Soon, likely in the next few weeks, the U.S. toll from the coronavirus will surpass 1 million.
Through wave after wave, the virus has compiled a merciless chronology of loss — one by one by one. If losing one person leaves such a lasting void, consider all that’s been lost with the deaths of 1 million. From the first deaths on the West Coast to the soaring toll in New York, and then every place in between, the nation has been marked by unfathomable loss.
On the deadliest day of a horrific week in April 2020, COVID took the lives of 816 people in New York City alone. Lost in the blizzard of pandemic data that’s been swirling ever since is the fact that 43-year-old Fernando Morales was one of them.
Two years and nearly 1 million deaths later, his brother, Adam Almonte, fingers the bass guitar Morales left behind and visualizes him playing tunes, a treasured blue bucket hat pulled low over his eyes. Walking through a park overlooking the Hudson River, he recalls long-ago days tossing a baseball with Morales and sharing tuna sandwiches. He replays old messages just to hear Morales’ voice.
“When he passed away it was like I lost a brother, a parent and a friend all at the same time,” says Almonte, 16 years younger than Morales, who shared his love of books, video games and wrestling, and worked for the city processing teachers’ pensions. “I used to call him just any time I was going through something difficult and I needed reassurance, knowing he would be there… That’s an irreplaceable type of love.”
AP Photo/David Goldman
Adam Almonte holds a photo of him with his older brother, Fernando Morales, on a bench where they used to sit and eat tuna sandwiches after playing catch in Fort Tryon Park in New York. Morales died April 7, 2020, from COVID-19 at age 43.
“We’re dealing with numbers that humans are just not able to comprehend,” says Sara Cordes, a professor of psychology at Boston College who studies the way people perceive quantity. “I can’t comprehend the lives of 1 million at one time and I think this is sort of self-preservation, to only think about the few that you have heard about.”
It goes far beyond faces and names.
COVID-19 has left an estimated 194,000 children in the U.S. without one or both of their parents. It has deprived communities of leaders, teachers and caregivers. It has robbed us of expertise and persistence, humor and devotion.
It began even before the threat had really come into focus. In February 2020, an unfamiliar respiratory illness started spreading through a nursing home outside Seattle, the Life Care Center of Kirkland.
Neil Lawyer, 84, was a short-term patient there, recovering after hospitalization for an infection. On the last Wednesday of the month he joined other residents for a belated Mardi Gras party. But the songs that filled the entertainment room were interrupted by frequent coughing. Before week’s end, the facility was in lockdown. Days later Lawyer, too, fell ill.
“By the time he got to the hospital they allowed us to put on these space suits and go in and see him,” son David Lawyer says. “It was pretty surreal.”
When the elder Lawyer died of complications from COVID-19 on March 8, the U.S. toll stood at 30. Eventually 39 Life Care residents and seven others linked to the facility perished in the outbreak.
AP Photo/David Goldman
David Lawyer visits the grave of his father, Neil Lawyer, for the first time since the inscription went up on his tombstone in Seattle on March 20, 2022.
By any account, Lawyer, known to his family as “Moose,” lived a very full life. Born on a Mississippi farm to parents whose mixed-race heritage subjected them to bitter discrimination, he became the first in his family to graduate from college.
Trained as a chemist, he took an assignment in Belgium with a U.S. company and stayed for more than two decades. Fellow expats knew him for his devotion to coaching baseball and for the rich baritone he brought to community theater and vocal ensembles.
“He had the most velvet-like voice,” says Marilyn Harper, who harmonized with Lawyer many times. “He loved to perform, but not in a showy way. He just got such great pleasure.”
After Lawyer and his wife retired to Bellevue, Washington to be near two of their children, he embraced his role as grandfather of 17.
When his energy for performing diminished, he visited clubs to hear his grandson play guitar. At weddings, he joined his sons, grandson and nephew to serenade brides and grooms in a makeshift ensemble dubbed the Moose-Tones.
Last October, when one of his granddaughters married, it marked the first family affair without Lawyer there to hold court. The Moose-Tones went on without him.
“He would have just been beaming because, you know, it was the most important thing in the world to him late in life, to get together with family,” David Lawyer says.
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By the end of March 2020, deaths in the U.S. topped 3,500 and the federal government’s lead expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted COVID would eventually take more than 100,000 lives.
Still, the idea that the toll could reach 1 million was “almost certainly off the chart,” he said at the time. “Not impossible, but very, very unlikely.”
