The grief is still unbearable for Martha Freire.
One year ago this week, she spoke to her husband, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez Barzola, for the last time. It was only a few hours later that he was killed at the kosher grocery store in Jersey City where he worked.
She expected family and friends to visit from her homeland of Ecuador in the past year and help distract her from the sorrow she seems to constantly feel. But COVID-19 struck, forcing flights to be canceled, and Freire to face the days mostly alone with her 12-year old daughter, Amy, in a country she still is getting to know.