Good to Know: 'He almost made it,' son says after dad died of COVID-19

Since Jesús Gómez got his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in January, he’s thought of his father every day.

The man who taught him to be strong and hardworking died of the coronavirus and was buried in Mexico the same day Gómez received the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at a pharmacy in the Chicago suburb where he lives, Gómez said recently.

"I would have given my spot up for him without a second thought," Gómez stuttered, trying to hold back tears.

The thought that his father died from complications of COVID-19 when vaccines are finally available sometimes feels unbearable, he said.

His father, J. Jesús Gómez Flores, who had just turned 89, had been living in their native Guadalajara, although over the years he had lived for a few stretches in the United States. When the pandemic began, Gómez and his siblings decided it wasn’t safe for their father to travel to the United States.

So Gómez, 70, never saw his father again and although he wanted to attend the funeral in Mexico and see his father one last time, he was afraid that the virus would get him as well because he has high blood pressure.

"He almost made it," Gómez said as he talked about the day he walked into a Walgreens near his home. Thinking of how many more people will die because they cannot yet get the vaccine also has marred his relief about getting it himself.

People 'left behind'

Thousands of Black and Latino people have died from the virus in the United States. Mexico recently climbed into third place among all countries for total coronavirus deaths, surpassing the United States in COVID-19 deaths per million residents.

Gómez fears that "since people of color and poor people have always been left behind, it will be the same with the vaccine distribution."

"They won’t be prioritized here or in Mexico," he said.

Even though Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus, the neighborhoods where they live have had the lowest vaccination rates in the Chicago area.

As of the end of January, a month into the vaccination effort, the rate of Latino and Black residents’ vaccination trailed that of whites and the city as a whole, according to city data. While 1 in 18 Chicagoans had received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Jan. 30, only 1 in 30 Latinos and 1 in 31 Black people had received the first dose.

Newly released data from the state shows that Black and Hispanic Illinoisans so far have been vaccinated at half the rate of white residents.

In Mexico, as COVID-19 cases mount and the death rate increases, the vaccine rollout is stalling, according to recent reports.

Still, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refuses to wear a face mask despite testing positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 24.

Anger and isolation

As he waits for his second dose of vaccine, Gómez is angry, he said. Angry "at the people who did not take the precautions to care for my father properly and save his life."

He said he is also mad at those who will continue to be careless, not wear a mask or not observe social distancing, putting their loved ones, older people and people with other illnesses or health conditions at risk of getting infected.

Since March 2020, Gómez and his partner have been isolated in their home in Evanston. Right before the pandemic broke out, he had planned to travel to Guadalajara to see his father but he had to cancel the trip.

The last time Gómez saw his father was in 2018 when they took a trip together to an archaeological site near their town in Mexico. There, he snapped the last photos of his father wearing a blue plaid shirt and his favorite sombrero.

His father’s last visit to the United States was four years ago, Gómez said. "If I had known that this was going to happen, I would have brought him here, with me," Gómez lamented.

Christmas Day was the last time he spoke to his father on the phone. The elder Gómez had always been a "strong and healthy man," his son said. As he aged, he began forgetting things and grew weaker.

"I know that he was older and that he was probably not going to be with us much longer, but he shouldn’t have died because of the virus," Gómez said.

His father began to show symptoms in early January, and Gómez and his family were still hopeful that it wasn’t COVID-19. But two weeks later, on Jan. 20, his father died of coronavirus complications.

On Jan. 22, hours before his father was buried in Guadalajara, Gómez finally got the vaccine. As Gómez awaits his second dose of the vaccine, scheduled for Feb. 19, "it still feels surreal," he said.

Gómez is grateful that he has been one of the "few lucky ones" who’ve been able to be vaccinated.

He hopes to keep his father’s memory alive by keeping together his six surviving younger siblings and his father’s more than 15 grandchildren and by caring for them in any way he can.

"Nadie se va del todo, yo soy su continuación," Gómez said, "No one leaves this world fully. I will be his legacy."