Alison Aucoin’s mother, Lynn Evans. The Facebook Post about one Covid death that stands for 404,689 in the U.S. – and counting.

Updated Jan. 21, 2021

Alison Aucoin  doesn't seem like the type of person given to making  profane gestures. But after her mother, Lynn Evans, contracted Covid and died last April in New Orleans, Alison -- livid with anger -- posted a photograph to Facebook that quickly went viral. Alison's post, a raw rant straight from the heart, was directed at Donald Trump and his egregeious mishandling of the pandemic that killed her mother.

Katie interviews Alison about her mother's life, their mutual devotion, and the terrible circumstances around Lynn's illness and death.

As of today, Thursday, Jan. 21,2021, the CDC puts the total number of deaths in the U.S. at 404,689. 

Let's put that number in perspective. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake killed 3,000 people in the SF Bay Area. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 killed 2,605 people. These latest tolls from Covid are happening in a single day. 

Lynn Evans is one of those lost to this pandemic. Each one of those people has a story, and for the loved ones left behind, devastating grief.

Alison's original Facebook post can be found here.

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.


Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson


Extra special thanks this week to Kevin Clark and the Dukes of Dixieland for permission to play a couple of songs. Kevin is on trumpet, and on Stardust Tom McDermott is on piano and the late Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris is the vocalist.

Transcript

Katie Hafner: 0:01

This is Our Mothers Ourselves, and I'm your host, Katie Hafner. Alison Aucoin doesn't seem like the type of person given to obscene gestures, which made the photos she posted on Facebook a couple of months ago, all the more powerful. It's a photograph of a very angry woman seated next to a wooden box containing her mother's ashes. And that woman, Alison Aucoin is flipping the bird at Donald Trump. Alison's mother died in April after contracting COVID at a nursing home in New Orleans. That photograph and the powerful words Alison wrote that went with it went viral almost immediately. When I saw it, I wanted to know more about what happened and more about Alison's mother Lynn Evans. I eed to tell you the story is psetting. But try to hang with t. Because it's one of the most oving stories I've heard from a aughter's perspective of mother aughter love. In this episode, ou're going to hear one person peaking from a shattered place, ust one. As of today, 256,000 eople in the US have died of OVID. Alison Aucoin, I'd like o thank you so much for coming n to Our Mothers Ourselves, to alk to me about a woman who ounds like she was absolutely emarkable as both a mother and person. Your mom, Lynn Evans. hat I wanted to ask you to do s read, start out by reading a ittle bit from this post of ours. It's, it was a Facebook ost, right?

Alison Aucoin: 2:39

Yeah. Okay. Why don't you read it, if you don't mind? I'll try. Sorry. I'm sorry. I totally, totally get it. If it's a little hard, you know, we could do is just start to talk. And then after later, then -- Yeah. Can we try that? I'm really sorry.

Katie Hafner: 3:05

Let's try it that way.

Alison Aucoin: 3:06

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 3:07

One of the things that I do is I ask everyone who comes on to the podcast to describe their mother using just one word. So if you had one word to describe your mom, what would the word be?

Alison Aucoin: 3:22

Bright.

Katie Hafner: 3:24

Bright, in all senses of the word, right?

Alison Aucoin: 3:27

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 3:28

I like that. I'd like to get the story before we go back and tell the story of your mom's life, which sounds so full and bright. Tell me the story of how she died.

Alison Aucoin: 3:42

My mom was, had dementia-

Katie Hafner: 3:45

-and set the scene for us. Where, where did she live?

