It looked like the end of the tunnel.
Phyllis Kingery's mother, Wanda Darlene Hedges, had received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine in January.
"We were so thrilled," Kingery said. "We said 'Mom, we're almost to the finish line.'"
But soon after receiving the shot, Hedges contracted COVID-19 at the southeast Lincoln nursing home where she lived. She showed no pressing symptoms for a week.
Then her oxygen levels plummeted.
"It went to 55% with a click of the fingers," Kingery said. "(Staff) came to do a regular bedtime check and they thought, 'What in the world?' Don't you think because you have no symptoms, you're fine, that it won't turn on you in a heartbeat."
Hedges was taken to Bryan East Campus, where she died Feb. 4 from COVID-19 complications at age 91.
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"Mom was a very strong woman,” Kingery said, despite her quick decline. She said her mother lived a hard life, raising her family on a farm near Bennet. Sometimes she worked at a nearby grocery store, but she was mostly a full-time mother.
Later in life, Hedges was able to travel to Alaska and the Holy Land with her husband. She kept big notebooks about the trips and would share them with anyone who wanted to look.
For the past five years, Hedges lived at The Waterford at College View assisted-living center, where she was happy, Kingery said.
She dealt with some memory loss and other health problems before the pandemic. When in-person visits stopped, Kingery would call her often and made a couple of visits outside her window.
"We tried sitting outside talking on the phone. She hated it because our mouths weren't in sync so she told me to just go home and call me," Kingery said.
What her mom really needed was human touch, she said.
"We underestimate the need for touch. She needed a purpose. We couldn't go in there and hold her hand and give her touch."
The day her mother died, Kingery was able to visit her at the hospital for an hour, to finally give her that human interaction that she had missed for the past year.
Seeing her mom decline so rapidly after contracting COVID also gave Kingery a deeper understanding of the disease that has killed more than 2,000 Nebraskans.
"I think that all along, it's been very easy for some people to make a joke about COVID, to say it's not a big deal and we're all making too much of it," Kingery said.
"I saw firsthand how it affects the respiratory system and it shocked me and it still shocks me. COVID is very real. We have to follow what's going on and do what we're told."
— Zach Hammack