Love, grief and faith remain 1 year after COVID-19 upended life for C.B.S. man
Doug Taylor talks life and death as the first husband left behind by the pandemic in N.L.
It's been one year since Doug Taylor last felt complete.
He still smiles sometimes on sunny days, when he speaks to strangers, sees happy children or sings in church. But he will never feel the same as he did one year ago when he shared those simple joys with his wife, Debbie.
While many people are eager to see the end of the pandemic in Newfoundland and Labrador, Doug Taylor is waiting for his creator to call him to join his wife again.
"I'll soon be 70 years old. I want to be ready when he comes. My life now — I'm just waiting to go with her," he tells me during an interview on Thursday.
Debbie Taylor was only 61 when COVID-19 took her life. The Conception Bay South couple fell ill in mid-March, before there were any confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the province.
They tried to fight it off in the comfort of their home. On April 1, however, he knew she had to go to the hospital.
"It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Before she left, I raised her head and kissed her and said, 'I'll always love you.' My heart died when she went through that door. Something [inside me] felt like I wouldn't see her again."
Five days later, he got a phone call at 7 a.m. His wife had died.
Tears well in Taylor's eyes as he stands across from me in his driveway and recounts the loneliness of the entire experience. He talks about how he longs for the day when he can shake a stranger's hand again, or give someone a hug.
Our conversation meanders throughout the interview, and he asks me about myself. There's a twinge of guilt.
As Doug Taylor was losing what meant most to him, my family was growing.
On the day his wife was admitted to hospital, I was setting up a crib. As each early day passed in the pregnancy, my wife and I wrote in a journal to be passed down to our son when he's older.
It took a dark turn in late March, becoming a history handbook for the worst days of the burgeoning pandemic; our fears and anxieties intertwined with hopes, dreams and possible names for our unborn child.
On March 29, the day 78-year-old Larry Walsh became the first person in the province to die of COVID-19, I wrote: "By the time you come, this should all be over."
How wrong we were.
Almost a year later, Doug Taylor is still waiting for a chance to bury his wife. Her ashes are on his mantle and she hasn't had a proper funeral.
The two met when they were young. Doug was from one end of Fowler's Road, and Debbie was from the other.
They dated for a while when he was 25 and she was 18, but eventually parted ways and went about their lives in different directions. As fate should have it, they got back together and were married in 1999.
The look on his face in their wedding photo says it all.
They talked about having kids, but felt they were too old at that point. Taylor has a joyous smile on his face as he asks about my son.
"It's a feeling I'll never know," he says, still smiling. There's no sadness in his voice. He's genuinely happy for a stranger he just met.
There are interviews that will stick with you in this job. Doug Taylor is one of them.
After his wife died, he was left to battle the virus on his own. He spent 28 days alone in the apartment they had shared for several years. A deeply religious man, he spent those 28 days talking to God.
"It was only him and me," he says.
He leaned on his faith to get him through the hardest days, and continues to rely on it today.
Taylor's reason for speaking with me was simple — he wanted to remind people that despite Newfoundland and Labrador's relative success containing the virus, six lives have been lost. If he can help one member of the other five families going through the same situation, he says he will do whatever he can.
As the interview wraps up, he looks around the driveway. It's a blank space to me — just some asphalt, a truck and a pile of wood stacked up against the side of the house. For him, though, it's one of many things that triggers a memory from the last time he felt whole.
"It only seems like yesterday Debbie and I were out here getting ready to go up to the supermarket," he says. "It's hard to believe it's been a year. Where did it go?"
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