Then deaths in the Northeast began to soar. Then-President Donald Trump dropped talk of reopening the nation by Easter. In April 2020, the U.S. surpassed Italy as the country with the most COVID deaths.
Read the full story here, and scroll through a gallery of images of COVID’s toll on the U.S.:
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David Goldman
Adam Almonte sits on a bench overlooking the Hudson River where he used to sit and eat tuna sandwiches with his older brother, Fernando Morales, in Fort Tryon Park in New York, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. On the deadliest day of a horrific week in April 2020, COVID-19 took the lives of 816 people in New York City alone. Lost in the blizzard of pandemic data that's been swirling ever since is the fact that 43-year-old Morales was one of them. Soon, likely in the next few weeks, the U.S. toll from the coronavirus will surpass 1 million. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Maryln Curtis, right, aunt of Jennifer McClung, holds hands with her husband, Jim Curtis, at Jennifer's mother's home in Muscle Shoals, Ala., Monday, March 7, 2022. At Helen Keller Hospital staffers knew McClung, a longtime dialysis nurse, as "Mama Jen." When new nurses started, she took them under her wing. Some nights, she woke up crying with worry about her patients, her family says. On Dec. 14, 2020, her lungs severely damaged by the virus, McClung died of COVID-19, just hours before the nation's vaccination campaign began. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
A photo of Neil Lawyer sits on the piano as his son, David Lawyer, plays in his home in Bellevue, Wash., Sunday, March 20, 2022. When the elder Lawyer died of complications from COVID-19 on March 8, 2020, the U.S. toll stood at 30. At weddings, he joined his sons to serenade brides and grooms in a makeshift ensemble dubbed the Moose-Tones. Last October, when one of his granddaughters married, it marked the first family affair without Lawyer there to hold court. The Moose-Tones went on without him. "He would have just been beaming because, you know, it was the most important thing in the world to him late in life, to get together with family," David says. "I can honestly tell you he was terribly missed." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
David Lawyer holds a photo of the house his father, Neil Lawyer, was born in while standing outside the last house he owned, Sunday, March 20, 2022, in Bellevue, Wash. Lawyer, 84, died on March 8, 2020, among the first residents of an area nursing home who succumbed to COVID-19 during the outbreak. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Cathie Quackenbush, right, comforts her daughter, Macy Sweeters, over the loss of her father and Cathie's husband, Larry, to COVID-19, at their home in Springfield, Mo., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. "Everybody who met him just loved him," says Sweeters. "It just hurts so much. He was my best friend." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Yolanda Bay stands next to a photo of her husband, Luis Alfonso Bay Montgomery, lower right, at their home in San Luis, Ariz., Saturday, March 19, 2022. Montgomery, 59, died from COVID on July 18, 2020. "It's time to get rid of his clothes, but ...," she says, unable to finish the sentence. "There are times that I feel completely alone. And I still can't believe it." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
A billboard put up by ShiVanda Peebles celebrates what would have been her husband Sherman's 50th birthday, in Columbus, Ga., Wednesday, March 9, 2022. Sherman Peebles doted on his wife, his sweetheart since high school. The couple ran a business together but their partnership was much more. After ShiVanda had a kidney transplant, he turned their trips to Atlanta for continued care into mini-vacations, taking her to Braves games and out for dinner. "He called me his queen," she says. Sherman Peebles died at age 49 from COVID in September. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Photos of Jennifer McClung sit on a table at the home of her mother, Stella Olive, left, sitting with her daughter, Tracee Jenkins, center, and Jennifer's daughter, Mary, right, in Muscle Shoals, Ala., Monday, March 7, 2022. On Dec.14, 2020 the nation's first COVID vaccine was administered. But the vaccines had arrived too late to save McClung, a long time dialysis nurse. In November, McClung, 54, had tested positive. Her lungs severely damaged by the virus, she died just hours before the nation's vaccination campaign began. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
