“Mary worked here for five years and was a highly valued and loved member of our team, a fantastic nurse and a great example of what we stand for in this Trust,” David Carter, CEO of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said in a statement.Īgyapong completed her last shift on March 12 and had not returned to work in the subsequent weeks. Agyapong’s husband is currently self-isolating and has been tested for COVID-19. Her daugher, who was named Mary in memory of her mother, is “doing very well” according to hospital officials. Agyapong underwent an emergency C-section shortly after she was admitted, and gave birth to a baby girl. Stephanie ZacharekĪgyapong, who also went by her married name, Mary Boateng, tested positive for COVID-19 on April 5 and was hospitalized two days later. Let’s think of them with wet eyes and a high heart. These are just some of the people who have been taken from us, even as they have left us much to remember them by. It’s not comprehensive, nor is it meant to be. That’s the goal of this list: to acknowledge the remarkable and joyful lives of some of those we have lost.

Maybe we can be better at celebrating life even as we’re saddened by its loss. But we all, at one time or another, have reason to mourn. We have no roadmap for this new territory.

It’s a book of large truths disguised as small ones: “I remember,” he writes, “those times of not knowing if you feel really happy or really sad. In his jubilant and revivifying memoir, I Remember, the artist and writer Joe Brainard tabulated all the little things that can come to shape how we think about life. There can always be at least a glimmer of joy in remembering things that people gave us while they were here.

Let Me Eat Cake by Leslie F. Miller