COVID-19

Jon Coelho with his children, Braedyn and Penelope. When Katie Coelho rushed to the hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, on Wednesday just before 3 a.m., it was too late. Her husband, Jon, who had spent the past month there being treated for the coronavirus, had just died of cardiac arrest brought on by the disease. Distraught and bereft, she gathered her late husband’s belongings and opened his phone, wanting to save as many pictures of him and their two children as she could. But what she found when she turned it on stopped her in her tracks. He’d left her a note. “I love you guys with all my heart and you’ve given me the best life I could have ever asked for,” Jon had written. “I am so lucky it makes me so proud to be your husband and the father to Braedyn and Penny.” “Katie you are the most beautiful caring nurturing person I’ve ever met,” the note continued. “You are truly one of a kind...make sure you live life with happiness and that same passion that made me fall in love with you. Seeing you be the best mom to the kids is the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced.” Katie was stunned to find the note, which she believes Jon must have written weeks earlier before he was first intubated, she told BuzzFeed News on the day of his death. “Even though he was fighting for his life for the past month, I know up until the last second he wanted to make sure the kids and I were okay,” she said. “He knew he had to say something to me because I haven’t been able to speak to him in so long.” “He loved his kids so much, and I know he didn’t want to leave them,” she said. “It feels so sad that they’re both going to miss out on each other. It’s not fair