The quality that made the tightly knit Fusco family great was the very thing that exacted the harshest price.
Two dozen or so relatives had gathered five years ago for dinner, as they often did. They talked loudly, hugged and shared food, unaware of the virus that filled the air in a kitchen in New Jersey and was about to dig its deadly spikes into the fabric of life in the United States.
Within days, four of the Fuscos were dead.
At the time, only nine deaths had been attributed to Covid-19 in New Jersey, a state that has recorded more than 36,000 virus-related fatalities since the start of the pandemic.
Their names and photos flashed in headlines across the globe in March 2020 as their story became an object lesson about the potency of the virus and the importance of adhering to a then-foreign concept of social distancing.
The world has mostly moved on, though people continue to die of the virus every day. But for the surviving Fuscos, a ghostlike companion has hovered over many of the intervening 1,823 days.
“Every day, you get up, and you’re like, ‘Did this really happen?’” said Maria Reid, who spent weeks on a ventilator fighting for life. “And then you’re like, ‘Yeah. It happened.’
“The pain is just all still there.”
Ms. Reid’s 73-year-old mother, her sister and two brothers all died within days of that Tuesday night dinner. Dozens of relatives were sickened, including an aunt, who died soon afterward.
“It’s like living a different life,” said Elizabeth Fusco, Ms. Reid’s sister and the youngest of Grace and Vincenzo Fusco’s 11 children. “It was just too many at one time.”
“For families like us,” she added, “Covid will never be over.”
Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, died first, on March 13. Grace, the matriarch, passed away five days later after being placed on a ventilator. She died without learning that two of her sons, Carmine, 55, and Vincent, 53, had also been fatally stricken.
The dates are seared in the memory of Msgr. Sam Sirianni of St. Robert Bellarmine, a cathedral in Freehold, N.J., where Rita taught religious education, sang in the choir, coordinated weddings and tended a garden.
The bishop called on March 14 and ordered the church to close for at least two weeks. Monsignor Sirianni announced the decision that day at Mass as he explained that a family of active parishioners had become extremely sick from the virus, without mentioning the Fuscos by name.
The church’s phone, Monsignor Sirianni said, began to ring. Many callers had the same question.
“Where did they sit?”
It is that insidious fear that shrouded the earliest months of the pandemic that Monsignor Sirianni still recalls best.
“It was a large Italian family that was just doing what large Italian families do: Eating. Having dinner,” he said. “It wasn’t extraordinary, and yet there was danger.”
In the years since the Fuscos buried a third of their nuclear family, several great-grandchildren have been born. A son purchased the home in Freehold where Grace and Vincenzo, an immigrant from Monte Forte, Italy, raised their children after moving from Brooklyn.
They can’t recall the last time they heard from researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who were initially so eager to study their DNA. Freehold Raceway, where the Fuscos, a family of horse racers, owners and trainers, often labored, closed down for good.
“We grew up there in that place,” Ms. Reid said. “Heartbreaking.”
Joe Fusco, the oldest surviving son who spent 30 days on a ventilator, said in a text message that he had no interest in reliving bad memories. Many other families lost nearly as much. Tell their stories, he suggested.
Michele Acito, a nurse, understands his desire to move on.
Three days before Rita’s death, John Brennan, who worked nights at Yonkers Raceway, had the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first person in the Northeast known to die from the virus, in Hackensack, N.J.
Within weeks, Holy Name Medical Center, a hospital about two miles away, became an epicenter of the virus.
“I think people need a way to say: ‘It’s over. I’m better, and I’m moving on,’ ” said Ms. Acito, who was on duty at Holy Name when three of her close relatives arrived, sick from the coronavirus and gasping for breath.
Her mother-in-law died there days later. Her brother-in-law suffered from long Covid, she said, and died in 2022 at the age of 72.
“It seems like it was 50 years ago and yet it seems like it could be last week,” said Ms. Acito, now the hospital’s chief nursing officer. “I can still to this day see the faces of the patients who were there.”
For the Fusco family, the trauma has taken its toll.
Last December was the first time since the pandemic that all eight of the remaining siblings came together for Christmas Eve, previously a don’t-miss event.
“Some days you just say, ‘They’re in a better place, and it’s going to be OK,’” said Elizabeth Fusco. “And other days, you just get really angry.” She contracted the virus but never showed symptoms, freeing her to take on the role of medical advocate while her relatives were hospitalized.
She said her brother Joe recognized how much she had started to struggle after the initial blizzard of grim activity.
“Like did I actually grieve?” she said. “Have I actually processed this?”
He insisted on getting together with her weekly, in addition to the large gatherings with the extended family, which still happen most Sundays.
“At first he would just say, ‘I miss Mommy’s meatloaf, and you’re the only one who can make it like she did,’ ” Ms. Fusco said.
Now, it’s a Thursday night ritual.
“A lot of weeks we don’t even talk about anything,” she said. “We just cook.”
