At the time of this writing, COVID-19 has claimed almost 750,000 lives in America. For Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, that number represents more than just a statistic.
During the course of the pandemic, the first pick in the 2015 NBA Draft lost eight family members to the deadly virus, including his beloved mother in April 2020. “I’ve been through a lot, obviously starting out with my mom,” he told ESPN in Dec. 2020. “Last night I got a call that I lost my uncle. I feel like I’ve been hardened a little bit by life and humbled.”
“I’ve seen a lot of coffins in the last seven months,” he continued. “I have a lot of people who have — in my family and my mom’s family — gotten COVID. I’m the one looking for answers still, trying to find how to keep them healthy. It’s just a lot of responsibility on me to keep my family well-informed and to make all the moves necessary to keep them alive.”
Karl-Anthony Towns Opens Up About His Mother’s Death
During an episode of the Facebook series, “Peace of Mind with Taraji,” Towns opens up to actress Taraji P. Henson about his season of grief and loss. The star center stated that his mother was scheduled to be removed from a ventilator, but developed a blood clot from which she never recovered.
“It just kept getting harder and harder and worse and worse on her, and no one really knew what they were doing,” he said. “As her son and someone who loves her so dearly, I just didn’t want to see her in pain, so I was trying to do everything possible to make her comfortable and get her better quicker.”
Towns knew the end was close. “I flew in, I put the hazmat suit on and everything, and I went in there, because I was like ‘If anyone’s going to see her out, I’m going to see her out,'” Towns said. “I knew it was going to be the last time, so I was kind of working that out.”
In a year where Towns suffered so much loss, it is no surprised that it changed him forever. “That day changed me as a man,” Towns explained. “I’m never going to get that innocent young boy back. That’s gone. Ever since that day, I feel like the world just made me a little colder. It took what was most valuable to me, so I don’t have that kind of feeling for it.”
