Powerful photos captured their pandemic struggles. Where are they now?
Five years later, the memories, though faded, linger.
Five years later, the memories, though faded, linger.
We recall how life lurched to a halt with a cascade of cancellations and postponement. Though our streets once again throng with people, we remember, even if deep in the back of our minds, how a highly contagious virus shuttered schools, stadiums, and worship halls. How places of community took on an unusual hush.
For some, that time is captured in smells: the hand sanitizer we slathered on our hands and antiseptic wipes we hoped would help us escape an invisible enemy. For others, it is captured in sounds: a shriek of ambulance sirens or an evening cheer for front-line workers.
As the world marks the fifth anniversary of COVID-19’s unwanted arrival, we revisited photographs from the D.C. region during the pandemic. In the nation’s capital alone, 1,450 residents have died of COVID.
We asked the subjects of these pictures about their enduring memories of that uneasy time.
They collect our trash, cut our hair, plan our funerals. Here’s how they reacquainted with the world.
‘I can still hear the wailing of family members unable to say goodbye’
Hari Close, 64, on the responsibility of being a funeral director
At the height of the pandemic, even on his birthday, Hari Close began embalming at 2 a.m. There were too many bodies not to, he said.
He had bouts of breathlessness and dizziness so intense he had to sit down.
When he wasn’t in the morgue, he was searching for protective gear at Lowe’s and Home Depot. Or he was supporting grieving families and worried staff. Or serving as the president of the nation’s biggest association for Black funeral directors and morticians.
So much death left him questioning whether he could continue this work and nudged him to start seeing a psychologist.
Late last year, he fell and broke his foot. He needed three surgeries.
“For the first time in a while, I had to prioritize me.”
He was forced to pause and rest, to reflect.
“I can still hear the wailing of family members unable to say goodbye,” he said.
He worries that people are forgetting the pandemic, or erasing it, and that the country isn’t ready for the next one. He’s doing what he can to preserve the history.
He donated the gown and shoes he wore while embalming for a museum exhibition. He made a scrapbook for his grandchildren.
And he tells them, despite the hardship, it was also a time of solidarity: “We came together as neighbors, as colleagues. God always makes sure we come together.”
‘Watching her decline while I had to keep an arm’s length — that was hard’
Anna Epstein, 44, on losing close contact with an elderly parent
When the assisted-living center emailed Anna Epstein that they’d figured out a way for families to safely visit, she sobbed.
“Happy tears,” she said. It was late March 2020. Her mom was a resident, then in the early stages of dementia.
Staff turned the glass doors between a dining room and an outside courtyard into a meeting space, placing comfortable chairs on each side. Epstein couldn’t embrace her mom, Donna Forsman, but at least she could see her. They could touch the glass and know they were separated only by a pane.
“Watching her decline while I had to keep an arm’s length — that was hard,” Epstein said recently.
When Forsman was hospitalized, Epstein couldn’t stand by her side. When the National Guard visited the center, rattling residents who couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, she couldn’t hold her hand.
“I’m right here. No one is going to hurt you,” Epstein would say on FaceTime. Forsman could operate a phone then. Not anymore. Dementia’s grip has tightened.
When the pandemic pressed the pause on human interactions, it took away time Epstein and a more lucid Forsman could’ve spent together. But Anna doesn’t like to think that way.
“There is nowhere productive for me to put that blame,” she said. “I just tried to make the best of it.”
When restrictions eased, she brought Mexican food, balloons, and party hats to the center for Forsman’s birthday. They ate outside despite the chill.
“We’ll always have that memory,” she said.
‘Like we’re back to square one’
Mike Brown, 53, on dispelling medical misinformation from his barbershop
Bit by bit, Mike Brown tried his best to chip away at what he calls the “‘hell no’ wall.”
From his barbershop chair, he soothed fears and countered medical misinformation in an effort to encourage his predominantly Black and Latino clientele to consider vaccination.
“When they see someone they trust, at least they start to listen,” said Brown, a certified community health worker and barber at the Shop Spa in Hyattsville which, in 2021, became the first barbershop in Maryland to host a Coronavirus vaccine clinic.
“Now, feels like we’re back to square one,” Brown said.
Distrust of the health-care system continues. Many clients, he said, see doctors rarely, if at all. Instead, they gather advice from social media feeds, where hoaxes spread unchecked. Plus, President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon of Anthony S. Fauci, his chief medical adviser, ignited renewed suspicion, he said.
At the barbershop, Brown hung a reminder of the real-world danger of the pandemic on the wall: an obituary of a beloved longtime client who refused the vaccine.
‘Appreciate your workers’
Octavia French, 32, on not having the option to work from home
As the country hunkered down, Octavia French’s trash collection route took her across D.C. — day in, day out. Mask on, gloves on, windows rolled down for airflow. Every day, she prayed her team wouldn’t get sick.
She crisscrossed empty streets and tended to bins fuller than usual, noticing more takeout containers and cardboard boxes from online orders.
“Can’t collect trash with the internet,” her boss would say.
“Balancing being safe, being a mom, doing your job. That was tough,” said French, who is still a Department of Public Works employee. “If I don’t do it, then who will?”
She recalled from those uneasy days of shutdown flashes of joy. People left notes of gratitude, water bottles, and masks. In Capitol Hill, kids scrawled on the ground with chalk: “Thank you, DPW.”
She hopes that spirit lingers.
“Appreciate your workers,” she said. “You don’t know what someone might be going through, and they still show up to do their job and clean our city.”
‘A risk I was willing to take to heal the country’
Cindy Hoose, 55, a nurse, on vaccines and building trust with the vaccine-hesitant
Cindy Hoose remembers the fear. As a nurse, she spoke to crowds all over, from churches to car washes, about getting vaccinated. Some feared needles; others feared the unknown.
“Some were fearful of the government,” Hoose said. “Some were fearful that we were trying to round people up and deport them.”
She graduated from nursing school in 2019, a few months before she turned 50. A pandemic wasn’t on her bingo card for her first year in the profession.
“I can assure you of that,” she said. “But you’re trained for anything.”
So she got to work trying to educate anyone and everyone about the vaccines.
“Being with people who were not vaccinated at the height of the pandemic was a risk I was willing to take to try to heal the country,” she said. Sometimes she would show pictures from her phone of her and her husband getting the vaccine to build trust. Other times she would just listen.
Years later, she tries her best to carry that empathy with her: “Some folks have real fears. Even if you can’t understand, you can certainly empathize.”
‘The only thing I had to be excited about’
Sherlyn Estrada, 19, on being a teenager in the time of COVID
The pandemic ruptured eighth grade and relegated Sherlyn Estrada’s freshman year of high school to a screen. Gone was the chance meet friends in person. Instead, she logged into class from bed.
As her 15th birthday neared, she worried that her quinceañera would become another casualty.
“It was pretty depressing being home all the time,” Estrada reflected recently. “The party was the only thing I had be excited about.”
When May 2021 rolled around and she slipped on her pale purple ball gown to take pictures at National Harbor a few weeks before the coming-of-age celebration, it was as though she was finally emerging from her pandemic cocoon. When strangers nearby learned of the occasion, they burst into a chorus of “Happy Birthday!”
Her family pushed back the celebration by a few months. When restrictions were eased, it was time to party.
Her grandparents flew in from El Salvador. After months alone, she sang and danced the night away with a crowd.
“I could create memories with my friends again,” she said.