DETROIT – Many people spent Mother’s Day without their mom for the first time.
One Metro Detroit woman who lost her mother at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is honoring her legacy by trying to get others vaccinated.
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“I think I cried my eyes off the past three days,” Sonia Sorrenti said. “She used to spend a few months of the year with us, but because of COVID was relegated into the home, of course.”
Spending most of the year in Italy, Anna-Maria was diagnosed with lung cancer last August. Unable to see her 79-year-old mother, Sorrenti had to say goodbye for the last time at the height of the pandemic, separated by distance and disease, watching her mother’s last days through a screen.
READ: Tearful reunions mark second Mother’s Day under pandemic
“When I witnessed with my own eyes what it is to die without being able to breathe and die alone, I knew I had to do something to prevent that to happen again,” Sorrenti said. “For all the other mothers alive out there.”
After a year of isolation, she now hopes to bring people closer together.
“I clean chairs in-between patients, I push wheelchairs,” Sorrenti said. “I like to hold hands for those who are maybe afraid, a little bit scared. We just talk and share a little bit of humanity.”
She said the hardest days at the clinic are the days when there aren’t people there. She’s asking everyone to get vaccinated so no one else has to be separated from the ones they love, especially on Mother’s Day.