This year Valentine’s Day is the saddest and loneliest for tens of thousands of people who have lost their partners to the covid-19 pandemic or keep them away from each other, either because they are hospitalized or must stay away due to the social distance.
One of them is Jazmín Mosqueda, who will not be able to be with her husband, Elías, who has been on an artificial respirator in a hospital in Phoenix (Arizona) since last December.
“Today he is 50 days in a coma and 61 days in the hospital. In this time the doctors have called me twice with the intention that I say goodbye to him, I have gone to his room but he has never said goodbye, but to pray, touch him and talk to him of our love “, Mosqueda tells Efe.
475,000 DEAD
This Sunday the First Valentine of the covid-19 era is celebrated and therefore the holiday will be very different from that of past years, since the pandemic has changed the habits of people in the world.
Within hours of the celebration that commemorates love and friendship, the United States reached 475,040 deaths this Thursday from the covid-19 disease, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University.
And, according to the Covid Tracking Project, like Elías, another 74,000 more people are hospitalized due to complications derived from the disease and will not be able to spend Valentine’s Day with their loved ones.
For Mosqueda this will undoubtedly be a different day. For her, her celebration focuses on the artificial support machine throwing good numbers on Elías’s breathing.
“Now we celebrate victories with numbers,” says the Latina, seven months pregnant and who will celebrate the aforementioned date in a “so different” way with her daughter Julia.
Something similar to what Mosqueda is experiencing will happen to thousands of families on February 14, with a country half paralyzed by fear of the disease and with celebrations that seem distant or, at least, different.
A LOVE STORY
“For us, every day was February 14, but when Valentine’s Day came we never spent the day in white, we went to a restaurant or celebrated together,” says Mosqueda.
The couple met in Mexico when they were ten years old, went to school together, then both families emigrated separately to Arizona and met again on social media.
“In 2010 we met again on Facebook, Elías was going to college in Tucson, and my family lived in Phoenix. When we saw each other, it was as if we had never separated, he started going to my house every day and after two months we got married, “recalls the 33-year-old Mexican.
The couple greatly wanted a child, but given the impossibility of procreating, they underwent an in vitro fertilization process, from which Julia, who is about to turn one year old, was born.
Now a new daughter awaits, whom Daniela will name in honor of Elías’s brother, who lost the fight against the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic.
A DIFFERENT CELEBRATION
In previous years, nearly a quarter of Americans dined at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, but with government regulations a lot is going to change.
The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) themselves have recommended as the safest way to celebrate Valentine’s Day to “meet virtually” or do it only with the partners, which would leave out thousands of couples.
And the recommendation goes further and, instead of the traditional love scenes, the CDC suggests avoiding hugs and kisses. Instead, comforting details, such as a teddy bear or a comfortable blanket, can be exchanged for physical and safe comfort.
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