COVID 5 Years Later Series P6
- Shidonna Raven
- Mar 3
- 2 min read
By Jeremy Olson
MARCH 6, 2025
Source: The Minnesota Star Tribune
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
HOW COVID-19 CHANGED MINNESOTANS
A kickboxing nurse, a dancer who hopes to walk again, and a defiant bar owner reflect how the pandemic changed lives in Minnesota.
COVID never left
COVID deaths are less common than during pandemic surges, including a peak in winter 2020 when Minnesota was losing 100 people per day to the coronavirus. But one legacy of the pandemic is an infectious disease that won’t go away.
COVID still caused more deaths this winter than influenza, and remains a particular risk to older people or younger adults with health problems.
Mae Brooks lost a brother-in-law in 2020, and then her husband, Robert Belton, in February 2024 after the pandemic emergency had been lifted. Both died from COVID.
Belton had been careful for years because he had a kidney transplant in 2019 and needed to take drugs that weakened his immune system. The couple wore masks everywhere and even tried UV light exposure early in the pandemic when there was hope that it killed the virus.
Belton returned home sick from a relative’s graduation in California in late 2023. He was hospitalized on New Year’s Eve 2023 and later placed on a breathing tube after his lungs failed.
The pandemic had been hard on Belton, who co-founded a construction and home remodeling business with his brother and loved meeting new clients, playing jazz saxophone with groups, and celebrating large family gatherings. He couldn’t see his brother in the hospital when he died in 2020, and could only talk with him by videoconferencing.
“That’s how he said goodbye to his brother,” Brooks said.
After Belton died last year, his wife used donations from friends to place a memorial bench at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Theodore Wirth Regional Park in Minneapolis. Belton had spent Sundays after church there as a child, and loved the untamed natural areas there as an adult.
When the anniversary of Belton’s death approached last month, Brooks knew she couldn’t be at the house that was filled with her husband’s decorations and renovations. She also made changes, getting rid of her husband’s coffee supplies and the comfy chair where he often nodded off to sleep.
“It was a great chair and ottoman,” she said, “but every time I would look at it, that was what I would visualize.”
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