ShiVanda Peebles poses for a portrait as a photo of her with her husband, Sherman, hangs on the wall next to his sheriff's uniform at their home in Columbus, Ga., Tuesday, March 8, 2022. In late September, as Sherman Peebles lay in the hospital, the U.S. toll topped 675,000, surpassing the number of Americans killed by the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago. He died the following day. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Landon Quackenbush, 13, right, lies on the couch next to a photo of him and his father, Larry Quackenbush, at their home in Springfield, Mo., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Larry, 60, was the glue that held his family together. He got sick with COVID-19 after Landon arrived home from summer camp in July. First Larry, then his wife were rushed to the hospital. She was able to return home a day later, but her husband remained, tethered to a ventilator. He died on Aug. 3. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Karen McCulloch, left, and her daughter, Kirsten, hold a photo of Karen's mother, Mary Jacq McCulloch, at the North Carolina Botanical Garden where they used to bring her on outings from her nursing home, Thursday, March 10, 2022, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Mary Jacq's death came at the height of a North Carolina spring. Now, with the season here again, Karen is reminded of their drives together to gaze at the trees in blossom. Mary Jacq's favorite were the redbuds. "They are stunning magenta," Karen says. "I can't see one in bloom without thinking, 'Mom would love this.' Kind of like her, brightly colored and demanding attention." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Larry Mass looks up at a portrait of him and his longtime partner, Arnie Kantrowitz, in their apartment in New York, Thursday, March 17, 2022. Mass worried about his partner, whose immune system was weakened by anti-rejection drugs required after a kidney transplant. For months, Kantrowitz, a retired professor and noted gay rights activist, took refuge on their couch, watching favorite Bette Davis movies with Mass by his side. Kantrowitz died of complications from COVID on January 21, as the toll moved nearer to 1 million. "He's still with me," Mass says. "He's there in my heart." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Gerald Riley stands for a portrait over the chair of his best friend and fellow barber, Sherman Peebles, at his barber shop in Columbus, Ga., Wednesday, March 9, 2022. Months after Peebles died from COVID, Riley still arrives at the shop each Saturday expecting to see Peebles' truck parked outside. At day's end, he thinks back to the routine he and his friend of more than 20 years always followed when closing. "I love you, brother," they'd tell one another. How could Riley have known those would be the last words they'd ever share? (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
The hat of Luis Alfonso Bay Montgomery, second from left in family photo, hangs on the bed as his wife, Yolanda Bay, stands in their bedroom in San Luis, Ariz., Saturday, March 19, 2022. Montgomery, 59, had worked straight through the pandemic's early months, piloting a tractor through the lettuce and cauliflower fields. Even after he began feeling sick in mid-June, he insisted on laboring on, said Bay, his wife of 42 years. By the time he was rushed to a hospital two weeks later, he required intubation, his body racked by the virus and a heart attack. He died on July 18, 2020 and for the first time since they'd met as teenagers in their native Mexico, Bay was on her own. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Cathie Quackenbush, right, sits on the couch with her children, Landon, 13, and Macy Sweeters, at their home in Springfield, Mo., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Larry Quackenbush, 60, was the glue that held his family together. After his wife, Cathie, suffered brain damage in a car accident more than 20 years ago, he became the primary cook, carpooler and caregiver, while continuing to work. When Landon, came home from summer camp sick with COVID, Quackenbush stepped up again. "Even when he started feeling sick, he kept taking care of everybody," Sweeters says. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Killian McClung, 3, plays on a memorial quilt for his grandmother, Jennifer McClung, as her mother, Stella Olive, reflected in mirror, looks on at her home in Muscle Shoals, Ala., Monday, March 7, 2022. One of McClung's greatest joys was caring for Killian, whom she called her "grandblessing." When he asked where she'd gone, family members made him a book showing McClung dressed like an astronaut, smiling back from space. On Dec. 14, 2020, McClung, a nurse, died of COVID-19, just hours before the nation's vaccination campaign began. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Karen McCulloch, left, and her daughter, Kirsten, look over photos of Karen's mother, Mary Jacq McCulloch, in their home, Thursday, March 10, 2022, in Hillsborough, N.C. At first the virus appeared to bypass Mary Jacq, who tested negative after others in her Chapel Hill, North Carolina nursing home were quarantined. When the 87-year-old became sick, her children, all grown, gathered at her bedside and by phone. McCulloch died the next afternoon, April 21, 2020. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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David Goldman
Karen McCulloch, left, embraces her daughter, Kirsten, as she wears her grandmother's robe in their home, Thursday, March 10, 2022, in Hillsborough, N.C. Mary Jacq McCulloch had long been the spark plug of her family, prone to dancing in supermarket aisles and striking up conversations with complete strangers. "She was really goofy," says her granddaughter who regularly wears the robe around the house. "I wish I could give her one more hug or hold her hand again." McCulloch, 87, died from COVID on April 21, 2020. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
