COVID devastates a family

Muffled by masks, the words “hail Mary, mother of God” barely escaped their quivering lips. Tears flooded their eyes and poured down their faces. The room was dimly lit with yellow flickering lights. The sounds of nearby construction blended with the heartbreaking sobs. At the front of the chapel towered a wooden cross draped with what appeared to be the purest white fabric. Looking around you’d find the family of Pedro Zarate scattered throughout the creaky pews, socially distanced, and on their knees praying, no, begging for a miracle.

Nationally, over 30 million people have tested positive for COVID-19. Nearly 1.3 million of those cases have been in Illinois. And more than 19,000 of the positive tests were reported in Champaign County.

Following the holidays, researchers found a massive surge in COVID-19 cases. After Thanksgiving 2020, the national numbers rose to an average of 200,000 new cases and about 3,000 deaths each day. Just as health officials had predicted.

On Thursday, November 26, 2020. The Zarate family gathered at the Hoopeston, Ill., Multi Agency to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was a day filled with joy, laughter, eating, family, and a whole lot of love.

The family went about the day as if it were any other holiday. There were no masks. Nobody social distanced. And nobody turned down a hug. Babies, deserts, and even a puppy were passed around.

A variety of foods were sprawled across the counters. The smell of fresh pie, mashed potatoes, and the most delicious empanadas carried through the air, but little did the family know, so did COVID-19.

If you would have walked into the Multi Agency that day, you would have thought that the family was blind to the potential threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, their eyes were quickly opened.

Not long after Thanksgiving, the resounding repercussions began to set in. A family group chat was created, simply for updates on who had received positive test results. Day by day, the numbers kept growing.

Everything that people had warned about getting together for Thanksgiving was happening, and it was happening fast. COVID spread through the Zarate family like wildfires in a dry forest.

“At no point did I think that I had COVID at that time,” Irasema Saldaña, daughter of Pedro Zarate, said. Irasema relates her initial symptoms to that of a cold. “I had a stuffy nose and a sore throat.”

Irasema did not even consider that she had COVID-19, until one of her coworkers called and explained how their facility had been completely shut down. To her surprise, Irasema was experiencing some of the same symptoms as her fellow employees. “Oh my gosh, I’ve been having chills all weekend,” she recalls.

At that moment, it dawned on her, it was time to get tested. According to Irasema, “Mom went and got checked. Ernie went and got checked. I went and got checked. Serena got checked. Theresa had gotten checked. Kori, Lucas, we all came back positive. And then Rosie came back positive. . .”

And so it began. Majority, of the family, now positive for COVID. So, what next?

For Irasema, the virus wasn’t so nice to her. What started out as comparable to cold symptoms turned into an utter nightmare. But why?

Aside from COVID-19, Irasema had another underlying health condition. “I have asthma.” Despite the fact that asthma is rarely life threatening, in Irasema’s case it could have been.

Asthma mixed with COVID-19 increased the risk for Irasema. Thus, making her symptoms more severe.

Days after testing positive, “I didn’t feel normal,” she said. “I can’t explain it. It was almost like I could black out at any minute.” With that uneasy feeling and the lack of functionality, Irasema and her family decided it was time she went to the hospital.

“They took me over from Hoopeston in the ambulance.” From Hoopeston, Irasema was taken to Order of Saint Francis Heart of Mary Medical Center (OSF) in Champaign. She was checked into the critical care unit, which at the time was the designated COVID-19 floor. Irasema spent six days at OSF as a patient.

Meanwhile, Rosie Diaz, Pedro Zarate’s youngest daughter, had also tested positive for COVID-19.

Unlike her sister, Rosie’s symptoms were mild. Thus, her experience with the virus looked a little different.

Rosie initially quarantined at home with her family. Eventually both her son, Isaias, and her husband, Miguel tested positive. Though, her daughter Mercedes has yet to get it

At the start of Rosie’s quarantine, her mother, Melida had been in the Hoopeston hospital due to struggles with COVID. According to Rosie, “by that time when Mom came home, Dad was in the hospital.” The day before Melida returned home, Pedro had been sent into the Hoopeston hospital. “So, I went and stayed with mom,” said Rosie.

It was only a few days into Rosie’s quarantine that she decided to go and take care of her mother. Rosie had felt as if her symptoms subsided. “Everybody was sick, but I was the least sick.” She went on to describe how, “even though I had it, I went to mom’s to quarantine because she had it too.”

At that point, Melida, Rosie, and Mercedes were all in quarantine together. But then again, things began to worsen for the Zarate’s.

