Kuperstein said his father, the son of Holocaust survivors, came to the United States with nothing and achieved so much.
NBC New York anchor Adam Kuperstein announced in an emotional Instagram post Monday that his father died “with a stranger holding his hand.”
Kuperstein said his mother, who was married to his father for 43 years, was “forced to stay inside their home, all alone.”
“With his sons, stuck in the epicenter of this crisis, where never-ending sirens echo throughout a deserted city,” he wrote.
Kuperstein, who anchors the station’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekend newscasts and covers breaking news on weekdays, said all he and his family, who are in quarantine separately, could do was listen on the phone, choking back tears, as a nurse informed them that his father’s heart had stopped.
“That’s when our hearts broke,” he wrote.
“We were shattered. A week of picturing the strong man we called ‘Aba,’ connected to a ventilator in an Indianapolis ICU, was bad enough, but now we were forced to imagine life without him,” Kuperstein wrote. “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
Kuperstein said he could not hug his mother, who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Thankfully, he said, his mother had only minor symptoms.
Still he said, at a time where she needed someone to comfort her, she was alone.
“It’s the cruelest part of this nightmare,” Kuperstein wrote. “She deserves better. He deserved better.”
Kuperstein said his father, the son of Holocaust survivors, came to the United States with nothing, and achieved so much.
“He made sacrifices for his family and taught his boys how to become gentlemen, never asking for anything in return,” he wrote. “Just love.”
The anchor and reporter asked that people pay tribute to his father by protecting themselves and their loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Don’t overlook symptoms just because you don’t have a cough or shortness of breath,” he wrote. “My father’s symptoms were digestive at first. My mom mainly lost her sense of taste and smell.”
He also asked that people send as much love as possible to the “heroic” healthcare workers “trying to save us.”
Although he and his family did not have the opportunity to meet the nurses and doctors who cared for his father, Kuperstein said, “I know they did everything they could, even though it meant putting their own lives at risk.”
He concluded the announcement by explaining that the photo he uploaded was the last picture he took with his parents.
“It wasn’t supposed to be,” he wrote. “He had so much more love to give. We miss you Aba!”