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Grieving Covid Losses, Five Years Later
In April 2020, when Sara Rochon lost her oldest brother to Covid, her grief felt all-consuming.
From her home in Florida, Ms. Rochon was pained by thoughts of her brother’s last days, alone without his wife, children and siblings in his hospital room in Ohio. In those early, paralyzing weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Rochon could not attend his funeral, a gathering limited to only a handful of immediate family members who lived nearby.
“It was unbearable,” she said.
Five years later, Ms. Rochon still thinks of her brother, Joseph Hanna, nearly every day.
But her grief has changed shape. Now when Mr. Hanna pops into her head, she remembers his face cracking a grin, his shock of thick white hair, his six-foot-one figure striding into a room.
This grief led to changes in her own life. Ms. Rochon, a retired teacher, decided to move back to Ohio, to be closer to her family.
“I can think of him with a smile and not a tear,” she said. “My grief hasn’t gone away. It’s just different.”
More than 1.2 million Americans died in the coronavirus pandemic. For their grieving families, the fifth anniversary of the pandemic’s beginning is an aching reminder of what they have lost.
Rituals were upended. Families were robbed of the ability to care for their loved ones, which, under normal circumstances, can help ease their emotional pain. The deaths themselves were often endured from a distance, with nurses holding up iPads to allow the sick to say goodbye to their relatives and spouses. And afterward, families were left to congregate and remember their loved ones by Zoom.
“It was a perfect storm of all the bad things,” said Holly Prigerson, chair of diagnostics in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and a longtime researcher on grief.
Just as Covid continues to affect people who are older or have underlying health conditions, it also still has a hold on bereaved families, five years on.
In interviews, many people say they are still mired in anger and crushing grief, unable to forget the particular cruelty of the pandemic: that their spouses, relatives and close friends often died alone.
Some mourners have found light after darkness. Since the pandemic, they have grown closer with their families and friends, embraced their own lives with more vigor and purpose, or turned to music or writing as a way to stitch themselves back together.
Still others say they are occupying a middle ground of grief.
Mary Anna Ball, a graduate student who lost several close family friends to Covid in her home state of West Virginia, said that she felt as though she would never catch up with her own mourning.
“It still feels kind of incomplete,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like there is that closure on any of it.”
Cleaved in Two
In Ann Arbor, Mich., Lisa Murray is still grieving her mother-in-law, Sandy Gatti, who died from the virus in February 2021.
Ms. Murray is no stranger to loss. Her own mother died in hospice in 2023, but that passing came peacefully, with family present.
“Sandy’s death stands out to me,” she said. “It feels like the hole has not closed, the wound has not closed. There’s this sense of injustice. Her death was so unnecessary. She was so close to getting a vaccine.”
Joy Netanya Thompson, an editor at a tech company in La Verne, Calif., lost her father to Covid in the summer of 2020, and then her beloved grandmother six months afterward.
“It feels so unmooring to lose a parent,” Ms. Thompson said. “It really feels like a part of you has been erased from the earth. And that was very profound.”
But it was the way Ms. Thompson’s father died — the isolation after weeks in the hospital — that made her grief linger, years later. She felt that her life had been cleaved in two: Before Grief and After Grief.
When her grandfather died in hospice care in 2023, she immediately felt the stark contrast between how he and her father spent their final days.
“I got to say goodbye to him,” Ms. Thompson said of her grandfather. “I got to hold his hand a couple different times in the last couple weeks. I got to tell him everything I wanted to tell him. And then we got to have a big memorial service and celebrate him. So I got to see the difference when you get to do the normal rituals.”
Looking Back in Anger
Like many Covid mourners, Amy Morris, 52, is still fighting one powerful emotion: anger.
Ms. Morris, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., watched helplessly from afar in late 2020 as her mother, Ilene Craft Boger, 85, fell ill in her assisted living facility and was transferred to a hospital. Ms. Boger, an accomplished jazz pianist who dressed impeccably, died a month later.
“The manner of her death still fills me with such rage that it takes my breath away,” Ms. Morris said.
Brian Owens, an artistic director in the film industry, has lost two aunts, an uncle and a nephew because of Covid.
He still feels a mix of frustration and grief. Though Mr. Owens’s family was in the United States, he was living in Canada, where Covid restrictions were far more stringent.
“You went to the grocery store and that was about it,” he said. “So that comparison added a layer of anger to the whole thing for me. I feel like so many of those deaths were preventable and we just didn’t prevent them.”
