Laura Levis. —McDonald Funeral Homes

Boston writer Peter DeMarco penned an emotionally powerful letter to the intensive care unit staff at CHA Cambridge Hospital who cared for his wife Laura Levis in her final days.

The letter, which was published Thursday by The New York Times, not only thanks the staff for their care of Levis, but also for their support of DeMarco and Levis’s family and friends.

“My father-in-law, a doctor himself as you learned, felt he was involved in her care. I can’t tell you how important that was to him,” DeMarco wrote.

Levis, a 34-year-old Emerson College graduate, died September 22 after a severe asthma attack. She began her career at The Boston Globe, where she met DeMarco, and had worked for Harvard Magazine and the Harvard Gazette for the past five years, according to her obituary.


DeMarco’s letter begins:

As I begin to tell my friends and family about the seven days you treated my wife, Laura Levis, in what turned out to be the last days of her young life, they stop me at about the 15th name that I recall. The list includes the doctors, nurses, respiratory specialists, social workers, even cleaning staff members who cared for her. “How do you remember any of their names?” they ask. How could I not, I respond.

You can read the full letter at the Times.