho used to work have kept in touch with the family, calling in to check up on them and help out when they can, Katie Coelho said.
“It just speaks to the kind of person that Jonathan was that his probation coworkers still check in and just care, after so many other people have faded into the background,” she said.
Despite the support of friends and family, life without her “soulmate” has not been easy, Katie Coelho admits.
“My life as I knew it has imploded. I lost of the love of my life, and the kids are going to have to grow up without their dad,” she said.
Diana Mallory, Jonathan Coelho’s sister, said her son Oliver has sorely missed his “tio” — “uncle” in Portuguese.
Days after her brother’s death, Mallory learned that she was pregnant with her second child.
The dueling emotions — crippling sadness at the loss of her only brother and the joy of a new addition to her own family — was “overwhelming” at first, Mallory said. But as time passed, she began to see her pregnancy as a continuation of the family’s experience.
“We felt like it was a sign from him that he is with us. My husband and I had been trying for a while, so it was just very coincidental,” she said.
To honor her brother, Mallory gave her daughter, born Dec. 4, “Alberta” as a middle name — which had been Jonathan Coelho’s middle name thanks to a typo on his birth certificate.
Mallory’s father channeled his grief into his work at Faith Church in New Milford. She said her dad poured most of his time into running local food pantries and giving back to his community.
“I think it’s helped him to keep going. For him to help people, especially during the pandemic when people have lost their jobs and they need food, it’s given him a purpose when things have gotten hard,” Mallory said.
For Katie Coelho, one of the few solaces she’s found in the past year is being able to share her and Jonathan’s story with the world. She’s made appearances on Anderson Cooper’s news show on CNN and has been featured in newspapers and magazines around the country.
She said to see people take interest in her husband’s life, for them to see the love that he helped spread, has kept her afloat during otherwise difficult times.
“It’s been one of the only lights for me in a really dark time,” she said.