Alison Aucoin: 3:48

So she was in New Orleans. She had moved to North Carolina after Hurricane Katrina, because I was moving there. And then she moved closer into Durham when I adopted my daughter to be close to her only grandchild. And then in 2016, my daughter and my mom decided that we needed to move back to New Orleans. So we all did. And so she Yeah, she was in New Orleans, and I started noticing, I start even in North Carolina, I had started noticing things and I brought it to her attention and she was not interested in listening. When it became clear to everyone that she had dementia and she needed to be in a nursing home and she finally agreed, so she was transferred to the nursing home I believe it was March 18th. So I was really pushing for them to find a placement for her because I was worried about her being in the hospital as COVID patients started to come in. I don't know why but it didn't really occurred to me that a nursing home would actually be much more dangerous place for her to b. I don't think, yeah, I think it didn't occur to a lot of people until it happened. Yeah. So, so she was transferred. And the nursing home within a week had a huge COVID plan that they told me about. And I felt relatively comfortable. They all of a sudden started restricting our communication with patients there. It was really difficult for me to talk to my mom. She wasn't able to use her cell phone effectively anymore. And as soon as that happened, and all the COVID stuff happened, it all just sort of fell apart. And I couldn't talk to her anymore. It wasn't until a couple of weeks of me just being like, this is ridiculous. You have to figure out a way to let me communicate with my mom. And at that point, I said something about, you know, when you get a COVID case, and the woman that I was that I was speaking to said, oh, we have cases and I was like, why didn't you tell me and she didn't really have an answer for that. And then in the midst of me throwing a fit about being able to communicate with her, they called me and said she was sick. And then in the midst of me throwing a fit about you didn't tell me that you had COVID cases, they called back and said that she was being transferred to the hospital. This was a hospital in New Orleans. Yeah. And so the last time, the last time that I spoke with her, speech was difficult for her, but we could still communicate. And I thought, wow, she has really taken a turn for the worst on the dementia. And what I now realize is that she was, she was horribly sick. She was trying to tell me and I didn't understand. She was trying to tell you how sick she was. Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 6:51

So sorry.

Alison Aucoin: 6:52

She was trying to tell me that she was sick, and that nobody was telling me that she was sick. That was still at the nursing home when that happened. And I'd never she was unable ever able to speak to me again. You mean after they took her to the hospital? Yeah, they called with a positive covid test. And she had full pneumonia in both lungs. So she had been at the nursing home horribly ill for just days before they sent her to the hospital. By the time they got her in the hospital and in ICU, she had kidney failure. And her brain was swelling. She was transferred to a hospice unit in New Orleans, outside of the hospital. She was there for about two days, and then she died. And you didn't get to talk to her. Did did they hold the phone up? They did.

Katie Hafner: 8:00

So that you could talk to her?

Alison Aucoin: 8:02

Yeah, they did at the hospital. And then they did at the, at the hospice as well. And I was living in North Carolina. And I certainly thought a billion times about just jumping in the car and driving to New Orleans. But I decided not to. My mom wouldn't have wanted me to take the risk for myself or my daughter and I know that. And some very, very good family friends. Um, the husband of that family is an amazing musician in New Orleans, professional musician. Kevin Clark. He's the trumpet player. He plays with the Dukes of Dixieland. He's amazing. Nobody had CD players anymore. So Kevin went and brought a CD player and some earphones

Katie Hafner: 9:03

So she could hear it. You know, I've heard that when you're dying hearing is the very last sentence to go, that you hold on to your hearing longer than any other sense. So there was something really brilliant about doing that.

Alison Aucoin: 9:22

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 9:27

Allison, would you like to go get a sip of water or tea?

Alison Aucoin: 9:31

I didn't really think about tissues.

Katie Hafner: 9:35

Why don't you go get a tissue.

Alison Aucoin: 9:40

I'll be right back.

Katie Hafner: 9:41

Okay.

Alison Aucoin: 9:41

Sorry. Okay, I'm back.

Katie Hafner: 9:45

So, let us start at the beginning. And tell me the story of your mom's life.

Alison Aucoin: 9:51

Um, my mom was born in Gretna, which is across, it's a suburb of New Orleans on the West Bank. And her mom was a housewife and her dad. She was born in 1940. I don't know what her dad was doing at the time when she was born. But during the war, he, he worked at the shipyard making those boats, the ones that they dry. They drove up onto the beaches in the Pacific, and then the flap fell down in the salt. The Marines and soldiers ran out. This was your your mom's dad. My mom's dad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, both of our parents were really into Mardi Gras. They were nuts about it. And they were-

Katie Hafner: 10:32

-What does it mean to be into Mardi Gras?

Alison Aucoin: 10:35

I think at one point, my grandfather was in like five different Mardi Gras crews. So he worked like five different parades. He had been a jazz musician in the 30s. Before he married my grandmother.