Others who lost relatives to the virus said they were dogged by lingering guilt.
Arjun Jalan, who lives in Boston, thinks about his father, far away in India.
Mr. Jalan’s mother, known in the family as a phenomenal hostess and cook, died in 2021, leaving his father widowed. For a long time, Mr. Jalan could not bear to look at photos of his mother. His father urged him to keep moving forward, to not worry about him or his loneliness.
Writing Your Way Through It
Before the pandemic, Nicholas Montemarano’s identity was wrapped around his love of fiction. He read relentlessly, wrote novels and taught creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
But when his mother, Catherine, died of Covid in January 2021, Mr. Montemarano found himself turning to poetry instead. He wrote a memoir, an elegy to his mother, in verse.
I’m trying to make my bed and brush my teeth.I’m trying to remember her voicebefore her lungs quit. Song sparrows fly twigsto the flowerbed outside my window.This morning in overgrown grass under light rain,a butterfly alighted on my face.
He is one of many Covid mourners who have discovered more personal ways to resolve their grief.
For Kim Lowe, a filmmaker in Boston, that relief was found after the pandemic left a gaping hole in her sprawling family in Massachusetts.
Ms. Lowe’s mother died during the pandemic in 2021, though doctors could not determine the cause. Then all four of her mother’s siblings fell ill and died within the next two years, two from Covid and two from what Ms. Lowe called “collateral Covid” — when they could not easily see a doctor and saw their health falter as a result.
“It felt like an entire generation had been wiped out,” she said. “It was physical pain, it was mental pain, it was all-encompassing grief.”
Ms. Lowe has fought through much of her grief by leaning on her own generation, the cousins who live around the Boston area. Together, they have written down their family stories and history, including a beloved recipe for Portuguese soup — one that her mother’s generation kept only in their heads.
On the fifth anniversary of the pandemic, Ms. Lowe feels like a changed person.
“I felt as if I was given a gift of perspective and love and gratitude,” she said. “I make people feel so awkward because I’m always telling them how much I love them and appreciate them. I’m so much more loving and present.”
Gwendolyn W. Williams, who lives in Los Angeles, last saw two of her closest friends on Christmas Eve in 2019, when she made her usual 45-minute drive to their assisted living home for a visit.
Both friends contracted Covid and died — only eight days apart — when the virus swept through the facility in 2020.
Today, Ms. Williams said she moves through life a little differently. She was always devoted to her friends, some close enough to feel like family. But now even a passing thought can prompt her to call or text someone.
“I don’t let the moment pass me by,” Ms. Williams said. “You do what you can for people, you love when you can do it.”
A federal judge has struck down a New Hampshire law that blocked new voters from using a sworn affidavit to prove their citizenship in the absence of official documents such as a birth certificate or passport.
The decision, filed late Thursday by Judge Samantha D. Elliott of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire, found that “eliminating the affidavits” as a means of proving citizenship “constitutes an unjustifiable burden on the right to vote in violation of the First and 14th Amendments.” The ruling immediately overturned the law, which was passed in 2024 and signed by the Republican governor at the time, Chris Sununu.
A spokesman for New Hampshire’s Justice Department said the state intended to appeal the decision.
The law “represents a common-sense approach to voter registration and election administration designed to protect the integrity of our elections,” the spokesman, Michael Garrity, said in a statement on Friday.
The law, which created some of the strictest voter registration requirements in the country, was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire on behalf of several groups, including the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire.
“New Hampshire’s elections have always been safe, secure and accurate,” Henry Klementowicz, the state A.C.L.U.’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “This law could have unconstitutionally and needlessly prevented thousands of eligible voters from casting a ballot.”
Reports of wrongful voting in the state did not decline after the law’s passage, Judge Elliott noted, with a similar number of reports filed with the state attorney general in the year before the law was passed, and the year after.
The push for proof of citizenship has been at the core of Republican-backed efforts to change voting rules, ever since President Trump and his allies began promoting baseless conspiracy theories over the past decade that there has been widespread voter fraud by noncitizens.
Mr. Trump put documentary proof of citizenship at the center of his effort to change the country’s voting laws last year. He first signed an executive order in March 2025 that partly sought to establish such a requirement for federal elections, but that provision of the order was rejected by federal courts.
