Daughter of Dallas woman who died of COVID invites Abbott to funeral, demands action
On her 40th birthday this past Sunday, Fiana Tulip didn’t receive a call or a card from her mom. Instead, she sat down to write a letter inviting Gov. Greg Abbott to her mother’s funeral.
Two-and-a-half weeks ago Tulip’s 64-year-old mother, Isabelle Papadimitriou, died on the Fourth of July from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. She was a respiratory therapist at the Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation in Dallas, and was supposed to be visiting Tulip in New York in late June. Papadimitriou was especially excited to see her granddaughter Lua, who she often gushed over.
But rising cases made the trip too risky, and she had to cancel. Instead, Papadimitriou had gone in to work to help with the surge in patients. She died just a week after she first took note of her symptoms.
In the days since Papadimitriou’s sudden death, Tulip’s grief has solidified into frustration and anger.
“The more I thought about it, I go backwards from my mom’s death and I truly, truly feel that if masks had been mandated from the start that she would still be alive,” Tulip said.
So she’s invited Abbott to her mother’s memorial service to witness firsthand the grief Papadimitriou’s sudden death has left friends and family to navigate. At 2:30 p.m. Thursday at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, only Tulip’s immediate family and maybe a few close family friends are expected to attend as they wear face masks, and stay apart from other households.
“There is no doubt that poor policy and terrible leadership was responsible for her death,” Tulip wrote in her letter to Abbott.
“The writing is on the wall: There will be far more deaths of Texans then there needed to be because of your gross mismanagement. Your inaction and active denial of the devastation COVID-19 is causing has made it clear that people dying, and their families left behind are just numbers to you,” Tulip wrote. “My mother was anything but a number.”
As of Wednesday morning, Tulip had yet to hear from Abbott’s office. A spokesman for the governor did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
When asked about Tulip’s criticism on KRIV-TV in Houston Thursday night, Abbott said to prevent future deaths, Texans have to wear a face mask and stay home as much as possible.
“I can’t imagine anything more sorrowful than losing a parent or losing a family member. It’s a tragedy. But it is a tragedy that hopefully everyone will understand that the way that we save lives now is by people adopting this practice of wearing a face mask. Of understanding that this is not a hoax. This is not a joke about COVID-19. This is something that is very real that everybody needs to take very seriously,” Abbott said. “It’s not going away tomorrow.”
Even if Abbott doesn’t accept her invitation, Tulip would like to see action taken.
“Texans are being told that they need to choose between health and the economy and that’s simply not true,” Tulip wrote in a text. “The reason Texas can’t fully reopen, at least in some capacity, is because leadership is unwilling to help them do it in a responsible way.”
After facing growing calls to mandate face masks statewide, Abbott issued an executive order that went into effect on July 3 and required face masks be worn in most public places with limited exceptions. Later that very night Papadimitriou’s condition worsened.
Her son who she lived with, Isaac Elizondo, recounted running to her room in the early morning hours where he found his mother could barely speak. By the time the ambulance reached Medical City Las Colinas in Irving, Papadimitriou had lost her pulse at least three times, Elizondo said.
While Dallas County’s local mandate requiring masks in businesses was in effect in late June, Tulip said she believes mandating masks statewide sooner would have helped keep healthcare workers like her mother safe. Recent studies by Texas researchers found wearing a face mask is one of the most effective ways to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 and that local mandates have contributed to a stabilization in North Texas’ COVID cases.
Living in Brooklyn, New York, Tulip’s seen firsthand the effectiveness masks can have. Once an epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., New Yorkers are beginning to gather again under the state’s fourth phase of reopenings — months after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mandated masks statewide in mid-April.
Meanwhile, Tulip left Sunday to start the roughly 24-hour road trip with her husband and 11-month-old daughter Lua to her home state of Texas, where hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients have reached an all-time high and the state’s previously aggressive phased reopening has been scaled back.
“It breaks my heart,” Tulip said. “Because earlier on in this pandemic, we had considered driving to Texas because it was a safe place. But now it is no longer a safe place and that’s where my family is.”
As Tulip read about Abbott stripping local officials of their ability to mandate local stay-at-home orders or enforce the wearing of masks, she was frustrated. It felt like Abbot was leaving local officials to slow the spread with one hand tied behind their backs, Tulip said.
It wasn’t until Abbott approved of Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff’s order mandating businesses require face masks in mid-June, that a wave of similar local orders followed suit. At the time, Abbott had said local officials had “finally figured that out” as an option.
“There needs to be more power with local governments because they are closer to their people than the governor is,” Tulip said.
As Texas grapples with how to keep the virus from overwhelming hospitals and works to shorten long testing delays, Abbott has doubled down on the need for Texans to abide by his mask mandate.
“All we need to do to have the economy going and for people to engage in normal activities is if — for just the next few months — whenever they go into public wear face mask or if they don’t have to go on in public, just stay home,” Abbott told KWTX-TV in Waco on Tuesday night.
Tulip hopes to see a clear, systematic approach led by experts taken sooner — rather than later.
A document prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force and first reported on by the Center for Public Integrity put both Texas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the “red zone” in terms of COVID cases. As a result, it recommended officials take a slew of actions, including some Abbott has yet to enact like closing gyms and reducing indoor dining capacity to 25%.
“We do need to follow these guidelines because they’re coming from a place of realness,” Tulip said. “They have seen this work in other places. They’ve seen this work in other countries.”
Tulip has been tirelessly writing op-eds, speaking to the press and working to share her mother’s story so people know that her life mattered. At the same time, Tulip has had to navigate the astounding cost of putting her mom to rest while working through her own grief.
“I think what’s driving me is that I really want to keep her spirit alive because I’m having a hard time accepting that she’s gone. And I think when the stories stop and the dust settles and we don’t hear about my mom anymore, it’s going to be really hard for me,” Tulip said.
Her brother, who tested positive for COVID-19 the day their mother died, tested negative this week. But even now, Tulip doesn’t know if she’ll be able to hug her family members when she seems them. They’ll livestream the service for all those who will be restricted from paying their respects in person, and next week they’ll bury Papadimitriou in her hometown of Brownsville. They’re trying to be cautious, seeing firsthand how the virus can ravage someone so quickly.
“That I am going to see them and may not even be able to hug them is so painful,” Tulip said. “Never would I have thought that I would be at a funeral for my mom and not being able to see people who loved her and meant so much to her.”
Tulip hopes people who come across her mom’s story — whether it’s Abbott or complete strangers — keep in mind how their actions during the pandemic may ultimately affect the frontline healthcare workers who have pledged to be there for them when the virus is at its worst.
“Those are the people who are putting their lives at risk every day,” Tulip said. “And we need to save them.”
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 12:46 PM.