Katie Hafner: 10:50

Those were your mom's parents?

Alison Aucoin: 10:52

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 10:52

And then they had one child, your mom?

Alison Aucoin: 10:55

They had two, they had a baby before my mom, and she died as an infant. And then they had my mom and that's it.

Katie Hafner: 11:04

So she must have been super special to them. Having lost one.

Alison Aucoin: 11:08

She was. My grandmother lost her dad in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Katie Hafner: 11:14

Oh, geez, Louise.

Alison Aucoin: 11:17

And then her mom and she and her sisters were all homeless. And then her mom died in childbirth when she was 11. And then she had a baby die. So she really felt like people I love die.

Katie Hafner: 11:33

So she had a special investment in your mom.

Alison Aucoin: 11:37

Obsessive. Yes. For good and for ill obsessive.

Katie Hafner: 11:42

Okay. So there was your mom, this very special only child growing up in New Orleans. Did she go to college?

Alison Aucoin: 11:51

She did. She really wanted to leave to go to college, but her parents wouldn't let her. So she went, she was in the first class of the University of New Orleans, the first freshman class. They said they didn't want her to leave New Orleans. They didn't want her to leave. They were okay. They wanted her to go to go to college. But they didn't want her to leave to go to college.

Katie Hafner: 12:13

Got it.

Alison Aucoin: 12:14

So she fixed that by getting engaged to my dad. And so she only went to one year of college before she married my dad. She had an escape plan. Yeah, she's getting out one way or the other. Okay, so and so how did she meet your dad? His cousins were my grandparents and my mom's next door neighbor. And he was in New Orleans going to school, he was a little older. And so he had come from this really small town in Louisiana called Napoleonville to go to school. And so she married my dad, he was finishing school, and going back to Napoleonville to start a business. And so she married him and went with him. I'm glad she did, because there's me. But that was, it was not wanting to leave your parents house is probably not ever a super good reason to get married.

Katie Hafner: 13:08

Right.

Alison Aucoin: 13:09

And they were the most ill suited people for each other that I could possibly imagine.

Katie Hafner: 13:17

Because your mother was what type of person versus your father who was what type of person?

Alison Aucoin: 13:21

My mom was very intellectually curious. My father was not. My mom was very interested in aesthetics, and the arts and the world. And my father was not. He was very rigid, very practical. The rest of the world didn't even really exist to him. And what did he do for a living? He had a retail store in Napoleonville that sold electronics.

Katie Hafner: 14:00

And your mom was a housewife, and a mom to you?

Alison Aucoin: 14:03

So they had fertility problems. And so in the beginning, she was a housewife with the expectation that she would start, you know, having babies. And when that didn't happen, she sort of I don't know exactly how she did it. But she sort of pushed him to let her work. And my mom was really smart. And so she started teaching school. So she was a school teacher.

Katie Hafner: 14:33

And so she grew up sort of knowing what was expected of her.

Alison Aucoin: 14:38

My mom definitely was raised, knowing what was expected of her. And my father also came from a very, very poor family, was a very good provider and to some degree, had an appreciation for my mother, knowing how to do things that he wasn't raised with.

Katie Hafner: 15:02

Right how to be in society, kind of the Junior League aspect of things.

Alison Aucoin: 15:07

Yes. Yeah. I don't think Napoleonville has a junior league. But if it had my mom would have been in it. Got it. And so when and how did she decide to tackle the fertility problems? I don't know. Exactly. I was born in 1967. So I mean, like mid 60s, this is way before Google. You know, I don't even know how she found a doctor. But she found a doctor in New Orleans, who was, you know, a pioneer in fertility treatments. So he helped her figure this out. Was your dad on board with all of this? I guess. He would have had to cooperate if for no other reason than to pay for it. So do you know if you were the first pregnancy? Uh huh. I was.