Merecedes recalls the morning of December 9^th in her journal entry. “It’s 6:02 a.m. . . Today is off to a scary start.” In the middle of the night, Melida’s blood sugar had plummeted. “My mom woke up to my grandma making sounds, almost like screaming,” Mercedes wrote.

As Rosie and Merecedes found Melida to be unresponsive, they knew something was wrong. “She couldn’t sit up. I tried to sit her up by sitting behind her.” Mercedes went on, “she was completely out of it, her eyes were open but it’s like she couldn’t see.”

“She was crying out to her mom in sadness, crying out to God for help.” Unaware of how to help her, Mercedes and Rosie decided to call for an ambulance.

“It seemed like forever by the time they got here. While my mom was on the phone with 911, I was still sitting behind her. . .rubbing her head with a washcloth and telling her it was all going to be okay.”

While the experience was a nightmare for Rosie and Melida, it was scarring for 16-year-old Mercedes. “I prayed over her. I was fighting back so many tears trying to be strong for her.”

“When they got here, they took a needle and stuck it in her left arm. I held her down because she kept wanting to get up.” Once the fluids began to register and Melida’s blood sugar rose, she became responsive.

“I was so thankful. . .when they took her sugar again it was at three hundred and some.” After the incident, Melida had no memory of what had just happened. Yet, the paramedics informed Rosie and Mercedes that Melida was safe to stay home as long as she kept eating and kept her sugar up.

“It’s currently 12 a.m.,” Mercedes wrote. “Today has been a hell of a day.” After the paramedics left, Merecedes recounts things calming down. Mercedes and Melida laid down to rest and Rosie went to shower.

“I could hear her crying in the shower,” Mercedes said. “Praying out loud asking God why this is happening to our family. . .In my own thoughts, I was thinking the same thing.”

Later, the same day, Merecedes recounts how things took a turn, again. During dinner, Merecedes remembers Melida telling her that she was experiencing chest pain. Merecedes wrote, “I remembered reading about that having to do with COVID, and I remember it said if you were having a pain in your chest, you need to seek urgent care.

Rosie, exhausted on the couch, kept telling Merecedes it was likely nothing. Determined, Merecedes reached out to a family member who worked in the medical field. They then came over and checked Melida’s blood pressure and agreed that she needed to go back to the hospital.

“My grandma didn’t want to go back. It was so sad calling 911 again to come get her.” Melida was too weak to walk. Thus, she was taken out on a stretcher. “After she left, I burst into tears.”

“Now both my grandparents were in the hospital and there was no way we could get in to see them,” Mercedes recalled. Later that night Rosie got a phone call that Pedro would need to be airlifted from Hoopeston hospital to OSF. “When I heard that my heart sunk. It was so deep I could feel it in my bones.”

“Everything was really in God’s hands.” According to the entry, that’s the last thing Pedro told Mercedes before being taken off in the ambulance.

She closed the journal for the day by writing “I think today is the most I have ever cried in my whole life. I honestly don’t know why God is doing this.”

To Irasema’s dismay her nurses informed her that her father had just been brought onto the same floor. “They took Dad over [Pedro]. . . and then they brought grandma [Melida] over” the next day.

After days in the hospital without any visitors, Irasema was sent a blessing. “I got to see my mom.” On December tenth, they put both her [Melida] and I in the same room. . . talk about being excited.”

While thousands of people are having to suffer through COVID-19 alone, Irasema and Melida were “so happy” to be roommates.

“The next day they came in and said well Irasema I think you’re going home.” For Irasema and Melida, their time together was short lived. “I need her here with me,” Melida pleaded to the doctors. According to Irasema the doctors said, “but we need that bed for another patient.”

So it was, Irasema packed up her stuff and said her goodbyes to her mother. She was well enough to go home, but she would be returning with an oxygen tank.

COVID-19 did a number on her lungs, and Irasema was unable to breathe fully on her own. She relied on the support of her oxygen tank until January twentieth.

Just as Irasema was coming home from the hospital, her eldest daughter was about to get checked in. Theresa too had tested positive. What started out as a cough, spiraled into much more.

A week prior to testing positive, Theresa had been diagnosed with bronchitis. It was not until getting tested at work that she discovered she also had COVID-19.

From there, things began to go downhill for Theresa as her battle with COVID grew more and more challenging. Theresa visited the ER three times for severe headaches. Each time she was given medication and discharged.

As Theresa finally thought she was getting better, things only drew to be more intense. “The day of the thirteenth [of December] I woke up with really bad pain in my back and my front,” Theresa explained. “It felt like there was somebody sitting on my chest and pushing on my back at the exact same time.”

