4-year-old’s dad died of COVID-19; months later, his mom died, too, Texas family says

A Texas family is grieving after a couple died months apart of COVID-19, leaving behind their young son.

Raiden Gonzalez, 4, lost his dad Adan to COVID-19 in June after he contracted the virus while “training at a new job,” KTRK reported.

Adan was hospitalized in San Antonio on June 9 about a week after testing positive for the virus, a family member told the outlet. He died on June 26. He was 33, NBC News reported.

Mariah, Raiden’s mom, “was just an emotional wreck. If she was lucky she would be able to talk to the charge nurse once a day,” her uncle Henry Wagner told KTRK. “At the very end when the nurses thought there may not be a recovery, she was allowed to FaceTime with him.”

Months later, Mariah died suddenly on October 5 at age 29, according to NBC. She’d only started feeling sick hours before.

“She was gone within 12 hours,” Margie Bryant, Raiden’s great-aunt, told KTRK.

The family was informed days after her death that Mariah had been positive for COVID-19, NBC reported.

“Raiden being left behind, it’s very hard,” grandmother Rozie Salinas told WOAI. “I mean, what do I tell him? You know, so I just told him that they’re now angels watching over us and protecting us,” she said, according to NBC.

“He says he wants to talk like him, he wants to be like him,” Bryant told WOAI

Raiden’s fifth birthday is in November, and the family is hoping to coordinate a drive-by parade to lift his spirits, according to the outlet.

“This is a milestone birthday, he’s been very upset because his mom and dad are not here to celebrate with him,” Bryant told WOAI.

Family members are stepping up to support Raiden and are in the process of sorting out his permanent guardianship, KTRK reported. His grandmother has also kept him enrolled in the same preschool where his mother worked, according to NBC News.

The family is urging others to take the virus seriously.

“We’ve lost two people now to COVID-19 and I can’t emphasize enough the severity, the seriousness and the hurt that this pandemic can cause, so wear your mask, be safe,” Raiden’s great-aunt told WOAI.

“It’s not a joke. It’s not fake news,” Wagner said, according to KTRK. “The other side to this is the painful suffering of the family members who are left behind, especially in this situation when it’s a 4-year-old child.”

Texas became the first state to reach 1 million cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

As of Saturday, Texas has had 1,014,160 confirmed cases of the coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic, and 19,470 deaths, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

This story was originally published November 15, 2020 at 10:51 AM with the headline "4-year-old’s dad died of COVID-19; months later, his mom died, too, Texas family says."