Katie Hafner: 16:05

And then you were born, no complications with the pregnancy and you were born-

Alison Aucoin: 16:10

- So the only complication with the pregnancy was that my mom had been, you know, she'd been having fertility problems for so long that it never occurred to her that she was pregnant. She didn't find out that she was pregnant until she was actually in her sixth grade class that she was teaching. And she passed out. And she was teaching at a Catholic school and the nuns were like, you have to go to the doctor. And she was like, Oh, I'm fine, which is totally my mom. And they were like, you know, do you think, you're in the family way? But she was like, No, no, no, you know, there's no way we've, they were married, like, think nine years at that point. And -

Katie Hafner: 16:54

- Oh, wow, this was a long time coming.

Alison Aucoin: 16:57

Yeah. And the nuns were like, Yeah, but like that really scared the kids, you have to go to the doctor. And so she went to the doctor, and she was pregnant, but it was unclear how pregnant she was. She had one idea of how pregnant she was. And the doctor had, had a different idea about it. And he thought that she was much further along than she was. She was like, no, I'm not. I don't feel it. And he was like, yeah, yeah, it's 1967 in the south, and you've never had a baby before. I'm not listening to you. And so they induced me. And sure enough, I was premature.

Katie Hafner: 17:40

So how old was she, when she had you?

Alison Aucoin: 17:43

27.

Katie Hafner: 17:45

Wow. So she got married when she was 18?

Alison Aucoin: 17:49

Well, I guess she must have been 28 then because she got married when she was 19.

Katie Hafner: 17:54

That is young.

Alison Aucoin: 17:55

Yeah. So when, at one point, my mom and I were talking about this, maybe 10 years ago, my mom got really serious. And she said, I never apologize to you for not standing against them. And letting that happen. And I'm sorry.

Katie Hafner: 18:17

So she carried this around all her life thinking she needed to apologize to you for not standing firmer against the people who wanted to induce?

Alison Aucoin: 18:28

Yeah, against my dad, and doctors. And I told her I was like that, that's, that's not the world that we live in now. You were in a completely different position.

Katie Hafner: 18:42

Right. So there you were, then there you were this precious only child much like your mother.

Alison Aucoin: 18:50

Yep.

Katie Hafner: 18:51

And what do you remember? So did she go back to college?

Alison Aucoin: 18:58

She went back to college, but not until I was in school.

Katie Hafner: 19:03

In grade school?

Alison Aucoin: 19:04

Yep. She realized that all of the things that were pretty messed up about her relationship with my dad, or becoming pretty messed up about my relationship with my dad, of him being very controlling and rigid and judgmental. And so she decided she had to divorce him. But she also realized that she didn't have a way to make a living because, you know, the only reason she was a school teacher with not having a college degree was because she was in Napoleonville for goodness sakes. And so she knew that if she went back to New Orleans, she wasn't going to be able to teach school without a degree. So she talked my dad into letting her go back to college, but I don't know how she did it. I really don't have any idea how she did it. But his rule was, yes, you could do it, but I won't pay for it. And you can only go to class when Allison is at school. And you could only study after Allison goes to bed.

Katie Hafner: 20:18

Why? And they were still married, right?

Alison Aucoin: 20:20

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 20:21

Oh my gosh. So what, what was that? What was the reason for this set of ridiculous rules?

Alison Aucoin: 20:27

Because her her goal in life was to be a mother. And of course, he clearly had no clue that she was doing it in order to leave him. Like the kind of stuff that my dad would do. He would, he was, he made those rules, right. And then we had a full time housekeeper. He cut the hours of our housekeeper so that she wasn't there to get me off the bus so that my mom had to be there to get me off the bus. And so that she wasn't there to fix dinner. So that my mom had to be up at God knows what hour of the morning studying before she got me up, get me up, get me to school, fix my dad and me breakfast, put me on the bus, get in the car, drive to the college, do all of her classes, drive back, get me back off the bus, hang out with me and fix dinner, have dinner, do the dishes, put me to bed, and then she could study.

Katie Hafner: 21:31

This is all very punitive on your father's part bordering on cruel?

Alison Aucoin: 21:35

Absolutely.

Katie Hafner: 21:37

Goodness gracious.

Alison Aucoin: 21:38

Absolutely.

Katie Hafner: 21:39

So she complied with this set of rules.

