INDIANAPOLIS — “It’s been a long year,” said Farrah Gibbens from Brazil, Indiana.
For Gibbens, that long year started with the death of her Aunt Roberta "Birdie" Shelton from COVID-19 on March 16, 2020. Birdie's death was the first coronavirus fatality that the state of Indiana acknowledged publicly.
“We talked every day, usually in the morning because I’d call her on my way to work and she would be on her way to work so we’d talk,” Gibbens recalled.
One of Gibben’s last conversations with her aunt happened a week before Birdie died.
“She said she thought she was going to go the hospital,” Gibbens recalled, saying Birdie’s coronavirus symptoms started with a headache followed by a fever.
“It just kept going up and down. I talked to her and we texted,” Gibbens said. "She thought she was coming home Sunday and said, ‘No. I’m not.’”
“They called me and said they were going to put her on a ventilator,” Gibbens said of the hospital staff.
At that point, Birdie hadn’t been diagnosed with COVID-19, so Gibbens was able to visit her.
“We had to wear masks. We had to wear gowns. We had to wear gloves. We did all of that,” Gibbens explained.
“She was squeezing my hand. She was trying to look over at us. I talked to her,” Gibbens added.
“I just told her I loved her and squeezed her hand,” she said.
That was the last time Gibbens would see her beloved aunt alive.
Birdie ended up testing positive for the coronavirus again.
“When the results came back that she was positive, then they wouldn’t let me back to see her,” Gibbens said.
Within days, Birdie was gone.
Gibbens didn’t even get to see her aunt after she passed.
“I just called the funeral home, and, at that time, they just said she just has to be cremated,” Gibbens explained.
Seven months later, Gibbens and her 13-year-old son contracted COVID-19 themselves.
Unlike Aunt Birdie, their symptoms were mild.
“I wasn’t coughing. He wasn’t coughing,” Gibbens said of the symptoms she and her son had.
And now, despite losing her aunt, Gibbens says she and her family won’t be getting the vaccine.
“I just don’t have that much trust,” said Gibbens.
She’s hoping though things will get better.
“It’s been crazy. I’ll just be glad when one day it gets back to being normal to what it used to be,” said Gibbens.
Whatever normal looks like, after a global pandemic.
