Fort Worth-area woman lost husband of 30 years to COVID. She knows it’s not the flu.
Going home is the worst. The door opens, and the silence and the quiet encroach at every step to remind Kelly Morton of her husband’s absence.
Joel Morton’s clothes are still there. If she is close, she can smell the cologne embedded into the fabric.
Going to work isn’t much better, because they worked together at the store they owned, Cactus Jack’s Boot Country in Alvarado. Going out isn’t that much better, because … where can you go?
“It’s hard to get up every day,” she said.
It’s been more than two months since her husband of 30 years, Joel, died of COVID-19. His was one of the first deaths in Tarrant County.
Morton has seen the numbers. She has read the news and the followed the debate of whether the measures to slow the spread were ultimately more harmful than helpful — that COVID is basically the flu.
She is a small business owner. She has lived all of this in way that few have.
“I just don’t know,” she said. “You can think what you want to think. This is all a very new disease. People who are healthy are getting it. Kids are getting it. Old people are getting it. Who knows?
“I think they are trying. But do I think this is real? Hell yeah, I think it’s real. It took my husband.”
A High Fever
Kelly is sitting in a kitchenette at her store, and her voice cracks and she occasionally wipes away tears as she looks at her day planner. It has all of the dates.
Joel died on April 10. He was 60.
Although they loved the beach, they were scheduled to take an Alaskan cruise soon. Their children are grown.
“You think your life is just beginning,” she said.
On March 19, Joel complained that he was not feeling well. Two days later, they went to the hospital to get tested for the coronavirus.
Because his symptoms were mostly mild, he was told to go home. He started to run a fever, but it subsided with over the counter pain relievers.
The fever grew worse.
A few days later, Kelly took her husband’s temperature.
“I think we need to go to the hospital,” she told Joel.
“Is it worse?” he asked.
“No, it’s better. It’s 101.6,” she said.
The actual reading was 104.
“I knew if I told him he would have flipped,” Kelly said.
On March 28, she dropped her husband off at Harris Hospital in Fort Worth. She was not allowed to enter the hospital, but immediately she felt relief.
Her husband was in the care of professionals, and he would improve.
Ninety minutes after she dropped off Joel, he called.
“Hon’, they are going to put me on a vent’,” Joel said. “I wanted to tell you I love you so very much, and to tell our children and all of my friends how much I love them, too.”
Every night Kelly would call, and a nurse would put the phone up to Joel’s ear. She barely slept. The phone was next to her at all times.
On April 2, Kelly was advised to come to the hospital to see Joel. Their children, Bailey, 26, and Parker, 22, joined her.
They wore full protective gear to enter the hospital room. On a ventilator, Joel was unable to speak. With his family in the room, his blood pressure rose, and his forehead moved. He knew they were there.
“Fight like hell,” she told him. “Fight like hell.”
He eventually went into a coma, was unable to breathe, and went into cardiac arrest. His kidneys began to fail, and he required dialysis.
She was allowed to see him alone.
“If it’s time for you to go, it’s OK,” she told him. “I will be OK.”
She knew her husband would not want to live on dialysis. In the final days, Kelly simply prayed for a miracle.
On the morning of April 10, a doctor told Kelly that her husband’s condition was not good. The kidneys were not returning. The doctor was not sure if Joel had brain activity.
Kelly was asked if she wanted to see her husband.
“I did not want my last memory of my husband to see him like that,” she said.
Joel was taken off the ventilator at noon. Two minutes later, he was gone.
For Kelly Morton, that is her experience with the coronavirus.
A good life together
Kelly can at least look back and say that she was fortunate to have been in a good marriage for 30 quality years.
Joel was an avid sports fan and loyal to the local teams.
“A game was always on the TV,” she said. “He loved the Cowboys.”
He listened to 105.3 The Fan, and the morning show hosted by Shan Shariff and R.J. Choppy. Joel would often imitate local sports’ radio voice Chris Arnold’s “Owwwwwwwwww-wee!”
They met on her birthday, Feb. 15, when she was on a date with Joel’s friend. Two weeks later, she asked God that, “If that’s not the one for me, I want one just like him.”
A few years later, they were married.
Although he started at Texas Tech, he left to pursue a career as an insurance salesman. The pair eventually took over the boot store, which had been in his family since 1973. She also runs an online boutique, Cactus Joy’s VIP.
They had a family of life, love and endless friends.
Determining the beginning
Kelly has no idea where her husband could have contracted COVID-19. She never got it. A few of their employees grew ill with flu-like symptoms before Joel got sick.
None of them tested positive.
Then there is the uncomfortable question that surrounds every COVID-19 death: Underlying conditions?
Kelly said Joel had hepatitis C, likely as a result of a blood transfusion.
“In his senior year of high school (at Alvarado), he was involved in a boat wreck where three of his friends were killed,” she said. “They don’t know how he got it. We had his liver and his heart checked, and everything was OK. I am sure he had liver damage.”
The condition was treated, and as such was dormant.
“Does it really matter? The outcome is the same. It sucks. It’s horrible,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they had underlying issues or not. Who knows?
“I think everybody has underlying conditions.”
Per Joel’s wishes, his remains were donated to the UNT Health Science Center. Joel wanted to be an organ donor, and Kelly said they intended to use his body for COVID-19 research as well.
Two days after her husband died, Kelly was at her home in Alvarado when her sister asked if she wanted to maybe go outside. She didn’t. She also noticed her sister was dressed up a bit.
It was Easter Sunday, and when Kelly was persuaded to walk outside, she saw the cars. For more than an hour, Kelly stood in the front yard as friends and loved ones drove by with signs, honking and waving.
“I was so emotional I nearly fell down,” she said. “I think it was important for people to see me because they could not see him. Not being with him was very hard. It’s easier to believe in things when you see it. When you don’t see it, it’s harder to relate.”
There is not just one “hard part” for Kelly. She opened the store as soon as it was allowed by the state.
She sees a counselor. She knows that at some point she will have to move out of a house that is simply too big for one person.
She knows that she needs to start seeing her friends again. She also knows they are going to want to talk about Joel.
She knows that the recovery rate for those who are infected with COVID-19 is encouraging. And she knows there are some who do not recover.
She knows that COVID-19 is not the flu.
“Some people are going to get over it and some people are not,” she said. “I wish I had words to tell them. When you lose someone it doesn’t really matter how you lose them, not when it’s a shock like this.
“I really don’t know what to think of all of it, I just know it’s real.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
