Denice Monroe’s family felt the weight of the pandemic even before the phone rang Monday evening.
One daughter, a senior at Lincoln Southeast High School and a straight-A student, is now missing all the final high school events and academic accolades. One son, a senior at Midland University in Fremont, had to push graduation back a year after the school canceled all senior internships. Another daughter, a mom with three kids, got laid off, and her family is now trying to make it work on one income.
Then a phone call about 10:30 p.m. Monday made the daily updates from state and local health officials alarmingly real: Monroe’s 81-year-old father, a resident of Gold Crest Retirement Center in Adams, had tested positive for COVID-19.
The news about Paul Monroe came a day after Gage County health department officials reported seven new cases at the retirement facility, four days after one of the residents, a woman in her 90s, died. By Wednesday, more than 20 staff and residents had tested positive.
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“It was shocking. It gives you that oh-my-God feeling,†Monroe said. “A lot of people think this is a joke. They don’t understand the impact it is having on people.â€
None of the Monroe family members had been able to see the family patriarch for six weeks, including his wife of 54 years, after they’d closed the retirement home and long-term care facility to visitors as a precaution.
Things seemed to snowball after the resident died, Monroe said.
They’d tested her dad because he’d had a cough, she said. He suffers from Parkinson’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy, so a virus that attacked the lungs was frightening. That it was one spreading across the world was terrifying.
He had to change rooms after he tested positive, but he’s been fever-free. He has some lung congestion, but they can’t send him to be X-rayed because he’s tested positive.
“Dad’s been holding his own, thankfully,†Monroe said.
The retirement facility employees have been wonderful, she said, updating her mom regularly, helping her dad when they call to talk to him.
“They have been amazing,†she said. “It’s not like they’re not doing what they need to be doing. It’s just running rampant right now.â€
His family hasn’t told Monroe he’s tested positive yet, have decided not to until he asks. Other residents who learned they had the virus didn’t react well, his daughter said, and they didn’t think it was something he needed to know unless he asked. He has some memory loss and might not remember he was tested, she said.
One of the worst things: not being able to see him, to check on him and sit by his side, to see how he’s doing for themselves.
“It’s a very helpless feeling,†she said.
The family might go to the facility on Easter and wave from outside the window, or try to FaceTime him instead.
The news that he has the virus has been hard for family members, for Monroe’s kids who are close to their grandparents. His wife calls to check on him daily, but she can’t walk inside anymore, bring him the VFW magazines that come in the mail.
They’ve tried to be proactive, make funeral plans in case things take a turn for the worst, but even that is hard. Plans need to be made online or over the phone, nowhere near all his family could come. He’s a veteran, but no veteran’s honors are happening now. His sister lives in Florida and can't get here.
Monroe moved to the Adams facility a little more than a year ago from one in Lincoln, where they'd been unhappy with his care. Denice Monroe said family thought he’d like being in Adams, where he grew up.
His family farmed near Adams, his daughter said, and the Monroe name is still well-known in the community. But the hometown feeling they were looking for makes all this so much harder now, because members of the community who work there are at risk.
That’s what Monroe thinks people forget sometimes, as the daily barrage of coronavirus news rains down on them: All these positive cases are people, with families who love them.
Paul Monroe graduated from high school in Adams at 16 and moved to Lincoln, where he worked for a grocery store until he was drafted. When he came home he married, had two kids and worked for many years at Fleming Foods.
He’s got grandkids now and a wife that checks in daily to see how he’s doing, children who wish they could be with him.
Like so many others.
“I’m sure there’s hundreds of other stories exactly like ours,†Monroe said.