By: Mike Mustiglione
With the coronavirus pandemic raging there has been no shortage of heartbreaking stories. One of the latest involves the deaths of an older married couple — Maria and Miguel Hernandez – which happened just three days apart.
The couple’s son, Jose, is left to pick up the pieces of his life and the $10,000 tab for his parents’ funeral and wake.
“I’m trying to stay strong, but it’s tough,” the son, Jose Hernandez, 36, said in an interview with NJ.com.
“Hernandez had told each parent — Miguel, 77, and Maria, 80 — that the other was going to survive for fear that the truth would crush them in their final hours. “They were always together, always,” reported the New York Post. “The son and his parents lived in side-by-side apartments in Elizabeth after emigrating from El Salvador in the mid-’80s. The dad, a retired warehouse and factory worker, got sick first with a persistent cough. Then the mother, a former housekeeper and babysitter, became ill.”
His parents were “loving, humble, hard-working people their entire lives,” Jose told NJ.com. “I hope I can surpass any expectations they may have had of me.” A GoFundMe has reportedly been set up to pay for a $2,500 burial plot and funeral services
Sadly, personal tragedy has not been in short supply during the crisis. New Yorkers have been saddened by the reported suicide of a 23 year old rookie EMT who had been on the job for less than 12 weeks. The EMT, John Mondello, had reportedly been toiling on the front lines of New York City’s hottest hotspots.
The youngster was found dead from a gunshot wound discharged from a weapon, registered to his retired NYPD father, according to the Daily Mail.
“The young EMT was on the Tactical Response Group running non-stop to areas with the busiest emergency call volume in the city. A few weeks ago he told colleagues that he did not like the job and that the death toll from the coronavirus was weighing heavily on him,” the news site noted.
New Jersey residents were also reeling just a couple of weeks ago by the story of a local woman, Jessica Ingaglio, who lost her 70-year-old mother to the coronavirus hours after her 33-year-old sister Amanda was found dead at her home.
“Ingaglio said her sister, who had diabetes, was incoherent and lethargic. She called an ambulance for Amanda and warned the EMTs that their mother and father both tested positive — and that her sister may have been exposed,” reported NBC News. “Amanda refused to go to the hospital, the responding EMTs said.”