Theresa spent the entire day trying to manage the pain, but on the fourteenth, she determined it was too much to handle. Theresa then decided to go to a walk-in clinic in hopes of relief. Instead, she was sent to Carl hospital in Champaign for a CT scan.

The scan discovered that there were blood clots in each of Theresa’s lungs. From there she was transferred and checked into OSF as a patient, the same hospital as Pedro and Melida.

Jesus, the oldest of Pedro’s four children, also came down with COVID after Thanksgiving. According to Jesus, his symptoms included loss of taste and smell. He also found himself to be more fatigued. “I just remember being tired, almost wiped out.” Other than that, his physical battle with the virus was fairly mild.

For Jesus, his emotional battle is what really got to him.

At their worst, Pedro and Melida both ended up in OSF on ventilators. Their conditions escalated quickly, and not for the better. COVID-19 had wreaked havoc on their physical health, and hell on their family's mental health.

“I feel mad,” says Jesus. This virus has taken so much from this family.

With his parents being in and out of the hospital, and in the end on ventilators. Jesus found himself frustrated. Frustrated with the situation. Frustrated with the emotion. Frustrated with the pandemic. Frustrated with COVID.

Since Pedro was unable to speak because of the ventilator, Melida named Jesus his surrogate. Meaning, Jesus was the one who approved or disapproved the doctor’s actions.

“I’ll take the job of being the surrogate just because I’ll make decisions based upon a yes or no answer. . .until the time came to actually voice the final decision to take him [Pedro] off life support.” Choked up, Jesus continued, “and that I wasn’t ready for. And I don’t know that I still am ready for that.” Though, he was not alone. Irasema, Rosie, and Pedro’s youngest son (and my dad) Pedro Jr. were all there to help with the process.

Like Jesus, for many members of the family, Pedro’s final days felt like hell. This is how I remember them.

It was the early hours of Christmas morning, and members of the family jolted out of bed with a sense of urgency, and it wasn’t to open presents.

For me, the memories are vivid. I knew both my grandparents had been at the hospital and that they were not in a stable state, but what came next was nothing that I could have expected.

As I groggily rubbed at my eyes and gained focus, I saw my mother there, hovering over me. It was just after two in the morning. She informed me that my grandpa had just been read his last rights and that I needed to get ready so we could go to the hospital.

I quickly pulled myself out of bed and hastily got ready. As I was flipping through my closet, I remember hesitantly questioning myself, “What do you wear to sit and wait for someone you love to die?”

Nevertheless, I had no time to think so I put on the first thing I could find.

I don’t even think I showered that morning. I threw on clothes that didn’t even match. I left my hair as is, and I headed for the door. On my way out I saw that my mom. had laid out our Christmas presents the night before.

Seeing my gifts sprawled across the couch and anxiously waiting for the rest of my family to wake up was my favorite part of Christmas. But not this Christmas. This Christmas the presents were meaningless, the split second I glanced at them as I walked by was the closest I’d come to a normal Christmas that day.

My dad, Pedro Zarate Jr., was the only one of his siblings to move away from his parents. While the rest of the family all lived nearby in Illinois, we lived hours away in Indiana.

We were the last to get to the hospital. Two hours in the car seems like forever when you are waiting for the inevitable to happen. Every phone call, every text notification, the ringtone piercing through the air was shocking, breathtaking. Could it be? Has he died?

The start of the car ride was silent. My dad lost in his thoughts, my mom holding back tears, and my sister gazing out the window. And me? I think I was a mix of all three.

About an hour in the silence was broken. My dad started talking about some of his favorite memories with his father. Recounting the tales and stories of his life. Time passed faster then.

We arrived at OSF in Champaign before five a.m. I hadn’t cried yet. But stepping off the elevator to the sobs of my cousin, Merecedes echoing the air just about did it for me. We turned the corner, and there she stood with my Aunt Rosie (her mother), just crying.

Behind them, a set of windows and a tall thick wooden door. Inside sat the rest of my family. It was silent at first. The greetings were joyless, and their faces didn’t even try to smile. I had never seen them like this before.

I thought about telling everyone Merry Christmas, but truth is, there was nothing “merry” about that day. So I refrained.

After Thanksgiving and the increased spread of COVID we had decided not to get together for Christmas. Yet here we all were. It was all a bit ironic to me.

Pedro? He was still alive. The ventilator taking his breaths for him. His lungs inflating and deflating steadily. Artificially, but steadily. So, there we all sat, waiting, hoping, praying for a miracle.

Christmas came and went. We had spent hours sitting in the most uncomfortable waiting room chairs. They were awful. Nevertheless, the day had passed, though it felt like an eternity.

