Thanksgiving Carries an Extra Weight This Year
This year’s pandemic has brought untold suffering to families across Texas. Making things worse: At a time when they might take solace in the company of friends or family, public health authorities are urging them to stay apart.
When Chris Mabe’s mother, “Gramma Blue,” moved to Brazos County, her family got a bigger home for all the friends and grandkids they expected her to draw from across the country. The house had a music room, a large kitchen, extra beds and a 12-seat, hand-carved dining table.
But this Thanksgiving, the house will be nearly empty. Mabe’s 81-year-old mother, Jewel Bergan-Brumbaugh, died this March, one of the state’s earliest victims of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It's all gone,” Mabe said. “Nobody comes. We don't see anyone. Mom is gone.”
Adding to the isolation, no students and faculty from Texas A&M University, where Mabe’s husband Jim works, will be invited to share a meal this year. And all of the couple’s family, including their two adult children, live out of state. The only attendees for Thanksgiving dinner will be Jim, Chris and her mother’s yowling, 16-year-old cat, Scooter.
“I dread the things that will come up for me and the amount of effort it's going to take to rise above the grief and the fear and the anger about this happening to our country and the world,” Chris Mabe said. “It's not fair. It's not just. It's terrifying. And yet I know we're going to figure out how to be OK.”
This year’s pandemic has brought untold suffering to families across Texas. The state has reported over 20,500 deaths from the pandemic alone. More than 8,000 were hospitalized in the days leading up to the holiday. Since March, more than 3.8 million Texans have applied for unemployment relief, with 70,000 applying through the first two weeks of November.
And now the holidays are arriving, a season that will be especially difficult for many of those who have lost loved ones, jobs and a sense of normalcy. Making things worse: At a time when they might take solace in the company of friends or family, public health authorities are urging them to stay apart.
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Economic pain
Justin residents Ashley and Terry-Lee Washko were saving to buy a house before the pandemic hit. Then when Terry-Lee, 35, was laid off from his job at an oil field company in June, Ashley, 32, had to drive four hours to pick him up from the side of the road. After months of searching for a job and receiving unemployment checks that didn’t amount to enough to pay the bills, Terry-Lee got a job at a nearby warehouse last week. Still, they lost the company car that came with his job and their dreams of buying a house anytime soon.
Ashley said the job she’d always worked to stay busy became the only source of income to help feed their two teenage kids and Terry-Lee’s father. As their savings has started to run out, they won’t be able to afford food they typically have for Thanksgiving.
"It's been so long since I've had to worry about groceries and now, I'm like, 'Hey, why don’t you go to Dollar Tree, I think they have that there,'" she said. "It's just a struggle when the kids are about to be out for Thanksgiving break and they're gonna be home all week and I'm like oh my gosh we don't have enough food for them."
Normally, Ashley’s family gathers and brings out a large tablecloth for people to write what they’re thankful for this year. She wrote last year that she felt blessed to have the life she did. Now, her family will stay home. She said if she had to write something on the tablecloth, it would be that the year is almost over.
Social service organizations and food banks across the state are working double to serve an influx of Texans needing assistance. The holiday season is always the busiest time of year for food banks, as they work to ensure every Texan gets to sit down to the Thanksgiving dinner table with enough to eat, said Celia Cole, CEO of the food bank network Feeding Texas, which serves 4.5 million Texans annually.
But this year, the need is much higher than in previous years, Cole said. She estimates food banks statewide are serving twice as many families as they were before the pandemic.
In El Paso, a major hot spot for cases, the organization is currently receiving many more requests for home delivery from people who cannot safely go out to get food, Cole said. The Rio Grande Valley and Houston have also seen a significant increase in need over the last month, she said.
“There are, unfortunately, no instances of decreased need,” Cole said. “It’s a lot more people needing help, a lot more food going out the door, and it’s a lot harder to get food to people in need.”
Early in the pandemic, food banks struggled to keep their shelves stocked as volunteers were told to stay home and grocery stores had less surplus to donate.
More Texans than usual showed up Saturday to receive a Thanksgiving turkey from CitySquare, a Dallas nonprofit that provides affordable housing and operates a local food pantry, said John Siburt, the organization’s president and chief operating officer. The annual event was turned into a drive-thru this year, with volunteers handing turkeys to people in cars.
