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Alex Zauner/NC3
A paddle out in the Santa Barbara Harbor payed tribute to those that have lost their lives to COVID-19.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. A group of local nurses organized a paddle out to grieve the many lives lost to COVID-19 Saturday afternoon in the Santa Barbara Harbor.
Nichol Clark is a nurse at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
“We were able to look at each other and see that we all share memories of a certain special person,” she said. “We also share the hardships of these times.
Clark has been battling this deadly virus for over a year while caring for those ailing in isolation.
Meissner-Davirro and Paddle Santa Barbara organized fundraising paddles for Halloween and Christmas.
Nichol Des Jardins Clark, a clinical nurse at Cottage Hospital, wrote on the Paddle Santa Barbara Facebook page about what the paddle out means: “COVID has touched so many of us. As nurses, it’s so hard loving somebody for weeks and fighting for them and losing them and not being able to hold their families, or talk to them and grieve.
“We love them and then lose them, totally lose them because we were only family for a little bit and then they are gone, and we aren’t family and don’t know they’re real people. And the grief has no place to go.