The loved ones of COVID victims say they feel their loss is harder to process because they are reliving the trauma every day.
Some loved ones have decided to share their story and they say sometimes the pain is sharpened by how others treat them.
"Everybody says we're going back to normal," one loved one shared. "When I hear that, my heart absolutely breaks. I don't have a normal."
Kassandra Raux, from Long Island, New York, says never in a million years did she think her brother was going to die.
Another loved one shared that this has been the most traumatic experience they've experienced in their lifetime.
An Associated Press poll found roughly 1 in 5 Americans said they "lost someone close" during the pandemic. That was six months ago.
Researchers estimate that for every life lost, "nine surviving Americans will lose a grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse, or child."
Loved ones have shared that they are currently going through counseling now to deal with the pain of losing family members to the deadly disease.
They also shared how some people still do not believe the virus is real, regardless if they knew someone has passed from it, and have created memes to minimize the impact.
"My mom's cousins will share memes and posts minimizing the virus, knowing they lost a cousin to the virus. When someone says only the weak die of COVID, I'm hearing, 'Your mother was weak. That's why she died of COVID,'" Rocco Deserto, a man who lost his mother to COVID, said.
Deserto went on to compare the situation to losing someone to another health matter, such as a heart attack.
"Imagine you lost someone to a heart attack and then, for the rest of your life, you just hear people saying, 'Heart attacks are fake. No one actually dies from heart attacks,'" he said.
