A Bend couple’s love story ends without a last touch, in the year of COVID-19

Deschutes County's fourth death, Central Oregon's fifth

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – Carrie Lea doesn’t want her mother’s COVID-19 death at Mt. Bachelor Memory Care to be just another sad statistic on a growing list, but for others to know a bit of her parents’ love story, unusual in some ways (a parting, then a reunion decades later), but in other ways very much a typical Bend story.

Sharran Weeks, 79, did not have her 80-year-old husband, Larry Weeks (known by his nickname “Troll”) at her side when she passed late Thursday night. Nor were Lea or other family members able to be there in the room, due to the pandemic outbreak that has led to 60 staff and resident COVID-19 cases at the facility in recent weeks.

Larry had last done the touching, but not-quite-touching ‘window touch” so sadly familiar to many with loved ones in long-term care facilities several weeks ago, before the outbreak hit.

Then, even that only visual almost-connection also had to end.

“I just don’t want her to be a number, a statistic,” Lea said Saturday after reaching out to NewsChannel 21.

“Theirs is a love story,” she had written. “My mom and dad married young, moved to Bend when Greenwood and (Highway) 97 was a four-way stop.”

They had Carrie and her twin sister at St. Charles Hospital, back when it was on “Hospital Hill” (where the Phoenix Inn was built and the DoubleTree by Hilton now stands downtown).

Lea said her dad did the electrical work on Bend’s first Safeway grocery store.

True Bend roots, indeed.

Sadly, they had a falling out and divorced -- and both remarried twice – but Lea said they “found each other again after 30 years and remarried” about 10 years ago.

That’s about as unusual as … well, these times we live in.

But in another turn of life, Lea said they only had a couple of years back together again, before “Alzheimer’s came and slowly took my mom away from him.”

Also sadly familiar for so many families, and the challenges it brings, even in “normal” times.

“He kept her home as long as he could,” Lea wrote. “But when he needed professional help, he made the gut-wrenching decision to put her in Mt. Bachelor Memory Care.”

“He came and got her almost every day, until she could no longer walk out. Then he came to see her almost every day.”

Then … COVID-19, and he could only see her through that window. Until the virus came calling, and “the lockdown prevented him from seeing her again, and she died without him by her side,” Lea wrote

“That was not our plan,” she said. “He wanted to be there, but the staff are absolutely wonderful, and I know they cared for her. They were with her.”

Sharran Weeks, as the lists will note, had an “underlying condition” – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, her daughter said. She’d also had asthma, though that cleared up within a year of her arrival at Mt. Bachelor Memory Care, and she no longer needed to be on oxygen.

“I’m not blaming anybody for her getting COVID,” Lee said, frequently thanking the facility’s staff for their caring, right up until her final days.

She was the third Mt. Bachelor Memory Care resident to die of COVID-19, health officials said.

"Our thoughts are with the family as they grieve the loss of their loved one," said Deschutes County Health Services spokeswoman Morgan Emerson.

Weeks is the fourth COVID-19-related death reported in Deschutes County and fifth among Central Oregon residents.

Two men in their 90s who also were living at Mt. Bachelor Memory Care have died after testing positive for COVID-19; their deaths were announced Friday.

Mallory DeCosta, regional vice president for the facility's managers, Frontier Management, provided this statement on Week's passing:

"We are saddened to share that a third resident in hospice care has passed after testing positive for the COVID-19 virus. While we continue to strictly follow the recommendations of the CDC, state and local health agencies, the impacts of this virus are challenging. Our commitment to caring for our residents and staff remains the ultimate priority, but we grieve for our residents and their loved ones as well."

Emerson said, "We need our community's help to continue to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Stay home when you are sick, wear a mask when you're around people you don't live with and practice physical distancing."

Emerson said the Oregon Health Authority will include the woman's death in an upcoming release.