‘He’ll always be there in my heart’: Elizabeth Warren opened up about grieving the death of her brother from COVID-19
"We're all having to learn a new way to grieve."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren admits she and her older brother, Don Reed Herring, didn’t agree on everything.
“He was a cranky Republican,” Warren, a progressive Democrat from Massachusetts, recalled on MSNBC Wednesday night. “But… no matter how much we disagreed, we ended every phone conversation with, he’d say, ‘I love ya, sis,’ and I would say, ‘Love you too, brother.’”
And Herring was “a good man,” she said.
An Air Force veteran, Herring served in the military for 20 years, including in combat in Vietnam.
In fact, Warren’s oldest memory of Herring was the drive her family took to Oklahoma City to see Herring off as he went to serve his country. He was 19 years old. Warren was 3.
“He was dashing, he was handsome, and he was ready for an adventure,” she said.
These are memories a tearful Warren offered to Nicolle Wallace, host of “Deadline White House,” on Wednesday as she remembered her brother, who died last April due to COVID-19.
Warren recalled the difficulty in not being able to be with her brother as he passed due to coronavirus safety protocols — a pain many families are still experiencing, even as vaccines become available.
“They called us and told us he was gone,” Warren said. “And nobody was with him, not any of us, and I don’t know how he died. I don’t know if he was cold, or if he was thirsty. All I know is I couldn’t be there to tell him how much I loved him and neither could the rest of our family, and that’s hard.”
Warren said her family tries to focus on the “good years” they had with Herring, instead.
“Those are the parts that we talk about because that’s what it means to keep someone alive,” she said. “No, I can’t talk to him on the phone, but he’ll always be there in my heart, always.”
She urged others to share and listen to the stories about loved ones they lost, too, to help them cope with the grief.
“We’re all having to learn a new way to grieve,” Warren said. “I would have been there with my brother, but I also would have been there with the rest of my family when we lost my brother, so we (would) have had all those chances to tell all those stories and to kind of let it find a place to settle in our hearts. That is part of what COVID has stolen from us.”
Watch the interview:
Like so many other families across the country, I lost my brother Don Reed to COVID-19 last spring. Last night I spoke to @NicolleDWallace about how he’s still alive in my heart. pic.twitter.com/BWRFzzp6wY
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 11, 2021
