When Pamela Caddell died of COVID-19 last month, there was no funeral- her family knew that, as a former nurse, she wouldn’t want anyone else to be exposed to the disease.
But there was still something her husband, Richard, wanted to say- needed to say- so he sat down in his empty house to write her obituary.
After honoring her decades in medicine and listing her surviving relatives, he included a plea to anyone who picked up the Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind.
Richard may not have known it, but the obituary for his wife belongs to a growing genre that dates to the summer.
Now with a third wave overwhelming hospitals across the country, Americans are increasingly turning their private grief into public calls for action as the COVID-19 death toll grows by thousands each day.
There have been some efforts to turn the obituaries into a more coordinated activist campaign, but for many it’s a decision they reach on their own, a reflection of their own frustration, anger and pain.
“A lot of people knew my wife,” Richard said. “Her message was to take it seriously. Everybody. Take it seriously. And there’s a lot of people that I’m afraid that they don’t.”
