A family lost its 7-year-old son before the coronavirus lockdown. Now it mourns in isolation. | Maria Panaritis

For Rebecca Wzorek, it’s the banana bread. She can’t bake it anymore because the Darth Vader apron that her 7-year-old son used to wear no longer has an owner.

For husband Barry, the thought of firing up the grill out back is crushing. How can he ever make hot dogs again without remembering how Matthew used to insist on ketchup first, then mustard, then relish on top before giving the dog a final twist in the bun?

Ten-year-old Jacob is another worry altogether.

He’s the big brother who used to have a little brother until, in February, the younger boy was sent home from the hospital with what seemed like influenza. Two days later, Matthew was dead. Eight weeks later, amid our pandemic lockdown, it is now just Jacob, Mom, and Dad.

“It’s, like, really hard to think of a scenario where we’ll ever be as happy as we were,” said Barry. There are memories and tears in every room.

“We’re stuck inside,” Rebecca said, honoring the same coronavirus stay-home orders that have idled the globe. She feels guilty that her older son has no one to lean on but two very sad parents. "He’s got a grieving mom — and I can barely take care of myself.”

Matthew Wzorek loved Disney World, the Eagles, Harry Potter, and fumbling as catcher in Little League. The cause of his Feb. 16 death remains under investigation as his family’s grief has found little outlet in the isolation forced by our nation’s response to COVID-19. They are trapped within the walls of the Marple Township home in which Matthew went limp in his mother’s arms.

This is death during a pandemic.

Crying while confined. Scavenging for scarce smiles in closed quarters. Hoping that when you turn a corner, a picture in a room doesn’t make you fall apart after you already fell apart, as you always do the minute you wake up that morning.

“This has been particularly hard because he was my little buddy in the house,” Rebecca said. “Usually, I’d be OK because I could bake right now and he’d have on his little Darth Vader apron and mixing and measuring with me.”

We talked recently in their backyard. I was in a mask. We were sitting a good 20 feet away. Rebecca cried. Barry cried. Matthew’s memory was strong.

“Or he’d be the one sitting and doing a puzzle with me or cuddling on the couch,” she said. “Everything I want to do reminds me of him.”

Between the three of you, are you getting enough hugs? I asked.

“We are. Yeah,” said Barry, 42, though his whisper was not convincing.

“There’s just a big one," said Rebecca, 37, ″that’s missing.”

Something scary stole Matthew’s life just before COVID-19 forced a March shutdown of schools, businesses, and commerce across much of the country. The second grader was said to have had Influenza B — something that rarely kills children despite its prevalence.

Matthew’s condition deteriorated so quickly that the coroner’s office initiated an autopsy investigation. Two months later, results remain incomplete, but Matthew appears, preliminarily, to have had two different kinds of pneumonia.

“It seems like there was more to the story," Montgomery County first deputy coroner Alexander Balacki said when I called this week. "And if there’s more to the story, it’s our job to tell that story.”

Matthew was not tested for COVID-19 because, at the time of his February death, the region had not yet identified a case locally, Balacki said. (Testing was not being done in any meaningful way until weeks later, even though local physicians were complaining in February about having no federal guidance about how to identify the virus in patients.)

Matthew, an active and cheerful second grader at Worrall Elementary School, was “a beautiful soul,” his mother said. He hardly complained when he fell ill quite suddenly.

It was the night of Valentine’s Day. A Friday. Matthew was in bed with Mom and Dad. He was burning up, his breathing raspy. After midnight, Rebecca rushed him to Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Matthew was swabbed for the flu. Mom was told he had Influenza B. They were sent home with steroids for croup.

Before Matthew’s discharge, a photo popped up on Barry’s phone back home in Delaware County.

“Him on the bed with the ice pop, you know?" Barry recalled. "And with a smile on his face.”

All day Saturday, Rebecca doted on the child. Sunday morning he seemed better.

“His fever had broke,” she said. “But he kept on saying that his belly hurt. I just kept on telling him it was all part of the flu. I would just hold him and kiss his forehead. He would just turn and say, ‘I love you too, Mommy.’ He kept on saying that all day.”

Then it happened.

Matthew was in bed.

“He told me that he couldn’t feel his legs. He turned to me, he said, ‘Mommy, I think we should go back to the hospital.’”

Rebecca scooped him up. The little guy collapsed in her arms.

Barry did CPR until an ambulance arrived. Matthew was pronounced dead at Bryn Mawr Hospital after frantic efforts to save him.

The next night, with a funeral planned the next morning at Temple Sholom in Broomall, the family’s rabbi was told to consider canceling the memorial. The Delaware County medical examiner had expressed fear of contagion, especially with so many children expected to pay their respects.

But there was no county health department with whom to consult more fully. The Wzoreks were overwhelmed.

“We didn’t have a place to turn to understand what was happening,” Rabbi Peter Rigler explained. This was “an incredible level of added fear.” (I left a message but did not hear back from the Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office.)

The family held a small graveside service at the cemetery where Matthew’s grandmother works — Mount Jacob in Glenolden. They squeezed in a modest funeral only four days later, after Mom and Dad had no signs of flu themselves.

Within a week or so, the gates of social distancing crashed down as schools and businesses went idle.

Rebecca now spends endless hours haunted by whether she could have done anything different to save Matthew. Her mother, in Havertown, has been unable to walk through the front door with hugs because she, along with all other relatives, is quarantined at home.

Support from friends has been huge, between Zoom video calls and greeting cards sent from 14 states for Jacob’s 10th birthday on April 13. Even first responders from multiple counties rolled through the neighborhood with a surprise birthday parade.

But still.

“There’s moments when you wake up and you forget for a brief moment,” Rebecca said. “Then you open your eyes and the pain is just this sharp pain in your chest and you realize it’s all happening. And there’s no way to get him back.”

The family is sending critically ill children to Disney World and Universal Studios through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Visit their GoFundMe page for details.