By Eileen Moon
With the holidays on the horizon and a third COVID-19 surge barreling across the nation, Monmouth County Freeholder Director Thomas A. Arnone and Freeholder Deputy Director Susan M. Kiley issued a press release Tuesday urging county residents to slow the spread by practicing social distancing, wearing masks, washing their hands and avoiding large get-togethers.
For two area families who have lost loved ones as a result of the pandemic, the precautions being advised seem like a small price to pay to help another family avoid the tragedy they are experiencing.
A year ago, the McManus family of Tinton Falls and the Holzens of Shrewsbury could not have envisioned what 2020 had in store for them.
In 2019 Laura McManus, 56, took a holiday season job at Macy’s after 17 years as a stay-at-home mom with children Kristin, 17, and James, 15.
“She was really excited about it,” recalled her husband John, 47.
After years of frequent travel for his job with a tech company, he had scaled back his schedule so that he could spend more time at home.
A few months later, Macy’s of fered Laura a full-time position and she happily accepted.
On March 17, the couple celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary. It was still early in the pandemic, but restaurants were closing down and residents were being advised to limit their outside activities, so the couple anticipated a quiet celebration at home.
They had had a few friends over March 15, the weekend before their anniversary, all agreeing that it would be the last time they got together until the pandemic was over.
No one but health care workers were being advised to wear masks at that point, McManus said, but everyone was being cautious. “I’ve been OCD (obsessive-com- pulsive) my whole life so I’ve always constantly washed my hands. We were very careful in that regard.”
On the 17th, with no big plans for a night out on their anniversary, Laura picked up an extra shift at work.
Two days later she began feeling sick, and so did John.
“Nobody really knows how we got it,” he said.
What followed was a week of ups and downs for both of them. “It was really cruel be- cause you think you’re out of the woods,” John recalled. His symptoms continued to improve, but on March 27, Laura’s condition took a turn for the worse and she was ad- mitted to the hospital where doctors diagnosed double pneumonia stemming from her COVID-19 infection. The following Monday, March 30, she was placed on a ventilator.
“At first, I was hopeful,” John said. “She actually ended up beating COVID, but then she developed a secondary infection.”
She died April 6.
“It was completely shocking,” he said. “It completely turned our lives around.”
In the midst of his own grief, he had to tell their children that their mother had died.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he said. “It’s the worst thing a parent can go through.”
He is grateful that the family was able to have a more or less traditional funeral service for Laura with visiting hours by appointment.
“My wife was like the mayor. She was so outgoing, and so loved.”
In the eight months since Laura’s death, John has found some comfort in the friends he has made through Stephy’s Place, a nonprofit support center for those suffering grief and loss. “It’s been very helpful to be able to share and talk with people who are experiencing very similar losses,” he said. “I feel like the people in my group have helped me, and I have helped them.”
Family and friends have also helped them cope with the loss of their wife and mother.
He has had a few uncomfortable interactions with friends on social media after he expressed his belief that the federal government “dropped the ball” on responding effectively to the pandemic.
“(One friend) jumped to the conclusion that I was blaming Donald Trump for what happened to my wife,” he said.
Mostly, though, he has tried to keep politics out of it. “My children lost their mother,” he said. “I do feel for everyone in this very serious situation. However, I do feel that people are not taking it seriously, whether it’s fatigue or – I feel like people are thinking, ‘Well, it can’t happen to me.’ Young people feel like they’re invincible. I tell my kids to be as careful as possible.”
On holidays past, the family would normally be visiting with family and friends. They had several kind invitations for Thanksgiving, John said. “I graciously declined.”
He is also skipping the family’s usual holiday visit with his own elderly parents.
When life returns to normal, he is planning to honor the wishes Laura recorded in a small journal she kept, asking that her passing be an occasion for joy. “I want a huge party,” she wrote, “with tequila, and episodes of ‘Law and Order,’ and disco music and even a disco ball.”
“I’m going to honor her wishes and do that,” John said.
Like John McManus, Leslie Havens of Shrewsbury is living through a loss she could not have imagined a year ago.
Her husband Bill died April 9 after an illness that began with a sore throat and cough and progressed to double pneumonia. While he never tested positive for COVID-19, his death certificate identifies the pulmonary embolism that caused his death as the probable result of the virus.
After having a cough and sore throat in mid-March, Leslie said, her husband began feeling better. He mentioned having a pain under his rib cage but thought he might have pulled a muscle. After developing a fever and coughing up blood, he went to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia.
When his condition didn’t improve, Bill went to the emergency room at Monmouth Medical Center, where a CT scan showed double pneumonia and pleural effusion, where fluid develops outside the lungs. That’s what had been causing the pain, the couple learned. Things seemed to be under control at that point. “He didn’t feel great, but he didn’t need oxygen,” Leslie recalled. “His oxygen levels were stable.” Discharged from the hospital March 27, Bill gradually began to feel better. “He showered, ate dinner, he took a walk around the block.”
But on April 9, he began having trouble breathing and Leslie called 911. “Literally as the ambulance was pulling up, he collapsed and died,” Leslie said. He was 56.
He was taken to Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, where Leslie was allowed to stay with him, but efforts to revive him were not successful.
They suspected COVID-19 right away, Leslie said, telling her that patients with the dis- ease may seem OK and then are very suddenly not OK.
While a COVID-19 test was negative, the accuracy of testing at that time was not reli- able, Leslie said. Bill had been sick since mid-March. It was possible that markers for the virus might have been undetectable when he died April 9.
After an autopsy, doctors believed that the pulmonar y embolism he suffered was related to the “cytokine storm” believed to be the result of an overreaction by the body’s immune system to a COVID-19 infection.
Even if the ambulance had come a half-hour earlier, they assured Leslie, “There was nothing anybody could have done.”
This holiday season, Leslie and daughters Rebecca, 28, and Samantha, 23, are keeping memories of their husband and father close. “We were a very close family,” she said. “We laugh, we yell, we cry,” Leslie said. “Sometimes we can’t believe it.”
They are grateful for a strong support system of family and friends.
Bill was a cabinetmaker who grew up in Fair Haven, said Leslie, who teaches reading part time in the Rumson school district.
“He was very talented,” she said. “He made lots of built-ins in our house.”
Leslie has no idea how her husband could have contracted COVID-19, noting that last March there was very little guidance on how the disease was spread or what to do to prevent it.
She remembers making a trip to ShopRite March 12. “Nobody was wearing masks. The place was mobbed.”
She hopes that by sharing her story people take the risk more seriously and abide by what precautions we can take.
“There are still people that don’t want to wear a mask and don’t want to stop getting together,” she said. But taking those precautions can literally make the difference between life and death.
“If everyone would just be more careful,” Leslie said. “It’s all we can try to do.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 10 – 16, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
