GREENFIELD — As the sun shone brightly on Good Friday, a crowd of 40 or so gathered outside Hancock Regional Hospital to honor the 27 lives lost there to COVID-19 over the past year.
Hospital chaplain Russel Jarvis passed out 27 small yellow flags, which nurses and other staff members placed in the ground in the grassy area on the western edge of the hospital campus along State Street.
“We wanted to honor those lives lost while also recognizing the anniversary of the start of the pandemic,” said Jenn Cox, marketing director at the hospital.
“We thought Good Friday was a perfect time to do that.”
Registered nurse Valerie Schlabach got emotional before the service even began, recalling the patients who were were lost to the pandemic over the past year.
“We took care of the sickest of the sick,” said Brandy Russell, who stood by Schlabach’s side on Friday. Both serve in the hospital’s intensive care unit, where many COVID patients fought for their last breath.
“We’d watch them get worse, which was especially hard when you were their whole support system. Their families couldn’t be with them, so it was us who held their hand,” Russell said.
“It was devastating. We were fighting for them to the end.”
Several other nurses and staff members appeared emotional at Friday’s ceremony, a few wiping away tears and others linking arms with their colleagues.
“I never would have made it without you guys,” Russell told her fellow nurses before the flag planting began.
In a brief memorial, Jarvis honored those who had died as unique individuals who each lived unique lives.
“Over the course of years we can imagine that each one loved and was loved. Each one suffered disappointments and celebrated achievements. Today, we call to mind the uniqueness of each one and the special place they claimed as their own in this world,” he said.
“We are here now to say that we remember you. We remember your name. We remember the compassion and courage you called forth from us. We remember trying to be as present as we could because your loved ones could not be by your side.”
Ruth Trobe cried softly as she heard those words, clutching a laminated picture of her late husband, Alan, in her hand.
“He was the love of my life,” she said of her husband, who died on Jan. 4, just 10 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Due to dementia, he was living in a Greenfield health-care facility at the time.
It was heartbreaking not being by his side, she said, and seeing how much he was suffering during one of the brief video calls she had with him near the end.
Trobe was thankful for Friday’s memorial and hopes hearing about it will encourage people to remain diligent in practicing safety measures to slow the spread of the ongoing pandemic.
Those who don’t are showing no regard for those who lost their lives to COVID-19 and those who have lost loved ones, she said.
“There are people who are suffering tremendously by this,” she said Friday, stifling her tears. “So wear the damn mask.”
Schlabach said those who took their last breaths on her watch at the hospital will forever have a place in her heart.
“I still pray for those that are gone,” she said solemnly. “The thing that gives me comfort is knowing that they’re at peace.”
Despite being a nurse for 27 years now, Schlabach said she didn’t realize her highest calling until tending to victims of COVID-19.
“Through this I found my work family. I found my purpose,” said the nurse, who had only started working at Hancock Regional last January, just two months before the pandemic began.
“In that regard, the greatest heartbreak has also been the greatest blessing,” she said.
To close out Friday’s ceremony, Jarvis played the song “Shelter Me,” written last year by a Catholic priest to provide comfort during the pandemic, and said a blessing for those who have died.
“May your life’s journey be remembered with gratitude for what it was. May your loved ones who remain and mourn be comforted as has been promised. And may you rest in infinite peace beyond this blessed earth, loved beyond the limits of our imagining,” said Jarvis, who has served as chaplain at the hospital for more than 20 years.
He finished by saying a prayer for the health-care providers.
“God bless us as we keep doing the good work,” he said.
