While Sesma mourned, mariachi music cut through the silence. “I’d rather sleep than be awake because it hurts so much you’re not there,” the band said in Spanish.
She buried her mother in South Los Angeles last week. But she had to say goodbye in a parking lot.
There, the box was placed in a corner under a pop-up awning – with flower arrangements and photos all around. Chairs were spaced apart in parking lots.
It was the only safe space for people to socially distance themselves while grieving that Calvary Chapel – located near the Sesma family in South LA – had available.
“Waiting to bury her felt like torture,” Sesma told CNN. “We were worried about what she would look like.”
She said she was concerned that her mother’s body would become deformed and begin to decompose before she could see her face for the last time.
At the funeral, Sesma was praying. Her faith, she said, is all that drives her in the aftermath of such a loss.
Sesma’s family contracted Covid in December
Sesma said she quit her job as a real estate agent to live with her mother and stepfather because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Her mother, a retired train driver, had a lung disease. Her stepfather was a handyman, with asthma and diabetes. Her brother lived next door with his young family.
In December, she said they had all contracted Covid-19. Her parents became so ill that they had to be admitted to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South LA.
The state-of-the-art hospital – teeming with patients – is a sanctuary in what has long been a healthcare desert in the heavily black and Latino area of the city.
“Our emergency department was designed to treat 40 to 45,000 patients per year. In 2019 – before Covid – we saw 110,000 patients per year,” said the hospital’s CEO, Dr. Elaine Batchlor. “This is largely due to a lack of access to quality assurance in the community.”
Now that the coronavirus is on, there are even more patients everywhere, she said.
Los Angeles reported 12,617 new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in the county to 932,697 as the county nears its grim milestone of 1 million cases. A further 137 new deaths were reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 12,387.
‘Don’t Let This Be You’
The Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital normally has a 135-bed capacity, but it now treats more than 200 people indoors, according to Batchlor. More than 60% are coronavirus patients.
Batchlor said the hospital is receiving some of the sickest patients in the city and state.
“Diabetes is three times more common here than in the rest of California. The death rate is 72% higher. Life expectancy here is 10 years shorter than in the rest of the state,” said Batchlor. “All of this is related to the fact that this is a resource-poor and disadvantaged community.”
And that means that what has happened to the Sesma family is usually the norm, not the exception.
“We have been unlucky to see this disease run through families and, all too often, to take in multiple members of a single family,” said Dr. Jason Prasso, who treated both Sesma’s mother and stepfather.
The pain of the losses for the doctors and nurses sits on their shoulders like a dull weight that won’t go away. For families, the loss of someone to Covid takes a devastating toll.
“We lost both my mother and stepfather to the coronavirus,” Sesma said. ‘Don’t let this be you. If you really love your loved ones, don’t let this be you. Continue to take all precautions, take extra precautions, exaggerate if you have to. ‘