Maura Lewinger says her husband, Joe, wrote love letters to her every morning and left them in her lunch box. They didn't just say, "Have a nice day," she said, but described what Maura meant to her and perhaps their plans for the next day or next weekend.

â??He always took care of me, got me coffee and helped me in every way I could,â? she told CNN Friday.

Joe, 42, died last weekend from coronavirus complications. Like other families across the US right now, Lewinger had to say goodbye to her husband virtually, with FaceTime, in their case. She said that due to the orders to stay at home, the social distance and the general isolation that this virus has brought, the reality of her husband's death is sometimes lacking.

"Right now, seeing no one, sometimes it seems to me like he's at work," she said.

Joe worked at a Catholic high school in Long Island, New York, for 20 years. He was an assistant and coach of the basketball team.

"He always had a listening ear, no matter what you were talking about, Joe was always listening. It always made you feel like you were the most important person in the room," Lewinger said.

Joe had no warning signs and the infection began with "mild symptoms," Lewinger told CNN Friday, which included low-grade fever. Around St. Patrick's Day, in March, when he started having fever and breathing problems.

In the days before Joe died, Lewinger told CNN that "the two talked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with Facetime, trying not to let him feel alone."

"The country had to get used to the distance, and we had to get used to virtual care and virtual marriage, just by being there for each other," she said.

When doctors told Lewinger that her husband's breathing was deteriorating and that she was being treated with three different blood pressure medications, she asked to talk to him at Facetime.

"I saw him and begged him not to leave us and I told him we all needed him," she said.

Doctors told her they would try other methods to keep Joe alive. During that waiting period, Lewinger told CNN that he was listening to the wedding song in the background as he watched the backyard. Then the doctor called again.

"I'm afraid he doesn't have more time," the doctor told him. Lewinger asked him to talk to Joe again via Facetime.

"I thanked him for being the most amazing man because he made me feel in love every day," - these were the words he said to Joe.

The doctor then told him that his pulse had stopped. "I put our wedding song on it. And that's how it was, "she said.

Joe left his wife and 3 children, a son and two daughters. Lewinger stressed the importance of respecting social distance and staying at home.

"People just aren't careful. People are feeling so invisible and they think it could happen to them," she said. "You can't be with people who aren't in your house. How sad, how lonely and everything else, you just have to stay with the people in your house."