I’ll stare at a blank piece of paper again today.

I’ll search for comforting words to jot down before slipping the note inside a sympathy card bound for Omaha, Nebraska, and into the hands of my sister, Laura. Her husband, Chuck Bair, died with COVID-19 the day after Thanksgiving 2020. He was 60.

Laura and Chuck were married 42 ½ years. They met at a church youth group as teenagers in Iowa in the 1970s. For 24 years, the home they shared in Omaha was a place where memories were made. “It was the first place we ever bought,” said Laura.

Chuck Bair is shown on the day he was connected to a ventilator while fighting for his life at Omaha Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Neb., in November of 2020. Bair, 60, was in the final stages of complications of COVID-19. He died two weeks later after the ventilator was removed. Photo courtesy of Laura Bair

Laura, her daughter Barb, and other family members spent the best moments of Chuck’s final day next to him. The rules are strict for visitors to the COVID unit of Omaha’s Methodist Hospital. Limited to pairs and bound by time, they took turns standing at his bedside. The ventilator came out as the goodbyes began.

Days earlier, Chuck told his daughter Barb, 42, that “he didn’t think he was going to make it.” The words were spoken though an oxygen mask that covered his face, muffling his speech.

Laura couldn’t see him for the first two weeks he was in the hospital. The first time she was close to him he was hooked up to a ventilator. He was beginning the next phase of treatment.

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“I asked him if he really wanted to be vented. He said he really didn’t have a choice.” She told him, “You always have a choice.”

“We just said we loved each other.” Laura said after he was sedated he wasn’t able to respond to those words.

Grandkids Tyler and Hannah went into the room first. Then grandson Austin with his dad, Steve. In the final moments, the kids held Chuck’s hand, told him they loved him, kissed him and said good-bye.

Laura and daughter Barb went last but by then Chuck was already gone. “I told him he was too young and was leaving us too early,” Laura said.

After battling the virus for two weeks, the ventilator was shut off. “It was the only thing keeping him breathing,” said Laura. The room grew quiet. Having lived for 60 years, it took only minutes for him to die.

BEHIND THE WHEEL

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It wasn’t the first time Chuck had to stare down a health crisis. He came back from a four-way heart bypass. He healed from a flesh eating bacteria. His back was injured in a wreck on icy roads. Chuck always rebounded, got back behind the wheel and returned to his job as service manager at a garage offering tire and automotive services. He was there for about 30 years.

Suffering through health problems and injuries didn’t keep Chuck from enjoying prime time with his grandkids. He taught others what he knew about fixing cars. He made it easy for them to understand.

Chuck Bair is shown with his 2015 Dodge Challenger that won a first-place trophy at a July 2018 car show in Omaha, Neb. Bair, 60, died from COVID-19 in November 2020. Photo courtesy of Laura Bair

His high-performance 2015 Dodge Challenger was a winner in auto shows. The car was trimmed in sublime green. It looked like a Hot Wheels car come to life and was tucked neatly in the garage next to a matching sublime green Hemi powered Dodge pickup. A buyer for the truck was found while the Challenger went to Chuck’s daughter Barb.

Laura and Chuck were teenagers when they met. His souped-up 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner contrasted with Laura’s 1973 Plymouth Valiant four-door sedan. The Roadrunner was equipped with a 440-cubic inch motor, dual exhausts, four on the floor and a Hurst shifter. The back tires were wide and gripped the pavement. The car looked menacing with its jacked-up rear end. It sounded tough and ran fast.

An advertisement touts the 1969 Plymouth Road Runner, a car that Chuck Bair owned and maintained as a teenager in Iowa. Bair turned his love of mechanics into a career. Bair, 60, died from COVID-19 in November 2020.  

The Valiant sported a fuel friendly six-cylinder motor with an automatic transmission. The only thing the two cars had in common was their color, blue.

Chuck was a rambunctious boy. He ran toy cars down a slide. His older sister kept wheels and spare parts for her brother’s patchwork repairs. He tried sneaking his horse into his upstairs bedroom. The animal’s hooves dug into the steps as he pulled the reins.

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At 16, he was learning auto mechanics. He had jet black hair, an aspiring mustache, dirt under his fingernails and a need for speed.  He was happy to demonstrate his car’s performance. Chuck’s car was his project, a learning laboratory with the hood off and tools nearby.

Being a kid brother meant I was already in bed by the time Chuck returned my sister from their dates. On still nights, I’d sit up in my bed while anticipating the roar of the motor and the squeal of the tires as they met dry road.

Chuck never disappointed me, though Dad wasn’t impressed with these demonstrations. Eventually I was granted a ride in the Road Runner. I got tossed back in my seat as Chuck shifted through the gears. A quick look at speedometer showed 110 mph. Power poles passed like fence posts in a heart pounding adrenaline rush.

Sometimes he and my sister would sit in the living room and listen to records. The Steve Miller Band’s “Book of Dreams” and the Beach Boys’ “Endless Summer” were among their favorites.

