A mother and daughter's response to the death of a loved one to COVID-19
The woman on the left is Catherine Vaughn, the older woman in the middle is Dolores Walker, and the younger lady on the right is Devana Smith.
The photo was taken by Devana's brother on Dec. 25, 2018.
On April 28, 2020, Catherine Vaughn received a call in the middle of the night at home notifying her that her mother, Dolores Walker, passed away. The call was from Symphony of Chicago West, formerly known as Jackson Square, a nursing home located on the West Side of Chicago. After receiving this devastating information about her mother, she went to her daughter, Devana Smith and told her the news.
"She came in, and she told me. I just knew because it was late, my mom never comes to my room this late," Smith said. "I was like, ‘It's grandma.’ She was like, ‘Yeah, she passed away.’"
Smith says that the news of her grandmother's death was hard on her mother. Vaughn only learned two weeks before Walker’s passing that her mother tested positive for COVID-19.
“I think, for my Mom, it was very hard because we couldn't see her,” Smith said. “And then all of a sudden, she got this phone call saying that her mom has the virus and they're moving her to a hospital, she can't come to see her.”
Before the pandemic, Smith remembers going with her mother and grandmother to MacArthur’s, a restaurant on the West Side of Chicago that specializes in southern cuisine.
“We picked her up from the nursing home, and we took my grandma out to eat at MacArthur’s, and we laughed, we ate, took pictures, and she showed us her dance moves,” said Smith.
The last time they saw Walker was on a Zoom call.
“I seen the state she was in when we were able to see her on Zoom,” said Smith. “I just knew that was not my grandmother. I could see that she was going to leave us.”
Smith said this experience for her was an eye-opener and filled her life with sadness. However, she used her loss of a loved one as motivation to focus on the positive aspects of her life. Smith's response to her grief was inspired by her mother's decision to move to California in November 2020. Vaughn’s reaction to Walker's death also provided Smith the reassurance she needed to know that everything would be fine.
"I believe the way I recovered through it is because of my mom. She always wanted to move to California,” Smith said. “She didn't go because of my grandmother, which is her mom. When she passed, my mom finally got the courage to go and live for herself."
Vaughn approach to her recovery changed how Smith perceived her own existence.
"I realized life was too short to be sad, and I found a push in that, and it helped me push away the sadness and focus on the positivity," Smith said. "We all have a life to live, and we have things to fulfill."
Ultimately, her recovery was based on her choosing between living a life full of sorrow or getting back up to learn how to live again. Smith is currently in school studying education and dreams of becoming a teacher one day.