“It was perfect for us, because we’re both in the academic field,” Ruth stated during the interview. It was nice to see a smile on her face for the first time through the Zoom screen after the interview has gone more than an hour. 

 

Ruth Ottman and David Strug met when they were in their late 40s through Academia Companion, which is a 90’s dating agency for single scholars in New York City. She was teaching Epidemiology at Columbia University, and David was also a psychotherapy researcher. They got married with no children, and they were soulmates to each other, enjoying a walk together in Prospect Park almost every evening for 24 years.

 

Ruth now is a 69-year-old lady and lost her husband, David to COVID-19 in June 2020. When David got COVID in early 2020, he was sent to the emergency room in a local hospital in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where they had been living together since 1999. Ruth was not allowed to see David due to the COVID-19 protocols that even excluded immediate relatives. Then a few weeks later, with Ruth’s colleague’s help, David was transferred to Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan, where she could finally have access to visit David. Ruth was advised by the doctor that David could never come back home, David was clear about not wanting to go on. In the most difficult decision of her life, she agreed with David’s decision to remove the ventilator. She had to confront the hopeless future. I conveyed my respect for her braveness to unreservedly share her stories with me.

 

Since 2021, she has tried to find new connections from the online bereavement, widows’ groups, or her neighbors, which are things she was barely familiar with before. She said she was the type of wife who most likely spent time with her husband, David. For her, this two-hour oral history interview with me, a new Columbia student from South Korea, was also new to her, but somehow relieved her pain.

 

Ruth is currently a tenured professor at Columbia University. She said that she recalls the time when she had a micro symptom in the early days of the pandemic and decided to sleep separately from David just in case to be safe. (They lived in two-bed rooms apartment.) She was concerned about her breath in the air which they were constantly sharing.