What could be more sad? The extent of parental deaths due to the pandemic is a staggering number and growing. I quote from this piece herein:
"Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics."
This will be a societal problem far into the future, no doubt, disproportionately impacting children of color. I'm sure there are various places to make a donation to help an orphaned child.
What I readily tracked down was the Child Mind Institute that provides research-based, crisis support to young children.
-Angela Valenzuela
‘He isn’t going to come back’ — Across Texas, COVID orphans struggle with loss of one or both parents
Six-year-old Ayden Villegas looks at pictures of his father, Robert Villegas, who died in January after a three-week battle with COVID-19. Villegas’ widow, Valerie, a hospice nurse, is raising their children — five boys and a daughter — on her own.
Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer
Rozie Salinas’ Christmas tree is covered in dinosaur ornaments, at the request of her 6-year-old grandson.
Decking the halls of her northeast San Antonio home with the colorful figurines is a way for Salinas to make happy memories for Raiden Gonzalez. She adopted the boy after his parents died last year from complications of COVID-19.
Since then, Salinas and Raiden have been through a lot: memorial services for his parents, a move to a new home and two birthdays for Raiden, who was just 4 when his parents died. Along the way, the boy and his grandmother both contracted the coronavirus themselves.
The holidays are especially difficult.
“He was crying, asking how come he can’t have his parents back and that he just wished that they were adults again and not angels,” said Salinas, 48. “It’s just kind of hard to explain to him why he can’t have them back.”
Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The long-term repercussions are expected to be profound. Single-parent households are more likely to slip into poverty and to suffer from unstable housing, low educational attainment and mental health problems. Orphaned children suffer elevated rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Pediatrics study described the loss of parents or other family caregivers as one of the “severe unrecognized consequences” of the pandemic.
Valerie Villegas of Portland with the youngest of her six children, Nicholas, 2. Her husband, Robert, 45, died of complications from COVID-19.
Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer
It has affected minority children disproportionately, the study found. Researchers determined that from April 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, the risk of losing a parent or a grandparent caregiver was 1.1 to 4.5 times higher for children in racial and ethnic minority groups.
In Texas, 58 percent of the children who lost parents were Hispanic and 16 percent were Black, the study found. Hispanics make up 39 percent of the state’s population and Black people 12 percent, according to the 2020 Census.
Some minority groups have larger families, which means the loss of a parent affects more children. But other factors were at work, too.
More than 70 percent of Black and Hispanic men work in front-line jobs in retail, warehousing, meat packing and health care, occupations where the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is greater, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as non-Hispanic whites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
Other epidemics, such as the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, claimed the lives of many parents. What sets COVID-19 apart is how quickly the disease can progress, leaving families with little time to steel themselves for a devastating loss.
“With COVID, often someone is dead within several days or two weeks,” said Susan D. Hillis, lead author of the Pediatrics study and a senior adviser for the CDC. “And so, suddenly, there’s this shock without adequate time to prepare families.”
‘He isn’t going to come back’
Robert Villegas was cutting his son’s hair in their home near Corpus Christi when he started breathing heavily. His wife, Valerie, a hospice nurse, knew something was wrong. A check of his oxygen level confirmed it: It had fallen dangerously low.
The Villegases headed for Northshore Emergency Center. Unable to go inside because of COVID-19 restrictions, 3-year-old Robert Jr., his haircut still unfinished, said goodbye to his father. It was the last time he saw him.
Valerie and Robert Villegas were just starting to make plans in case one of them died. They never had time to prepare a will. They didn’t have life insurance.
Robert, a truck driver, was 45 when he died. He’d brought in half the family’s income. His death created a huge financial burden on the family, one that widened when Valerie took a three-month, unpaid leave from her job to care for her children.
Unemployment assistance and Social Security survivor benefits kept the family afloat, but money was tight as Valerie tried to keep six children, ages 1 to 18, fed and clothed. Day care for her two youngest cost more than $700 a month.
“My kids never knew what it was to have the lights turned off or the water turned off,” Villegas said. “And they experienced it a good few times this last year.”
In the spring, she returned to work at hospice after being named director of nurses, an administrative role with a higher salary. Now, she’s able to stay on top of the bills, but there isn’t much left over. There won’t be as many Christmas presents under the tree this year, she said.
While the family’s finances have stabilized, the children are still struggling with the loss of their father. Robert Jr., now 4, has angry outbursts, usually when after he hears someone talk about his father.
“He is just starting to realize he isn’t going to come back,” Villegas said.
‘Struggling to be OK’
Tiffany Sanders, 46, of Pearland, lost her husband, Stephen, to COVID a year ago. He was a consultant for oil and gas companies and contracted the virus on a business trip. The family was blindsided. Stephen, 41, had no underlying health conditions and regularly wore a mask.
He was close to their daughters, now 13 and 15. Sanders said her younger teenager is having a particularly hard time.
“It’s been a struggle to get her to a place where she can still keep her dad alive in her heart and honor him by living the best life that she can,” Sanders said. “She’s still struggling to be OK with having any kind of joy in her life.”
Sanders sought counseling for her two teenage daughters, but it took three months to get even a virtual appointment. Her 13-year-old waited nearly 10 months to see a therapist in person.
Stephen Sanders was the sole breadwinner for the family. Tiffany is supporting the family with the payout from her husband’s life insurance policy and Social Security survivor benefits.
She plans to return to work eventually but wonders whether she’s still employable after 15 years as a stay-at-home parent. Before she had children, she worked in international relocations, helping oil and gas companies move employees to operations in other countries.
“I’m going to have to go back to work. My husband left me money, but I’m only 46 years old and it’s not going to last,” Sanders said. “But I’m not trying to think that far ahead. I can barely get through one day.”
‘Too many memories’
Raiden’s father, Adan Gonzalez, 33, died in June 2020 after being hospitalized with COVID-19 for almost a month. He was a truck driver and was in training for a new job.
His wife, Mariah, died four months later at age 29. As Salinas remembers it, her daughter complained she wasn’t feeling well and was taken to the hospital — and by the next day, she was dead.
For a time, Raiden didn’t want to sleep alone. In September, Salinas moved them from a home she’d been leasing to their “forever home” two miles away. Since then, Raiden has been able to sleep by himself.
“That house that we were at, there were just too many memories in there,” said Salinas, who is a customer service representative for a health insurance company.
A GoFundMe helped pay for their new home and for a more reliable car.
Salinas said Raiden sometimes has “little breakdowns” at home and struggles to focus on school the next day. She’s searching for a therapist for him and is seeing one herself.
“It’s OK. Like I tell Raiden, we’re going to get through this one way or the other,” Salinas said. “If we have to struggle a bit, it’s OK. We’re going to get through it. I just want to make sure that he has a good life and has a good childhood. That way, he’s got his memories to be able to go back and talk about.”
Their Christmas tree includes a little memorial to Raiden’s parents. A glittery gold ornament shaped like an M for Mariah and a silver A for Adan hang front and center on the tree. Between them is an ornament with a picture of a smiling Raiden.
rebecca.carballo@chron.com
megan.rodriguez@express-news.net
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