What They Left Behind by Cate Dingley

Public Project

What They Left Behind

Copyright Cate Dingley 2024

Updated Mar 2021

Location Amarillo, Texas

Topics Children, Coronavirus, Covid, Dying/Death, Editorial, Media, Pandemics, Parenting & Family, Photography, Sorrow

As the nation reaches the milestone of a half-million deaths about a year after the first American succumbed to the coronavirus, the number of children killed by the disease remains relatively small. Each death represents a shattered family and a trauma deepened, parents say, by the rampant belief that kids can’t get covid, or that it doesn’t much harm them when they do. The children who have died of covid-19 are, even more than among adults, disproportionately children of color—about three-quarters of those who’ve succumbed to covid so far, according to CDC data.

They were kids who were obsessed with vampires and unicorns, thrilled by skateboarding and Mario Kart. They left behind stuffed animals worn raw with love, siblings who still wander into their rooms looking for them, and, next to one child’s tombstone, a little white concrete bench, bedazzled with pink rhinestones that spell out “Kim.”

“Look what happened to us,” Drone said. “People have to take it serious. And it’s not over. We’re still in the pandemic. We’re still in 2021. Do you think no more kids are going to die? Tagan was the light for us. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

Text excerpt by Annie Gowen et al. Published by The Washington Post in February, 2021. Read here.

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Cate Dingley

Also by Cate Dingley —

Predicting The Worst

Exotic Bodies In Motion

The Triumph of Obscurity