Choices

Well, it finally happened. I know someone who has died of COVID-19. I had been lucky thus far in that my circle of friends and family are privileged enough to not have to venture out of our living spaces. We all have the kinds of jobs that allow us to stay home, and the means to have groceries delivered if that’s what we want.

I didn’t know this person well. He was a close friend of my dad’s, but not someone I grew up with. He was one of us, though, a patient with diabetes and physical limitations, as well as a few other conditions. He often told my dad that he was surprised he lived as long as he had, and he used that as a reason to not follow CDC guidelines as closely as patients have been advised to. He did not wear a mask as religiously as most of us do now. He socialized when he wanted to, without self-restriction. He traveled back and forth between Connecticut and Florida multiple times to see his girlfriend and to play golf, especially as it got colder.

I don’t know how I feel about this.

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On the one hand, I get it. I have often felt that if I were to get cancer after everything else I have gone through medically, I would just throw up my hands, say to hell with it, live the best life I can, and die on my terms.

On the other hand, COVID is much more preventable than cancer. If we make the choice to follow the guidelines as they’ve been set out for us, there is a more than fair chance that we will be able to avoid contracting COVID. Perhaps he just couldn’t bear the restrictions. Perhaps, staring down the time he had left, as it got medically more difficult, he was ok taking risks that might end his life. Perhaps he simply decided to live by his own rules and not those set by others.

On the other hand (yes, I know that makes three), I am really angry because his death, which was likely preventable, has deeply hurt someone I care about.

And he died horribly, lying on the floor of his house for three days before anyone found him, unable to move, drink or eat, or relieve himself, while his breathing grew more and more labored. Dying alone has been one of the worst aspects of this pandemic, but in this case, there wasn’t even a nurse to alleviate the loneliness or a bed, just the cold hard floor, until the very end.

A few weeks ago, I made the case that we shouldn’t judge the people who get COVID because we can’t know how they got it. And I’m not judging. No one deserves to contract COVID, and his choices are neither good nor bad. They just are.

But I wonder, if he could come back, would he make the same choices?