How Do We Grieve 300,000 Lives Lost?

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White flags planted by volunteers visualize lives lost in the U.S. to COVID-19 as part of an installation by artist Suzanne Firstenberg in D.C. The death toll has now reached 300,000.





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Family members mourn the death of Conrad Coleman Jr. at his burial on July 3, in Rye, N.Y. Coleman, 39, died of Covid-19 on June 20, just over two months after his father Conrad Coleman Sr. also died of the disease.





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Nurse Michele Younkin (left). comforts Romelia Navarro as she sits at the bedside of her dying husband, Antonio Navarro, in St. Jude Medical Center’s COVID-19 unit in Fullerton, Calif on July 31. Antonio was Younkin’s first COVID-19 patient to pass on her watch.





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Medical staff member Susan Paradela places her hand on a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center on Dec. 7 in Houston.





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IV pumps and electrocardiogram machines are seen in a patient’s room in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center on Dec. 7 in Houston.





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Dozens of volunteers helped geotag and collect flags in an art installation dismantled last month. Some flags had been personalized with inscriptions by family members or friends of those who died.





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Dozens of volunteers helped geotag and collect flags in an art installation dismantled last month. Some flags had been personalized with inscriptions by family members or friends of those who died.


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The enemy is invisible, he says, the war zone is everywhere, and many refuse to take the most simple actions to combat the virus, even as morgues fill up in their own community.

«I call this a crime against humanity, because that’s exactly what this is.

Throughout the pandemic, Gilman has shared photos and stories of people who’ve died from COVID-19 each day on social media. He wishes someone in every city or town of America would do the same.

«All the people that you’re not going to see a big article about and you’re not going to hear about them anywhere else, he says. «It’s really important to honor them.

‘Nobody wants to hear sad stories like these.’

Nurse Jessica Scarlett saw more death in three months of caring for COVID patients in McAllen, Texas, than she did in her previous 15 years as a nurse.

«It was just extremely difficult to see so much death, she says. «We’d see families praying in front of the hospital, praying for us and for their family on our way into work.

It was unlike any nursing she’d ever done before. Almost the entire hospital was on oxygen. Nurses would sit at the foot of the bed because there wasn’t any other space.

She became intimately familiar with the progression of the disease, with patients needing more and more help breathing, until eventually being placed on life support.

«And there’s nothing you could do, she says. «There was one guy, he would always say, ‘Please sit with me — I’m really scared.’ And the day before I left, he was intubated.

After that, Scarlett says she needed a break from such a «tremendous amount of death.

She’s still trying to grasp all the tragedy, seeing daughters and mothers ending up in the hospital after a family reunion.

What happened inside that hospital felt like its own separate reality. She hasn’t talked about her time there with almost anyone else, except other nurses.

«Nobody wants to hear sad stories like these, people don’t want to. she says.

This story comes from NPR’s reporting partnership with KHN (Kaiser Health News).

• COVID-19 deaths


• coronavirus pandemic