New York City Has Failed my Eighty-Eight-Year Old Aunt
I never thought I would have to write an obituary for my Aunt Kay. Born in 1932, Kay Michaels was a fixture in my life growing up in New York City. A lifetime New Yorker, she spent most of her career working in the theatre, starring in or supporting countless productions ranging from off-off-Broadway to off-off-off-Broadway. She always gave the best and most thoughtful birthday and holiday presents, each one extensively researched, hand wrapped in colored paper and ribbons, works of art that we would heedlessly tear off. When I had my own children, they too joined the special club, receiving presents that were individual campaigns. I will never forget the present that my younger son Ishan received from Aunt Kay on his fifth birthday. It was a CD of an album by Danny Kaye that I loved to listen to as a child: “Mommy, Gimme a Drinka Water”. The second track, “I’m Five”, ends with the kicker: “on December 12”, which is Ishan’s birthday. Aunt Kay waited five years to give this present to Ishan.
Over the last twenty years, Aunt Kay’s theatre career slowed, and when we would ask her what she was up to she responded that she was working on editing a novel for a friend of hers. It was a fib. She was working on her own novel, which she revealed to the family about a year ago. Aunt Kay was famous for being completely flustered by all technology. She did manage after much encouragement and training to use a laptop to assist with her writing. She insisted on lugging her manuscripts to the post office to mail to various publishers and literary agents. She despaired that not one of the manuscripts was ever returned to her, though she included the full return postage with her submissions. Physically, she was tiny, not edging past five feet in height, while her older brother — my father — was a full 6’4”. Her personality was eight feet tall, and her determination was legendary.
We loved her, and could not understand how New York City could fail her so miserably with regard to getting a vaccine. At eighty eight years of age, you would think she would be ushered to the front of any vaccine line. But no, in this merciless city she was abandoned by a system that is no system at all. She was no anti-vaxxer, just a frail old woman who wanted to be vaccinated. In the early days of the pandemic, I struggled to explain to her how dangerous it was for her to travel on a daily basis to multiple shops so she could get her favorite foods. She was exceptionally frail, having fallen several times on city streets and in her apartment where she lived alone in an apartment building now largely abandoned by those wealthy enough to escape city life during the depths of the pandemic. When I warned her about the danger of keeping with her daily shopping ritual, that she might contract COVID in those crowded shops and die all alone in a hospital bed with no one to attend her funeral, she shrieked in delight. The only way I could convince her to wear a mask was to explain that there is a period of time when one can transmit the virus unknowingly — would she want to be responsible for the death of others? That argument kept her homebound and masked during her infrequent outings.
I had no idea how to get a vaccine appointment for her. No city seems to be more ruthless than New York City in this regard. I learned one weekend that she had spent eight solid hours on the phone, mostly on hold, attempting to get an appointment for herself. She failed. A few weeks later, she informed me that she finally did get an appointment — her ordeal was finally ending. When I called a few hours after her scheduled appointment, to ask if she was feeling symptoms from the vaccine, she said “what vaccine? I didn’t get any vaccine.” She then proceeded to describe in her unique acerbic fashion — Pure Kay — that a black limousine picked her up at 8 am in the morning, and drove her to get her vaccine, but there was no vaccine. She then proceeded, with heroic attempts by her caregiver companion, to criss-cross, East and West, North and South, the full island of Manhattan in search of a vaccine dose. She sat for hours in this taxicab, helplessly marveling at the beautiful architecture of Manhattan buildings, watching the meter fare run into hundreds of dollars. “The last leg of the journey, from Canal street back home, the driver said he would not charge me for that.” Her words were dripping with sarcasm and ire, at everyone — the entire miserable failed system that could not come to the aid of one of its oldest and most vulnerable inhabitants.
I never thought that I would be writing this obituary for my Aunt Kay, who is still alive, still COVID-free, who could become infected at any time, and who might not escape this fate that has claimed more than half a million Americans. This city, which she loved — loves — has failed her.