Laura said she and Chuck didn’t have a lot of money “but we made it with what we had.” They liked going to drive-in movies and dining at the Happy-Chef restaurant.

They shared one of their first homes along the tornado belt in Oklahoma. Their root cellar doubled as a storm shelter for anyone in the neighborhood needing to take cover. I visited them with my parents in the 1980s.

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One night we hustled into the shelter as a storm blew through the town. The early warning siren blared over head as Barbara, 4, led us and a few neighbors, into the tiny shelter.

Barb was quick to introduce me to the neighbors. In spite of the fierce winds that raged overhead, it was important for Barb to let the neighbors know she had relatives from Iowa visiting.

A FAMILY GRIEVES 

I got word of Chuck’s rapid decline through text messages from my sister. “He just needs to get better so we can get him back home,” said Laura after he was hospitalized. A few days later Laura sent me a photo showing her husband on a ventilator.

Text messages from Laura were brief and to the point. Her photo of Chuck attached to the ventilator made it real. Laura also tested positive for COVID-19. So did her daughter, granddaughter and two other family members. Dad and daughter shared moments over Facetime as his condition worsened.

In early May this year, about 60 of us turned out for Chuck’s funeral at a cemetery in Leon, Iowa, a small town about 15 miles north of Iowa’s border with Missouri. He was buried next to his parents with a stone that also bears my sister’s name.

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Chuck Bair is shown in an undated photo with his dogs Scooter, top, and Bear, at his home in Omaha, Neb. Bair, 60, died from COVID-19 in November 2020. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

At her dad’s graveside, Barb, 42, again had words of comfort and good humor that honored her dad in the wake of the family’s personal storm. Her dad’s bright green challenger is now hers. It’s first in a line of cars parked near her dad’s grave.

“It’s not my car. It’ll always be my dad’s car.”

It’s a stick shift and she’s still learning how to drive it. Though her dad isn’t here to teach, I’m sure she’ll learn.

“So many times over the past months and days, as I’ve struggled with hurt and hope, I’ve thought, I should call Dad, he will be able to help. It’s incredibly hard living life without him.”

When she was a girl, Chuck assisted her with story problems. He helped her find a path to the answer by breaking down the problem. “He would listen, absorb and offer advice,” said Barb.

We gathered to celebrate Chuck’s life on his 61st birthday, then we shared all his favorite foods at his sister’s home a few minutes away.

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Laura made all the food, including four different types of cookies and bars. Ranch-style baked beans with hickory smoked flavor, potato salad and sloppy Joes served with soft white buns highlighted the picnic-style lunch. Brown sugar and barbeque sauce were mixed with the ground beef. That’s how Chuck liked it.

Laura and Chuck Bair are shown with infant daughter, Barbara, in a 1979 photo from Boxholm, Iowa. Chuck Bair, 60, died from COVID-19 in November 2020. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

As her family reels from their loss, the headlines offer optimism in the wake of mass vaccinations, although the spread of the delta variant seems to be sending us in the wrong direction. We look back at more than 600,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. in a year’s time. Life inches toward a return to odd normalness, but then takes two steps back.

For many, the heartache and sadness lingered through the holidays and into 2021. We limited or postponed holiday gatherings, limited our travel, sanitized our hands and kept a 6-foot distance from our friends. We smiled and frowned from behind our facemasks. We celebrated and suffered while watching with optimism as the vaccine arrived in Maine.

For thousands who have already died, with the vaccine now available, it’s too late. But for others the vaccine is just in time and the beginning of returning to the world we all took for granted.

MOVING AHEAD

Laura’s house was quiet this year. Holiday cheer was replaced with sadness, Christmas cards mixed with letters of sympathy.

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Laura and Chuck Bair are shown in an undated photo from Boxholm, Iowa. Chuck Bair, 60, died from COVID-19 in November 2020. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

In the spring, she downsized, sold her home and moved into an apartment. It’s a 1,400-square-foot place with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large open kitchen. All her furniture fits, thanks to a sale that helped downsize things accumulated over a lifetime. There’s a garage for her car. Someone else mows the lawn.

Scale models of cars made by Chuck were shared among family members. They filled a curio cabinet with other momentos.

Before relocation, her life focused on her work as a dietary technician at the hospital cafeteria. It’s dark and late in the day when she begins the overnight shift. It’ll still be dark and before sunrise before she clocks out. In between, she’ll run the cash register, clean and stock the doctor’s lounge. Pushing through the next 15 days without a day off will provide some distraction from her grief. Laura’s not afraid to work. Staying busy is normal.

She’ll start and end her shift by passing the door that leads to the room where her husband died. It’s on her way to the parking lot, a convenient route that she won’t change.

Her house will be extra quiet when she gets home.

“This house is empty. That’s why I’m going to have to move,” Laura said. “There’s a lot of memories here. Sometimes I don’t even go to bed. I just sit in my chair. On his side of the bed I have clothes I folded, like there’s something there.”

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