“We’re definitely seeing increased need at our food pantry, with a new segment of people needing food pantries for the first time and a steady stream of people needing to access food to get through the month,” Siburt said.
More Texans are also turning to social service organizations for help maintaining their housing.
“The most alarming needs we’re seeing right now are around rental assistance and utility bill assistance,” Siburt said. “We’re being overrun with people who need help paying their rent and paying their utility bills and trying to avoid eviction.”
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That strain is being felt even by people not directly affected by the pandemic. In Mt. Vernon, Tony Hall, 57, lost his job last year. Hall and his wife, Teresa Barinecutt, 59, have tried reaching out to organizations for housing, but haven’t been able to find any help.
Hall was working as a log roller last year when one of the 150-pound logs rolled into his chest. He told himself he could shake it off, but had to go to the hospital a month later and discovered that he had loose blood in his lungs that caused blood clots and pneumonia. Without health insurance and unable to work, he and Barinecutt were evicted from their home and are now living in their car.
Mental health
Experts say that reports of depression and anxiety increase around the holidays during a typical year. They fear increased loss and lack of normal support systems will make this year even worse.
“There's a lot of societal pressure on us to be happy and joyful during this time of year,” said Julie Kaplow, executive director of the Trauma and Grief Center at the Hackett Center for Mental Health. “We know that there are a lot of reasons why that may not be feasible or possible for many families, this year.”
Joy Alonzo, clinical assistant professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center, said the constant stress of worrying about you or loved ones catching COVID-19 isn’t making things any easier. Almost 80% of adults said the pandemic was a significant source of stress for them, according to the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America 2020 report.
And people like Chris Mabe, who have already lost someone, are navigating their grief in a time where typical support systems like gathering together aren’t possible.
“They're also grieving for a loss of tradition, loss of what they would normally do during this time period,” Alonzo said. “They're actually grieving for normalcy.”
“What I need more than anything is a place to get out of my car and lay down and get some rest,” Tony said.
Mabe said she’s feeling dread about the coming holiday, “but I don’t want to feel that.”
She said sticking to the routine and finding ways to stay connected during the holidays are going to be the family’s “safety light.” She said she’s still planning to cook a big turkey, make video calls, exchange photos on Facebook and stick to her ritual of watching football and yelling at the TV.
“I mean, it's not what I want to project, and it's not what I'm going to talk about on the Zoom call, but I'm really aware that that's what I'm feeling because it's a reckoning," she said. "It's a milestone, anniversary dates and little milestones, they bear so much weight, and it's going to be hard.”
Mabe’s family could never gather for a funeral after the death of her mother because of the pandemic. She said it makes her angry that while her family canceled its celebration, her neighbors are still having parties.
Normally, family members would gather in the same room and process their loss together. They would talk about how angry or sad they were, laugh, cry, play music and crack jokes with a bottle of wine or sparkling cider in tow.
“We never got to do that together. and that is a huge loss and we’re not alone in that,” Mabe said.
She said she feels lucky to have the financial resources to support her family and access mental health support. Still, despite having experienced tragic losses in the past, she said grieving doesn’t get any easier.
“Our family has lived very hard lives for lots and lots of reasons. … We've always found a way to get through it,” Mabe said. “And we'll get through this, too. But it is going to be exhausting.”
How to get help
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255
Officials Raise Alarm Ahead of Thanksgiving
Health experts worry that increased travel and mingling over Thanksgiving and into the December holidays could exacerbate an already dangerous situation as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising across Texas.
The original plan for Thanksgiving was that nothing would be different.
Eight members of Jesse Gonzales’ family would come from all over North Texas for a traditional turkey dinner in his Dallas home, just like they do every year. His grandchildren would run around the house and Jesse would watch football with his son while other family members caught up and retold old stories.
Then, the family got a wake-up call.
Gonzales was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October. And six other family members also caught the virus around the same time. It was enough to remind the family about the seriousness of the still-raging coronavirus pandemic.
So this year, Thanksgiving is canceled. It’s a big deal for Gonzales, who loves the fall holiday celebration even more than Christmas — which is also canceled.
“It’s always been a tradition that we all come here and celebrate, but now with this deal, this put a different outlook on the situation,” Gonzales said.
That’s along the lines of what health experts and some local officials are advocating for as the holidays draw near, and some families across Texas make preparations to travel and gather indoors over Thanksgiving meals.
