Two months ago my grandmother, Mimi, passed away. When we lost her, I was heartbroken. Now I’m thankful.

I’m a college student and an EMT. For the past few weeks, I’ve been volunteering as a nursing assistant in long-term care facilities across Massachusetts.

Over half of Massachusetts’ COVID-19 deaths, about 55 percent, have been in long-term care facilities. Unfortunately, this is likely an underestimate. Visitation in these facilities has been restricted or eliminated in an important effort to curb the spread of infection.

When Mimi died, I got to hold her hand in the hospital. If she were there today, I might not even get to say goodbye.

At one of the facilities where I was volunteering, the nurses asked me to look after a patient with COVID-19 and dementia. He was sick and coughing but wasn’t able to keep a mask on or stay in his room, as he was too confused and distressed. The nurses were doing everything they could and being incredibly caring, but we were severely understaffed and they had many other ill residents who needed attention.

While I was with him, he told me all about his daughter. He talked about how much he loved her and begged me to take him to her. He was coughing and having trouble catching his breath between words. I asked if he might feel better with some oxygen, as I tried to put on his supplemental O2, but he kept refusing. He told me, weakly, that all he felt was pain, not because he was sick but because he couldn’t see his daughter.

I had to leave him as I was called to help with other patients, but an hour later I heard someone yelling his name. Out the window of the rec-room I saw a woman and she asked if her dad was there. When I got him to her he came back to life. He sat up, he breathed better, he laughed and nearly cried. “I miss you already,” he said through the window. “I’m here now Dad,” she said back.

Massachusetts has made long-term care facilities a priority during COVID-19. That’s a great start, but the plans falter when they’re put to the test on the ground.

State government has promised $130 million in new funding to help long-term care facilities. All nursing homes receive a 10 percent increase in budget but can only access an additional 15 percent increase if they create dedicated COVID-19 wings and follow certain safety protocols.

Unfortunately, meeting these checkpoints is impossible for some facilities. With too little space, overwhelmed nursing workforce, and limited testing and PPE, staff often acknowledge that even though only a subset of patients are known to be positive, all residents in the facility likely have been exposed to the virus. For example, Massachusetts tried to designate one nursing home as a COVID-only center. This plan was cancelled as they went to move all the “healthy” patients to another facility, tested them and found that over half had asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic COVID-19.

To address the problem of family disconnection, Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA) has spoken highly of a family hotline. But many families complain that their calls here have gone unanswered or that those who answer aren’t able to give them any information about their loved ones.Instead they often call the nurses’ desk, where staff are desperately trying to give them the attention and information they deserve, but have no bandwidth to do so.

CDC policies for long-term care facilities outline that staff should facilitate “alternative methods for visitation (e.g. video conferences).”This is the same staff dealing with unprecedented disease burden and decreased workforce, as many nurses and aides are home sick. Running between increasingly sick patients, no one has time to get a sip of water — much less facilitate a video conference for an elderly resident who often has little ability to use technology.

At one of the nursing homes, while I was working the phones, a woman called very upset. She said it was her sister’s birthday and she’d been calling since the morning; she needed to say happy birthday. The resident had COVID-19 and was sleeping in her room. I wanted to help but didn’t want to get her up and to a central phone without asking her nurse, who was critically occupied with multiple patients. I was being called off to assist with other residents. It was 9 p.m. when I finally got the okay from her nurse, helped the resident to the phone, and called back the number. She lit up as her sister sang to her.

I know it must have been so frustrating for this woman to have to call all day in order to just talk to her sister for five minutes on her birthday. But putting the burden of fixing that problem on the nursing staff is completely infeasible.

Even more, this problem in nursing homes unquestionably discriminates. Nursing homes primarily serving Medicaid residents and with greater proportions of minority residents have less resources and lower staff to patient ratios. As already over-extended and under-resourced nursing staff try to meet the increased medical and connection needs of residents, these populations will be most hurt.

Without a doubt, we should focus on development of medical treatments for this disease, but we should not forget the power of mental health. Gov. Baker’s administration has taken action in contracting crisis management firms that specialize in nursing homes and infection control. But why not contract with technology firms that can connect residents with loved ones to ease the burden on nursing home staff and families? Meeting this need has to be a priority. If we give up connection, we’re stealing humanity from many of our grandparents’ last days.

Now, the coronavirus is hitting elderly people in long-term care facilities especially hard. Despite the medical reality of COVID-19 being worse for elderly people, this population has been left vulnerable by the lack of care and attention we give them as a society. Residents in nursing homes see high rates of depression and abuse, which often go unrecognized. So many can’t get the care they need, in part because there’s a shortage of physicians trained in geriatric care. Even when this is over, this virus should be a wakeup call that we need to change the system of geriatric health care in this country.

I think it’s a blessing Mimi was in the hospital at a time when my family could stay with her until the end.

When she died, I was sad that she wouldn’t be able to experience all the beauties of life anymore. Now I’m grateful that at least she doesn’t have to experience this pandemic as an 85-year-old person. It shouldn’t be so bad to be elderly right now that it could be a blessing to be gone. I can’t imagine how much more heartbreaking it would’ve been if we’d had to take Mimi to the ER just a few weeks later and be ripped away from her at the door.

A version of this article was published in The Boston Globe on April 30.

Karina Aguilar is a Weinberg junior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.