Republicans in Congress then took up the charge, making documentary proof of citizenship central to their federal voting legislation, known as the SAVE America Act. But the measure has stalled in Congress, where Republicans do not have enough votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster of the bill.
With the bill in limbo, Mr. Trump has threatened not to sign any other legislation until Republicans reform the filibuster to pass it, a procedural move known as the “nuclear option.” But his threats have not moved many Republicans to make the move.
There is no evidence of widespread voting by noncitizens, and the Trump administration’s efforts to prove these conspiracies are not succeeding: Out of 49.5 million voter registrations that have been checked by the beginning of 2026, the Department of Homeland Security referred around 0.02 percent of the names for further investigation. Any actual proven cases are likely to be a fraction of that fraction.
Even before the new law was passed, New Hampshire’s voting access had been more limited than most states’. It did not offer early in-person voting, or registration by mail for most voters. And it removed inactive voters after four years. More than 195,000 voters were removed in 2021 alone, according to a summary of evidence in the 100-page court decision.
New Hampshire does offer same-day registration on Election Day, an option that was used by voters some 350,000 times from 2016 to 2024, witnesses testified.
Under the law that was struck down, voters who showed up to register could present a birth certificate, a passport, naturalization papers “or any other reasonable documentation.” But they could no longer, as an alternative, sign an affidavit stating they were 18, a resident of the municipality they were voting in and a citizen of the United States.
“It may be tempting for some to describe the Qualified Voter Affidavit as an exception to the proof-of-citizenship requirement, but it is not,” Judge Elliott wrote in her decision. “A sworn affidavit capable of exposing an affiant to criminal prosecution is a method of proving citizenship.”
“Moreover,” she added, “the evidence shows that it is the only method of proof available to a significant number of New Hampshire voters.”
Experts testified in a trial this year that 5,000 to 30,000 residents in the state did not have documentary proof of citizenship. They said that 14,700 voters had used the affidavit option to register to vote from April to November of 2024.
From left: Jeff Bezos, Roland Garros, Jill Biden.
Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images; Branger/Getty Images/Hulton Archive; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
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This week, the pope took a stand on artificial intelligence in an encyclical Google Gemini called “historic and highly ambitious” and an “aggressive, uncompromising critique.” Thanks, Gemini! Enjoy the quiz, y’all.
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Becerra leads governor’s race, with Hilton and Steyer in tight contest for second spot, poll finds
On the cusp of California’s gubernatorial June 2 primary, a poll shows voters are closely divided among three candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom at a perilous moment in history for the state and the nation.
Among likely California voters, 25% support Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden Cabinet secretary, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and released Thursday. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British political strategist, has the backing of 21%, while 19% backed billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.
California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra takes a selfie while campaigning Tuesday at an event in San Francisco.
(Benjamin Fanjoy / Getty Images)
The survey provided the clearest indication yet that the three have separated themselves from the rest of the field. Support increased for Becerra, Hilton and Steyer since the last Berkeley IGS poll in March. Becerra leapfrogged everyone. In early March, he wallowed near the bottom of the pack at just 5% support among likely voters, and now is the front-runner.
The other candidates floundered. Support for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, dropped 5%, and he now finds himself in a distant fourth place. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine dropped by almost half to 7%. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — all Democrats — remained mired in the single digits.
Poll director Mark DiCamillo cautioned that it remains unclear which candidates will finish in first and second place in the June 2 primary, a pivotal question since only the top two finishers will advance to the November general election regardless of party affiliation. The low voter turnout thus far makes predicting the outcome especially difficult.
Although every registered voter in California was sent a mail-in ballot, many have not returned them or dropped them off at voting locations — a telltale sign of the uncertain nature of this year’s governor’s race. The survey, which included all 61 of the gubernatorial candidates on the ballot, found that Democratic turnout thus far is noticeably lower compared with past primary elections, DiCamillo said.
Steve Hilton arrives for a news conference at the San Jose Diridon rail station on Tuesday.
(Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’re assuming that … the Democrats will in fact turn out in the final week after we had concluded our poll and begin to make up ground on what looks like an early lead for Hilton, and those voters favor Becerra,” DiCamillo said.
The survey, conducted between May 19 and 24, found that likely Democratic voters favored Becerra over Steyer by 11 percentage points. Voters registered as “no party preference” were evenly divided among Becerra, Steyer and Hilton. Among likely Republican voters, Hilton led Bianco by almost 2 to 1.
