Watch: A Rhode Island family spoke on CNN about losing 2 members to COVID-19 on the same day
“We’re having a very difficult time. We’re dealing with both losses.”
A Rhode Island family is sharing their experience after losing two loved ones on the same day to the coronavirus.
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Dianne Remillard, joined by her daughter, Cindy Archambault, and grandson, Dilyn, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday about the loss of her husband, Ron Remillard, and son, Dan Remillard, in June.
“We’re having a very difficult time,” she said. “We’re dealing with both losses. It’s really difficult.”
The father and son, both residents of Woonsocket, died within an hour of one another on June 28.
Dan became sick first, the family said, testing positive for COVID-19 a few days after his wife, who was working in the coronavirus unit of a nursing home, was diagnosed with the illness.
“My husband was told, but he had dementia,” Dianne told Cooper. “He was in a nursing home, so we asked him to pray for my son who ended up at Rhode Island Hospital on May 14th. So I asked my husband to pray for his son. But unfortunately he did keep forgetting because of his dementia. And my son did not know that my husband had gotten it, because by then, my son had been in the hospital already for four or five weeks.”
On June 28, the family, along with 100 others, gathered on Zoom to say goodbye to Dan, the family said, when they got a call that Ron had passed away.
“When I received the phone call, we were still on Zoom,” Archambault said. “So I just went on and said, ‘Go with Daddy, Danny. Daddy’s waiting for you.’”
Dan passed away less than an hour later. He was 43; his father was 72.
Archambault, her mother, and nephew urged the public to take the coronavirus seriously, saying it is not “a hoax.” As of Tuesday, more than 1,000 Rhode Island residents had died from complications of COVID-19 and more than 21,000 had tested positive for the virus, according to the state.
“It’s real,” Archambault said of the coronavirus. “We felt this firsthand, and we don’t want anyone else to go through what we’re going through. It’s devastating, and it hurts.”
Rhode Island resident Dianne Remillard’s husband and son died from coronavirus on the same day.
“While we were saying our goodbyes to our son is when…my daughter ended up getting the phone call that my husband had just passed away,” she says. https://t.co/6k4F9R7PXw pic.twitter.com/JdW2OjA9bG
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) August 25, 2020