Alison Aucoin: 21:42

She complied with the set of rules and wound up like on the Dean's list, I think every semester and on the President's list several semesters and got her degree and left my dad. Packed me up and left my dad. She decided to go to graduate school. And she wanted to be a social worker, because a lot of the volunteer work that she had done as a young married was with people with disabilities. And so she did one year of graduate school and then realized that she wasn't going to be able to support us, that she couldn't support us as a graduate student. So my mom had really incredible taste. So she quit school. And she got a job at the best design firm, interior design firm in Baton Rouge. And within a really short period of time, she was made like manager or something like that. And then at one point, she found out that she was making less than the man who had had the job before her. And when she asked her boss why, he said it was because she was a woman, and she got child support and alimony. And she didn't need as much money. And the thing that's so sick about that, is that in actuality, my mom was totally screwed. My dad told her in no uncertain terms when she decided to divorce him that she could have a property settlement or she could have custody of me. But she could not have both. And she chose me.

Katie Hafner: 23:24

It sounds like her biggest priority was being your mother.

Alison Aucoin: 23:28

Absolutely.

Katie Hafner: 23:30

And as you look back on your childhood, and you think of all the ways that she was a wonderful mother, give, I'd love to hear something that made you understand what a great mother she was.

Alison Aucoin: 23:42

I think I think that, you know, not being uncommon among those of us who go on to have kids is that I realized how much my mom loved me when I became a mom.

Katie Hafner: 23:58

Because-

Alison Aucoin: 24:01

-Because I was able to see how often in the case of my mom very imperfectly, but always did her absolute, sometimes super human best to get me what I needed. And very often what I wanted, you know, my mom made sure that I had the opportunity to go away to college if that's what I wanted to do. My daughter is adopted, I was, you know, becoming a parent as a single person and I thought, oh, how do I want to do this and doing it by myself and I just really felt like pregnancy was not going to be for me, and that I really wanted to adopt. And so, you know, my mom helped me pay for the adoption and rearranged her life to be in Durham to help me be the most effective parent that I could be. You know, a lot of my childhood and, and after my childhood, she was self employed. And so there were times when, you know, we never, we certainly never went hungry. But there were definitely times when, you know, need to be a little bit frugal and my mom was not awesome at that. But if something came up where it was important to me, the answer was always yes, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Yes. And there are so many ways that I am a very different parent than my mom was. Sorry. But I'm really proud about the fact that that is something that is a way in which I am very much like her, because I sit here talking to you from Orange County, California, a place I do not belong.

Katie Hafner: 25:56

Not sure who belongs in Orange County.

Alison Aucoin: 25:59

I really don't. But my daughter received a scholarship to the American Ballet Theatre training program here in Orange County.

Katie Hafner: 26:09

Hmm.

Alison Aucoin: 26:09

And we moved from North Carolina to California, in a Prius, in a pandemic. So that she could go to -- So that she could go there. That's what I mean, like I am, that is a part of my mom's parenting that I am proud to continue. That my mom did not do things perfectly. There are ways in which she was an absolute mess. But when I got that look in my eye, and she knew something was important that I either needed or wanted, every time, the answer was, I don't know how I'm gonna make it work, but I will, we'll figure it out.

Katie Hafner: 27:01

Amazing.

Alison Aucoin: 27:02

We always did. Amazing. Let's fast forward to the post. Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 27:13

Your mom, you've described this terrible scene of leading up to her death. What is it that made you decide that you were going to post this?

Alison Aucoin: 27:25

And I just posted it for my friends. And then a couple of my friends said, hey, will you make this public so I can share it? And then it was it was so strange, because we were in a hotel here in Orange County, waiting to move into our apartment.

Katie Hafner: 27:45

So this was to Facebook. Right?

Alison Aucoin: 27:47

Yeah.

Katie Hafner: 27:47

And then it went viral very quickly, within hours, right?

Alison Aucoin: 27:53

I don't, I think it took a little bit longer than that. But it went pretty quickly.

Katie Hafner: 27:58

Is this the post where you're there in the photograph with the box of your mom's ashes? And you are -

Alison Aucoin: 28:05

- Giving the finger -

Katie Hafner: 28:07

- to Donald Trump?

Alison Aucoin: 28:09

Yep.