Becerra also had a notable edge over Steyer among women and Latino voters, while Steyer had an advantage among Black voters. Hilton was favored over the two Democrats among self-identified libertarians and among voters in Orange County, the Central Valley and northern coast and Sierra region.
The poll found that 7% of voters remained undecided.
For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy has consistently lacked a front-runner despite a plethora of candidates.
Two of California’s best-known Democrats, former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both toyed with a run for governor before deciding not to run, which contributed to the sluggishness of the race. The 2026 campaign for governor also languished in the shadow of the mayhem stirred up by President Trump, including his immigration raids throughout Southern California, and the devastation wrought by the 2025 Pacific Palisades and Altadena wildfires.
But a whirlwind of recent developments has drawn attention to the race.
Former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), once a front-runner in the contest, withdrew from the race and resigned from Congress in the aftermath of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault that he denies.
Tom Steyer takes part in a campaign event in Santa Rosa on Wednesday.
(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Additionally, record-breaking amounts of money have flowed into the race. Steyer has smashed state self-funding records by contributing $212 million to his campaign as of Tuesday, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Nearly $85 million has been donated to independent expenditure committees by corporations, labor unions, tech titans, Native American tribes and other special interests, most of which will have policy interests that will be in front of the next governor.
Although the 2026 California governor’s race lacks the allure of recent contests that featured candidates such as global movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, political scion Jerry Brown and former San Francisco mayor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, it is unfolding at a crucial time for Californians.
The state’s most vulnerable residents are facing severe reductions to medical care because of looming federal healthcare funding cuts, and California’s budget, already volatile because of its reliance on the state’s wealthiest residents, may grow more unpredictable. California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices increased even more because of the U.S.-Iran war, adding to the state’s entrenched affordability crisis, which has driven many residents out of the state.
The cost of living, homelessness and public safety were among the top concerns expressed by voters, according to the poll. Protecting voting rights was also supported by most voters, though their underlying concerns could be starkly different based on their political views.
Democrats have been focused on the disenfranchisement of voters, a fear that has heightened in the aftermath of a recent Supreme Court decision that gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act that forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress. Republicans echo President Trump’s claims of elections being rigged.
Chad Bianco is interviewed May 6 after the gubernatorial debate at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Voters split largely along party lines about issues such as Trump’s policies about climate change, immigration and taxes.
Voters’ uncertainty in the governor’s race is partly driven by California’s unique, voter-approved “jungle” primary system, in which the two candidates who win the most votes in the June 2 primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.
Although the state’s voters are largely registered Democrats, the party’s leaders feared earlier this year that they would splinter among the multiple Democrats on the ballot, leading to Hilton and Bianco advancing to the November general election and ensuring that a Republican would be elected governor. Bianco had the backing of 11% in the new Berkeley survey.
The Republicans were once roughly tied in polls, until Trump endorsed Hilton in April. More than one-third of likely Republican voters said Trump’s endorsement of Hilton made them more likely to support him. Among voters who identified with the “Make America Great Again” movement, nearly two-thirds supported Hilton while less than 3 in 10 backed Bianco.
Though Bianco’s followers seem to be more passionate, “Hilton has got the much broader base of support, and then he got Trump’s endorsement,” DiCamillo said.
He added that Hilton’s rise is unusual in California, where statewide candidates typically spend enormous sums of money to raise their visibility among the state’s 23.1 million registered voters.
“What’s interesting about Hilton is that he hasn’t really done much of his campaigning in the traditional way. He hasn’t run huge amounts of television advertising, you don’t see his name out there in the traditional media, other than in free media,” DiCamillo said. “You can see that in the data, because almost a third of voters still have no opinion of Hilton … about what it was back in March, which is startling for a candidate who is among the leaders.”
Democrats’ fear of being locked out of the November general election led party leaders and allies to effectively urge low-polling candidates to drop out of the race in remarkable public statements in March.
The tables have since turned — the prospect of two Republicans winning the top spots in the June primary appear nonexistent, while polling shows a small possibility of two Democrats advancing to the general election.
“I’m not saying it’s likely, but it’s possible that two Democrats could emerge, and that would have huge implications on turnout in the [November] election,” DiCamillo said, pointing to California congressional races that could shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives. “If you don’t have a Republican at the top of the ticket, it would be dismal for the Republicans’ chances.”
The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.
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