My dad died of COVID in 2021 after being in the hospital for a month, including a ventilator and a medically induced coma. I'm still mad when people deny COVID matters. I'm still wicked upset when someone asks me "but did he die of COVID or with COVID?" (technically, he died when he was removed from life support, so it wasn't COVID that killed him it was the lack of being able to breath. You got me there.)

Also, yes, he had underlying health conditions. He was 62. He was doing everything right---staying home, wearing a mask when he went for drive up groceries, waiting for vaccines to become available. The only way he screwed up was trusting his wife. His wife put her job above her husband's safety and went to a mandatory unmasked work pot luck breakfast in December 2020. It couldn't have been too mandatory---she retired 2 months later after my dad died.

It all goes into the background for normal day to day, but then something triggers it. And yes, I have a therapist. And yes, I'm still upset at the person that chided his wife that my dad's "mask didn't help him" while he was busy dying in the hospital.

There's a lot of trauma wrapped up in that whole experience. It's mostly scabbed over, but sometimes something picks at it, which doesn't help the healing.