Father Used the Notepad App on His Phone to Write His Wife and Children a Letter Before Succumbing to COVID-19, His Wife Found It After He Died

Before 32-year-old Jonathan Coelho passed away after a valiant battle with COVID-19, he wrote a letter in the notepad app on his phone. He didn’t tell anyone about the letter, but his wife still found it.

Coelho is married to 28-year-old Katie Coelho. He passed away on April 22, according to CNN. And in an interview with Katie, she explained how she discovered her husband’s last words to her and their two children.

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At first, things looked good for Coelho. But when he took a turn for the worst, the father was removed from his ventilator 28 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. “My husband wore gloves, masks, he washed his hands,” Katie told BuzzFeed. “He was so super vigilant because he was so afraid of what would happen to our son if he caught it.”

And when he learned he did contract it, he quarantined himself in a separate room of the house. Within 24 hours, he started having extreme coughing fits and a doctor told him to go to the hospital for nebulizer treatments. He never came home. That next day, he was put on a ventilator.

“They tried to wake him up on day seven, and he was breathing way, way, way too hard,” she told BuzzFeed. “They thought he was having a panic attack, so they FaceTimed me, and he just said, ‘I love you and I’m sorry,’ and then they had to re-intubate him.”

Father Write Letter to Family Before Succumbing to COVID-19

It was after she was sent home with a plastic bag of her husband’s things that something in her told her to get all of the pictures of him and their children off of his phone. “For some reason in my delirium, I wanted to get all of the pictures of my husband and my kids off of his phone.” And that’s when she found his note:

“I love you guys with all my heart and you’ve given me the best life I could have ever asked for. I am so lucky it makes me so proud to be your husband and the father to Braedyn and Penny,” Coelho wrote in his note, according to BuzzFeed. “Katie you are the most beautiful caring nurturing person I’ve ever met. You are truly one of a kind…make sure you live life with happiness and that same passion that made me fall in love with you. Seeing you be the best mom to the kids is the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

The father then addressed his kids individually before telling his wife that if she found someone that loved her and their kids, that he wants her to do whatever will make her the happiest. “Let Braedyn know he’s my best bud and I’m proud to be his father and for all the amazing things he’s done and continue to do. Let Penelope know she’s a princess and can have whatever she wants in life. I’m so lucky…”

“Don’t hold back,” he told his wife in the note. “And if you meet someone know that if they love you and the kids that I love that for you. Always be happy no matter what!”

“They don’t know that they lost the greatest human being,” Katie told CNN when speaking about their son and daughter. “And they’ll only know their dad through pictures and videos.”

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Katie told BuzzFeed that she and her husband were close friends who were dating other people at first when they met in college. Then after their relationship evolved into something more romantic, the couple later got married in 2013. Their son is 2-and-a-half years old, and their daughter is just 10 months.

Katie became a stay-at-home mom after their son was born with severe neurological issues, which doctors didn’t think he could survive. Coelho was described as a “devoted father” and “a bit of a romantic when it comes to Katie,” by one of his friends.