The following days not much changed. I drove back to Indiana for a night for clothes, a break, and honestly just to be able to get some sleep in my own bed.

Who would have guessed waiting for a miracle was so exhausting?

The rest of the family stayed in Champaign, some in hotels, others cramped into my house where I stay back on campus. The days in between were all blended. We would wake up, go to the hospital, sit in the waiting room, and wait.

Waiting consisted of board games, tv, stories, snacks and lots of tears. It was a weird combination. It’s like one minute we were all fine, and the next we’d remember why we were there. In those moments the silence would creep over the room like a dark shadow.

Despite the national pandemic, and the hospital guidelines on visiting COVID patients, we were allowed in. For some reason, the hospital made us an exception. At first, I think it’s because it was Christmas, but I have no explanation of why they let us stay the other days. And it’s not like they were just allowing a few members of the family in no, we were all there, over twenty of us.

That week, the OSF waiting room was filled with love, heartbreak, and so many stories. As priests, religious figures, and nurses walked into the room they were all bombarded with stories about Pedro. A man so loved; his family wanted everyone to know.

Meanwhile, Melida sat on the ventilator. The two had been married for sixty years, and this was the longest they had ever been apart. Yet, they were just rooms away from each other.

After days of praying, the family finally came to a decision. On New Year's Eve at 3 p.m. Pedro’s ventilator would be shut off.

Days before Melida had gained consciousness and been taken off the ventilator. She began breathing on her own and was eager to know how her husband was. She knew he was on a ventilator but did not know the severity of his condition.

New Year’s Eve came, and Melida got to see Pedro. That morning nurses wheeled her into his room, and they were finally reunited. For that brief time, Melida sat and held her husband's hand. It was something so simple, so normal, yet it was a moment flooded with emotions.

Later that day the family began praying for a miracle. Jesus, Pedro Jr., and Rosie all gathered in Pedro’s room while Irasema sat with Melida.

No one had told Melida that they were taking Pedro off of life support at the time, but according to Irasema, no one had to. Irasema recalls her mother asking, “the time has come, hasn’t it?” Melida knew it was her husband’s time, she felt it.

The rest of the family took the elevator down to the hospital’s chapel. There was a camera set up in the back of the chapel so that patients could watch the services from their rooms.

When the time came, the camera was turned on and the tv in Pedro’s hospital room was tuned in. Not all of the family could be in his room physically, but we were all there.

So it was. We cried, we begged, we got on our knees and prayed for a miracle. Every so often a member of the hospital staff would come into the chapel giving us updates.

3 p.m. came and went. The ventilator had been shut off and Pedro had been removed from the machine. His lungs were breathing, barely, but this time on their own. A little over a half hour later he was still breathing. Exhausted from emotions, the family returned to the waiting room unsure of what to anticipate. Moments later a figure walked in, and the room fell silent. He died.

Throughout the room heads dropped, tears fell, and sobs echoed. He was gone. An entire life ended, just like that.

We were shocked. I was confused. How could something we had been anticipating, waiting, planning for for days be so gut wrenching, devastating, and heart shattering?

Three months later the family held the funeral service for Pedro. In those three months Melida had made a lot of progress.

She underwent rehabilitation and eventually began gaining her strength back. She was released from the hospital and moved in with Rosie. She’s recovering both mentally and physically.

Pedro was loved and respected by so many. For years he owned and operated “Zarate’s Market,” a little shop that the people of Hoopeston cherished. He was even once named “Citizen of the Year.” He had a special place in the community, and so when it came time for the funeral many people wanted to be there, for Pedro, for the family.

Yet, due to the COVID-19 restrictions and the families hopes to prevent Melida from getting sick again, the family had a private funeral. But that did not stop the community from showing up.

As the family got in their cars and joined the precession to the cemetery, hundreds of people lined the streets of Hoopeston to send Pedro off.

Community members, family friends, and even a high school soccer team showed up to pay their respects. Pedro Zarate was loved.

Looking back to that Thanksgiving, the time before the chaos, when asked if they regret attending, majority of the family members say no. Between sickness, hospitalizations, and a tragic death, one would think that they would regret it. Yet, they don’t. But why?

Pedro Zarate was a man so deeply rooted in has faith that he was not afraid of the inevitable.

At the funeral I remember the priest sharing a testimony with the family. It was a line from the Saint Joan of Arc. As the Saint was about to be killed for believing in Jesus, she was asked “Have you no fear of death as you will be burned at the stake?” She replied, “Fear? I was made for this moment.”

Pedro Zarate was made for this. He lived his life seeking to be with his everlasting God. He finally made it.