The daughter of a Bay Area woman who died from coronavirus wants her death to be a “wake-up call” for anyone in the public who may still be reluctant to accept COVID-19’s danger.
“My heart has shattered into a trillion pieces,” Adriane Hopper Williams said on a Facebook post that was open to public viewing.
Williams’ mother, Barbara Johnson Hopper, of Oakland, died in a hospital March 26. She was 81.
Through Monday morning, 50 people in the Bay Area have died from the coronavirus.
The Bay Area, with a population of about 8 million people across 10 counties, passed 2,000 positive cases through Monday morning, according to data posted by this news organization.
“I am beyond devastated by her loss,” Hopper Williams wrote, “and I sincerely hope that her story can be a wake-up call for those of you who think this pandemic shutdown is a joke.
“It is not.”
According to Hopper Williams, of Los Angeles, her mother was a deeply faithful woman who desired and believed she would get better, even saying to her daughter, according to the post: “I want to live!”
“She told me that she believed with all her heart and every fiber of her being that God could heal her. And so did I,” she wrote. “And so did the host of family and friends around the world who were praying for her.”
Hopper Williams described her mom as a “trailblazer,” saying that she had created a learning school and a dance school in her younger days and that she remained a successful real estate agent in the Bay Area.
In the end, however, Barbara Hopper was isolated in a hospital when she died, her daughter wrote.
“You do not want your loved one to die like this — with people who have to cover every inch of their bodies to come and care for them — not being able to hold their hand and be with them when they take their final breath. You do not want this hell. My mother deserved to be surrounded by her family and not treated like a threat to someone’s life for getting near her.
“… Take heed, I would have never in a million years thought that something like this could happen to my family. But it did. And it can happen to yours, too, if your are not safe. Stay home. This virus doesn’t care about your race, class, religion or life’s purpose. Don’t let this be your story, too.”