This essay is part of Survive. Thrive. Evolve: How Two Years of the Pandemic Impacted Us Around the World, a global HuffPost project featuring individuals writing about how their lives were affected after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The following piece originally appeared on HuffPost Spain. It has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity.

I live in Madrid and work in a nursing home. Ive been asked to talk about my experience and the experiences of others working in this sector during the coronavirus pandemic . I cant sit down and write this without breaking down in tears. All I can say is that it was horrible. Total madness. A situation of complete helplessness.

Before the state of emergency was declared in Spain in March 2020, we already had COVID cases in the home where I work, both among the staff and the residents. At first, they told us not to wear masks because we might frighten the residents. When people started dying, it was already too late. There was not enough equipment or PPE for all the staff at that point. We considered ourselves lucky if we could use a surgical mask that lasted two or three days. We were scared to go to work and terrified of bringing the virus home with us to our families or of getting sick ourselves.

In the end, we all got COVID-19. We were in the first line of fire. But the ones who bore the brunt of the virus were the residents. On April 20, 2020, when I caught it, 63 of the 180 residents at the home had already died. It was total chaos. We were forbidden from referring residents to the hospitals . There were bodies in body bags. We took food on trays to the residents, who were locked in their rooms, and we had no idea if they ate it or not. It was a terrible attack on human dignity.

Their families knew nothing they received dribs and drabs of the bare minimum of information. We were forbidden from using our phones to allow the residents to speak to their families over video chat. It must have been so hard not knowing if they were OK.

Ive lost my father and mother and sister not to COVID and I feel lucky to be able to have been there, clutching their hands, as they died. I didnt have to leave their side. That was awful, of course, but I cant imagine the suffering of the people whose family members were stuck in a room in a nursing home, or a hospital, without being able to hold their hand and say goodbye. I think that is the worst torture a human being can go through. Its taken time for me to be able to say this, but Im glad my sister died a year before the pandemic. Im glad I was able to be with her.