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‘Tell the Kids I Love Them’: Widow Finds COVID Victim’s Last Unsent Text

“I felt so cheated I didn’t get to be with him,” Michelle Cook says of her husband’s final days.

After Darrin Cook contracted COVID-19, the community volunteer from Bennington, Nebraska, suffered at home with a fever for nine days before heading to the emergency room. The 57-year-old was transferred to a different hospital and ended up on a ventilator before he died Aug. 31 from the virus. His wife of 31 years, Michelle, says she was never able to say goodbye in person. “I felt so cheated I didn’t get to be with him,” she told the Omaha World-Herald. “That is probably the worst thing ever, and I know he felt it, too.” But now she says she found a text message on Darrin’s phone that shows his family was the only thing on his mind in his final moments. It read: “Tell the kids I love them, and I love you, too.”