Two Texas brothers lost both of their parents to the novel coronavirus within two weeks of each other.
Naomi Esquivel, 39, died on July 2 of COVID-19, her mother Rita Marquez-Mendoza told NBC affiliate KWQC-TV.
Two weeks later, Carlos Garcia, 44, died of the same respiratory illness. He’d attended his wife of 24 years’ funeral, but succumbed to kidney failure at the hospital on July 17.
The parents, who died alone in their hospital rooms, leave both of their sons, Isaiah, 14, and 11-year-old Nathan, behind.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye to my mom, or my dad now, and that’s what hurts me the most right now,” Isaiah told the broadcast station.
“At least since (my father) passed, at least we got to be with our family,” Isaiah told the broadcast station. “We didn’t have to go to an orphanage or anything, because I’d rather be here than anywhere else right now.”
A GoFundMe has been set up to raise money for the boys’ living expenses. It’s well exceeded its original US$5,000 goal at more than $33,000 raised in just a day.
It was originally set up to pay for their father’s funeral, but after a “generous donation,” the costs were completely taken care of. Now, the money will help the boys survive.
“He had just spoken to his son at 11:00,” Jacob Mendoza, Esquivel’s younger brother, said. “They pronounced him dead at 12:24.”
Now, Mendoza, who already has four children, finds himself a father to six.
“I love them with all my heart, and I know that this is what their parents would have wanted, was for me to take them in,” Mendoza said.
It’s an unimaginable loss for one family to go through, especially in such a short time.
“We have no words to describe it,” Marquez-Mendoza said. “No words.”
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