(Reuters) – Susan Morrison lost her 39-year-old stepbrother, Lawrence Jones, from coronavirus complications on April 8. A day later, her 83-year-old father, Feaster Dorsey, also became a COVID-19 victim.
Morrison’s uncle is also sick and she has lost a family friend.
“To me, I’m like I’m living a movie,” she said in an interview via Facetime on Tuesday from Texas, where she now lives. Her family is from Gonzales, Louisiana.
“I’m like, this is not real life… I go on Facebook and I’m like, I’m one of the victims of this. And I say our whole family is a victim of this virus. We’ve had two members that were casualties and then we have members that are potential casualties, if my uncle just doesn’t heal.”
Morrison believes her stepmother may have contracted the coronavirus at February’s Mardi Gras celebrations.
“It was to me unexpected. But I also was tying together the pieces of my mother, my stepmother, having gone to Mardi Gras and coming back possibly with that type of virus, giving it to him and not being aware.”
Morrison was unable to attend the joint funeral of her family members and had to make do with photos.
“To not be able to see your family member die or to be there, hold their hands… it’s not how I imagined saying goodbye to father – through a picture of his body in a casket,” she said.
(Reporting by Alicia Powell; Writing by Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