“Cancel gatherings, large and small, unless you’re with your household,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Tuesday. “We’re in a war against this virus. This is not the time to lament that we didn’t get a gathering this time around.”
Eight months into the pandemic, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rapidly rising again in Texas and across the country. Experts say the latest surge in cases is linked to pandemic fatigue. In just eight days, the U.S. recorded 1 million new coronavirus cases, bringing the nation’s total to over 11 million. Texas exceeded a million cases Friday, according to state data.
Health experts worry that increased travel and mingling over Thanksgiving and into the December holidays could exacerbate an already dangerous situation.
“The worst thing I could think of is to take people from all over the country, put them in planes and mix them up,” said Dr. James McDeavitt, dean of clinical affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine. “That’s almost like you designed something to spread the virus aggressively.”
Already, airlines are reporting that travel is up for the holidays.
United Airlines is expecting the Thanksgiving holiday to be the busiest time since the pandemic began in March, according to a news release. The airline added over 1,400 domestic flights to accommodate the demand during the week of Thanksgiving.
Southwest Airlines plans to add up to 300 flights a day, and American Airlines plans to average over 4,000 flights a day during the upcoming holiday, about a 15% increase compared with the rest of the month.
New traditions
Anaiya Davis said when her family gathers this Thanksgiving, there will be temperature checks at the door. Everyone attending is being asked to quarantine before the celebration. When Davis heads from her home in Austin to the Fort Worth area, she’s expecting to see about 15 people in her family. Usually there are about 50 there. Davis said two family members died this year who were immunocompromised, which has put the rest of the family on high alert.
“When we lost my grandpa, it kind of made us more conscious and very afraid of the virus in general,” Davis said. “Then when we lost my cousin, we jumped back into being more afraid because we were like, we’ve already lost two super important people in our family. We don’t want to run the risk of losing anybody else.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says small household gatherings are an “important contributor” to the rise in COVID-19 cases. The CDC advised that holidays be celebrated among the members in a household and noted that college students who live away are not considered household members.
“In-person gatherings that bring together family members or friends from different households, including college students returning home, pose varying levels of risk,” the agency said.
Kate Feuille said her family is planning a small, outdoor Thanksgiving, but the situation where she lives, in El Paso, is worrisome. Cases in the area have surged and overwhelmed hospitals.
Still, she’s hoping the weather is nice so the family can have a physically distanced celebration outdoors. Feuille said her family is still working out how to get her son home from college safely. This year, instead of worrying about throwing a more grand Thanksgiving, she’s planning something more scaled down.
“The idea of making this big meal to come together as a family doesn’t seem that special right now,” Feuille said.
Alternative plans
Isolating completely for the holidays isn’t the only option, health experts say.
“We need to celebrate after everything everyone has been through for the past year,” McDeavitt said. “If we could just get enough people paying attention to the holidays and being careful, then my hope is we can keep the holidays from becoming a major super-spreader event.”
McDeavitt said this holiday season, people should consider meeting virtually, celebrating only with those in their households, having carefully planned events with masks and distancing, or gathering only with those in their “bubble.” In the holiday bubble, as he described it, everyone involved would need to agree to follow strict health precautions, self-quarantine if possible, get tested for the virus and avoid contact with people outside of the bubble.
“Once you’re in your bubble, everybody comes in, everybody stays, nobody leaves and you don’t have neighbors over for drinks,” McDeavitt said.
Being away from family and friends during the holidays can have mental health consequences.
“If you want to be totally safe, you would just hole up in your house and never see another human being,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. “Well, that’s probably not even possible, but also not real good for your mental health.”
Even in normal times, the holiday season is “probably one of the most difficult times of the year for people” said Austin-based psychotherapist Grace Dowd.
“I think people are starting to really feel the psychological implications of COVID and some of that loneliness and isolation that’s being brought out,” Dowd said.
Dowd said while it can be the season of joy, people can also feel lonely and be reminded of family or friends who aren’t around. If someone is looking for community, they might not be able to visit family, but they could meet virtually or visit friends in their area while following precautions, Dowd said.
“I think we’re going to have to get a lot more creative this year around what the holidays look like, and I think coming to terms with [how] they may not look like how they looked in the past and mentally preparing for that,” Dowd said.
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff contributed to this report.