Jay Mantuhac, Masters of Public Health Student (Biostatistics Emphasis) at UC Irvine, Archival Team

Warning: Explicit Language, may be offensive to some readers.

“Anak, your lola is now in hospice. She’s been in a lot of pain and suffering, and I think that she’s now accepting that this is her end.”

I didn’t know what to say when my mother called me over the phone to tell me this one night. It took a while to sit with the thought that my grandmother, my lola, who at the time, was living 1,000 miles away from me, was dying, and that my entire family was literally just waiting for her to die.

We didn’t have to wait very long.

The next morning, on Thursday, September 17, 2020, at about 9:30 am, my 81-year-old grandmother, Magdalina Cabang Mantuhac, died at the hospice center. The cause of death: Pneumonia complicated by COVID-19. About a month prior to her death, she was infected by the virus, and although she survived the initial infection and doctors declared her “COVID-free” (as if such a term actually exists), the virus destroyed her lungs so much that they couldn’t handle the after-effects of the initial infection.

Upon receiving that call from my father to let me know that she had died, two things happened. First, I went numb. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel any emotion. My brain just proceeded to stop thinking to shield me from feeling anything. Then, after I rode out that initial numb feeling, a lot of questions started rushing into my head, all of which related to the chain of events that eventually brought the virus to my grandmother. Who was the selfish bastard who didn’t wear a mask? Who went to a large gathering and failed to practice any kind of COVID-19 recommendation? To these people, I honestly wished that they would get COVID-19, such that they would end up on a ventilator. Maybe then would they learn why these measures are in place.

What a fucked up way to think of others, especially for me, as a public health student.

When did a healthcare worker not have proper personal protective equipment? When did a government not institute lockdowns, stay-at-home measures, mandatory mask-wearing, and other measures to reduce the spread of the virus? Why did our president (at the time), and so many other leaders like him, downplay the severity of COVID-19? Why was nothing more done earlier to protect people like my grandmother, our most vulnerable set of family members, friends, and loved ones?

What a fucked up world we live in.

It’s interesting scrolling through my endless social media feed and constantly seeing reminders of the rising COVID-19 death toll in the US. At the time my grandmother died, the US had 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. 6 months later, at the time of writing this, the US has now surpassed 500,000 deaths. In order to cope, we learned to only see that number as a number and nothing else, because thinking about that number as 500,000 people left gasping for air, 500,000 lives cut short, 500,000 parents, grandparents, children, friends, etc., is too much to bear. Yes, my whole professional interest is to deal with the data and statistics behind public health, but, even I have had to learn how to distance myself from associating the numbers with the people who make up those numbers. Dwelling on the fact my grandmother is just 1 of 500,000 people killed by the virus will not do my mental health any good. It doesn’t do anyone any kind of good.

Just like many other aspects of this pandemic, we learned how to dissociate ourselves from reality as a coping mechanism for the trauma that we’re hit with every single day that the pandemic drags on. Even as a public health student who should be working with those harsh realities of this pandemic, I like having that ability of distancing myself from the constant headlines, alerts, and data points that paint that ugly picture. It keeps me sane during this (quote unquote) “unprecedented” time.

On the day we buried my grandmother, right before the funeral workers closed the casket on my grandmother, I had a semi-private moment with her body, where I talked to her as if she were still alive. First, I apologized to her for not becoming the medical doctor that she thought I would eventually become. Then, I told her that I found my passions elsewhere in public health and my interest in data science. I told her that I want to use data to fight for a more equitable healthcare system and that the reason I am doing this is to help prevent what happened to her from happening to other people.

It was only then that after well over 2 weeks of feeling numb at my grandmother’s death, the gravity of her being gone decided to hit me like a truck and I broke down beside her casket.

At the time that I’m finally writing this memoir, which I’ve put off for a long time, it’s been well over 6 months since my grandmother died and I had gotten my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. Was I happy to be on the path to full vaccination? Absolutely. But, I couldn’t help but feel this sense of guilt that wouldn’t go away as I was driving to my vaccination appointment. My grandmother would have needed this vaccine much more than me and she would have gotten this vaccine much sooner than me. So many others who were more deserving could have gotten this vaccine. Yet, here I was, a healthy 23-year old, getting this life-saving miracle of science, despite having never gotten COVID over the course of the pandemic.

In all honesty, I feel so fucking guilty for getting something so life-saving. I feel so fucking guilty for coming out of this pandemic alive and healthy, when so many people, like my grandmother, didn’t even make it out alive.

Maybe this is God’s incredibly twisted way of telling me to use my privilege of making it out of the pandemic like this to improve the very systems that have facilitated the deaths of 499,999+ other people. I just hope that being a part of this archival team and working on this project is just one way of improving those systems for the future.

Gimingaw ko nimo, lola. Say hi to lolo for me.