NEW ORLEANS — Singer Charmaine Neville talks about recovering from COVID-19 and what keeps her going through this difficult time.
"My faith teaches me that I’m still going to be a good person and say, 'Hi. How ‘ya doin’? How ‘ya mom and ’em. What y’all cook today?'" Neville laughs.
The local entertainer is telling her story about getting through COVID-19 and the anxiety she felt and the many other topics on so many minds in 2020.
It was right before the lockdown in March when Charmaine Neville rehearsed with a fellow musician.
"Maybe two weeks later, he called me and he said he had been tested positive and that he was very sick, him, his daughter and his wife were very sick," she said.
Charmaine never got a coronavirus test, but is convinced she had it.
"A week later I got a horrifying headache. Then the next day the headache was worse and the fever, and I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t drink anything," remembers Neville.
It caused her much anxiety.
"I kept saying to myself, 'Oh my goodness, I’m going to die and nobody’s going to know that I’m dead," she said.
Charmaine loves people and has friends around the world. Being in quarantine has been difficult socially, even after her recovery.
"It’s been very hard mainly because I love what I do. I enjoy making other people smile," she said.
And it's hard economically. She gets anxiety over being able to pay her bills.
"They don’t stop coming," Neville laughed.
She gives a shout out to all the 2020 graduates who missed having a real commencement and encouraged them in their roles for the future.
"I’m so proud of them to understand that they are the ones that have to make changes. They are the ones that are going to have to make sure that everything gets better," she said. "And it’s not going to be in a moment. It’s going to take time to do it. I mean look how long we’ve been fighting."
What keeps her going through this tough year?
"Without faith, you have nothing. The one thing you have to remember is that long as He wakes us up, everything else is lagniappe," she said.
And she mourns what the pandemic and personally being sick took away from her, missing the togetherness and saying good-bye to friend Wendy Good, who loved and documented through photographs, New Orleans cultural icons, such as herself. She recently died from brain cancer. Charmaine wrote this song for Wendy.
"As the moon goes sailing by, across that deep dark purple sky, you can hear the notes the stars just softly sigh, as if singing karaoke with the moon," Neville sang.
Charmaine will dedicate her next album to Wendy Good.
Charmaine says that she did not have the respiratory problems that others have had with COVID-19.
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