An obituary for a Kansas man who died of COVID-19 this week skewers those who have chosen not to wear masks in public throughout the pandemic.
According to his obituary, Marvin Farr died of COVID-19 on Tuesday in western Kansas. Born in 1939 amid the Great Depression and just ahead of World War II, the remembrance says that Farr was born into times where Americans banded together for common causes — "times of loss and sacrifice difficult for most of us to imagine."
However, the obituary says that's not the case today.
"He died in a world where many of his fellow Americans refuse to wear a piece of cloth on their face to protect one another," his obituary reads.
Farr's obituary also says that his final days were "harder, scarier and lonelier than necessary" and that "he died in a room not his own, being cared for by people dressed in confusing and frightening ways." It adds that he was not surrounded by friends and family at the time of his death.
Farr's obituary describes him as a farmer, veterinarian and a religious man, a person who "would look after those who had harmed him the deepest, a sentiment echoed by the healthcare workers struggling to do their jobs as their own communities turn against them or make their jobs harder."
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Farr's son Courtney said he was "in shock" to see how widely the obituary had spread online. He said that while the response has been overwhelmingly positive, he has seen some negative comments, including claims that he had made his father's death about politics.
"Well, his death was political," Courtney Farr wrote. "He died in isolation with an infectious disease that is causing a national crisis. To pretend otherwise or to obfuscate is also a political decision."
Courtney Farr says his father tested positive for the virus last week and had been in isolation since Thanksgiving.
"I've spent most of this year hearing people from my hometown talk about how this disease isn't real, isn't that bad, only kills old people, masks don't work, etc," Courtney Farr said in a Facebook post. "And because of the prevalence of those attitudes, my father's death was so much harder on him, his family and his caregivers than it should have been. Which is why this obit is written as it is."