I received that call the other day. The one we all dread and hope against all hope to not have to answer.
It was my childhood friend Wilson Brown.
“I know you don’t have much time, so I am going to make this one quick. Tiny Man died,” he explained to me on Monday.
Tiny Man was his only sibling, a brother named Raymond Fields.
The phone call was not as quick as Brown expected it to be.
He went on to tell me that COVID had claimed Fields life on Dec. 5.
“Man, I am just numb right now. I can’t believe it. He was healthy didn’t really have any underlining health conditions and he’s gone. He had went to a band rehearsal with about six of his friends and that is where he got it. An unknown super spreader,” said Brown.
Many, particularly in the Black community are wrestling with the information regarding COVID-19. Some ascribe to the theory that its not real other assume they won’t catch it, of course until it does.
With a vaccine within reach, there is growing speculation that many people of color will not take it.
“I just wish that my brother would have held on long enough so that he could have gotten that vaccine,” Brown admitted.
Brown said that his brother’s symptoms advanced from losing the ability to smell and taste food to severe breathing problems before he succumbed. He was 64 years old.
I vividly remember the days when we were all growing up and he played the drums, kept a set in his mother’s home. Fields was always smiling and uplifting to his brother and me.
For Brown the loss was more than devastating. Just a month prior he lost his wife to cancer.
Discovering someone close to you had contracted COVID was not new. Just a week ago a friend Aaron Moore informed me of the same symptoms of the disease that Fields died from lost of appetite and smell, but he survived it.
The growing number of COVID cases is mind-boggling and the ongoing debate over when the vaccine will arrive and whether or not one should take it is even more troubling.
However, when you receive that COVID call all of what you thought about this pandemic hit home, and it really hurts.
It was my childhood friend Wilson Brown.
“I know you don’t have much time, so I am going to make this one quick. Tiny Man died,” he explained to me on Monday.
Tiny Man was his only sibling, a brother named Raymond Fields.
The phone call was not as quick as Brown expected it to be.
He went on to tell me that COVID had claimed Fields life on Dec. 5.
“Man, I am just numb right now. I can’t believe it. He was healthy didn’t really have any underlining health conditions and he’s gone. He had went to a band rehearsal with about six of his friends and that is where he got it. An unknown super spreader,” said Brown.
Many, particularly in the Black community are wrestling with the information regarding COVID-19. Some ascribe to the theory that its not real other assume they won’t catch it, of course until it does.
With a vaccine within reach, there is growing speculation that many people of color will not take it.
“I just wish that my brother would have held on long enough so that he could have gotten that vaccine,” Brown admitted.
Brown said that his brother’s symptoms advanced from losing the ability to smell and taste food to severe breathing problems before he succumbed. He was 64 years old.
I vividly remember the days when we were all growing up and he played the drums, kept a set in his mother’s home. Fields was always smiling and uplifting to his brother and me.
For Brown the loss was more than devastating. Just a month prior he lost his wife to cancer.
Discovering someone close to you had contracted COVID was not new. Just a week ago a friend Aaron Moore informed me of the same symptoms of the disease that Fields died from lost of appetite and smell, but he survived it.
The growing number of COVID cases is mind-boggling and the ongoing debate over when the vaccine will arrive and whether or not one should take it is even more troubling.
However, when you receive that COVID call all of what you thought about this pandemic hit home, and it really hurts.