Katie Hafner: 28:10

And what made you decide to have that particular pose?

Alison Aucoin: 28:14

With regard to, sorry, with regard to my mom's ashes, being in the photo, the idea that so many millions of people in this country think that people who died aren't real or don't matter is honestly, like, the most heartbreaking thing I've ever experienced in my life. One thing that surprised me when I saw it, oddly enough, it wasn't that you were giving the middle finger to Trump, which I think a lot of people have, have felt in his response to the pandemic, but that it was the box of her ashes. It's almost counterintuitive. Because you'd think you'd, in stories like this, people have photographs of their loved one, which is the memory. But what was so striking was her absence. I think part of that decision was about the fact that my mom's dear friend who was able to see her, took possession of her ashes. And I actually picked them up as we drove cross country to move to California. The Night of the first debate, we were traveling through Texas. I was pretty nervous about it, this time in America, driving alone with my black child. That didn't feel okay to me. And my daughter is an immigrant. And I was concerned about being stopped by Border Patrol and being asked, Where were you born? My daughter? Her answer would be Ethiopia. And we were driving down this State Road in Texas, with my mom's ashes on the floor in the car. And my daughter wanted to listen to the debate. And we started listening to delusional and hateful things he was saying, with all of those things sort of coming together at the same time, the ashes in the state highway and avoiding Border Patrol and everything, something in me just sort of cracked. That, to me is what led to the place of, I'm not going to show you a lovely picture of my mom, even though she was lovely. I'm going to show you what he left us with. And you did. I did. And the finger was because my mom had the capacity to be the most gracious, and genteel, Southern woman that you can imagine. But when somebody needed to be told to fuck off, she told them.

Katie Hafner: 31:29

And you were speaking for all those people grieving for when you wrote your post, it was 214,000 dead. And today, it's 250,000 people dead and counting.

Alison Aucoin: 31:44

And there are very, very few of those people who had no one who cared about them. I mean, even if you're a jerk, somebody cares that you died. Do you think that you can read that for me? Now? I'll try.

Katie Hafner: 32:01

Okay, give it a try.

Alison Aucoin: 32:08

To friends who have been there with us through the last five months, we love you to the moon and back. To those who I don't know, who have reacted, supportively commented and shared, I can't even express to you how much this has meant to my daughter and me. The isolation we have felt in our grief has been unimaginable. So please, don't stop with us. Read the obituaries. Reach out to those you barely know who have lost someone in this nightmare. And let them know that you care. Celebrate the people we've lost. The non famous people like my mom, who were imperfect people, who persevered through all sorts of complications of life. My mom is one of over 214,000 people in this country who have died. Grieve each and every one of them. Was that okay enough to use?

Katie Hafner: 33:20

That was beautiful.

Alison Aucoin: 33:22

Thanks.

Katie Hafner: 33:23

Alison. I'm gonna let you go. And I want to thank you.

Alison Aucoin: 33:28

Can I add one thing please I think it important. Yes. Whatever you want to add, please do. So, my mom really loved Joe Biden. Like she really really loved Joe Biden. She had a lot of respect for Obama, but she loved Joe Biden. There are no words for how much it means to me to have a leader who cares about those of us who are grieving. And who is able to understand it. I expected to feel relief when the election ended with the outcome that it had, but I didn't expect it to be so healing.

Katie Hafner: 34:19

Unexpectedly healing, right?

Alison Aucoin: 34:22

Yeah. My mom would be so proud to have him as her president. And she would be so grateful for the compassionate empathy that he showed to the people, the two people that she loved most in the world. And he did that without knowing who we are.

Katie Hafner: 34:58

And that's Our Mothers Ourselves for this week. Our theme song was composed and performed by Andrea Perry. Paula Mangin is our artist in residence. Our intern is Rosie Manock and Alice Hudson is the show's producer. A special thanks to Kevin Clark and his Dukes of Dixieland Band for giving us permission to play a couple of songs. On Stardust, Lil Queenie is on vocals. And Tom McDermott is on piano. Our Mothers Ourselves is a production of Oradek Studios in San Francisco. And I'm your host, Katie Hafner. Have a great week everybody, and a safe Thanksgiving.