Photo of Mom Hugging Nurse Daughter Through Sheet Tugs Heartstrings Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

A mother and daughter have gone viral after sharing a hug in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The heartwarming photo is between Cheryl Norton and her daughter Kelsey Kerr, who is an ICU nurse, as Kerr is draped with a sheet out of protection so that Norton could hug her daughter. Norton revealed in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer how hard it has been not being able to hug her daughter, so she found a way to make it happen safely.

“It felt like my heart went, ahhh. It felt so good to hold her for a second. The thing that was interesting about the photograph is you could see how tight she was holding me,” the 64-year-old said. “It was like she was home again. She was safe in my arms. For the moment, for that split second, she was safe.” Norton came up with the idea to pull a sheet from her closet and drape it over her daughter so the two could be separated, but still be able to embrace in a hug. What the picture doesn’t show is that Kerr was wearing a mask underneath the sheet as well.

Kerr has been quarantining with her husband at their home, which is 15 min away from her parents’ house. Although they’ve been self-isolating, she’s continued to drop by her mom’s home for things here and there, but always practiced safe, social distancing. Norton and her husband have pre-existing medical conditions, so they’ve found it important to keep their distance from their daughter since she’s on the frontlines and is exposed to sick patients.

“I just want to know she’s okay, so when I got that one opportunity to see her, I just had to throw that sheet over her,” she told Good Morning America. “I thought, ‘I want to hug her, and if she has a sheet around her maybe I can do it.’” She added, “I see on social media that all these healthcare workers are feeling very isolated and I didn’t want that to happen to her.” Norton said she took the sheet off of her daughter when they were done hugging and left it in her garage for several days before bringing it inside to wash it. “I did it for me. But that was kind of selfish,” she said. “I did it for her also because I didn’t want her to feel like she was contaminated.” Click here to see the photo.