What lives they led. They were spouses, grandparents, siblings. They came from farms and from cities. They were teachers, engineers, homemakers, executives. They fished and sang and danced. They raced motorcycles and made quilts and raised champion dogs. And in the end, they died of COVID-19, more than 1,000 of them here in Minnesota. Some slipped away quietly, a blessed release from the illnesses of old age. Others were taken too soon. They leave behind family members crushed by the cruelty of a global pandemic that kept them apart from their loved ones during their final days, watching them fade on the other side of a window or a video screen. “We could not hold her hand or give her a kiss on her forehead and whisper that it was OK,” wrote the family of Gae Pearl. “This is what we will carry with us the rest of our lives.” They were all of us.
They were Minnesota.

John Reinan