Remembering the forgotten
The death of a dear neighbour was the catalyst to finally reflect on the circumstances of the demise and death of my mum in the days prior to the country being locked down in March 2020.
Our beloved 92 year old neighbour died recently. Her death was hardly premature and in some ways expected, but still a sad occasion for our community who have valued her as a neighbour and friend for countless reasons. Her passing brought about that familiar mix of emotions; a loss for us mixed with relief that she’s now at peace.
Her large catholic family arrived from around the world to be with her during her final days in hospital and stayed until she was laid to rest. They were a constant presence at her bedside, soothing her with their soft voices and rosary prayers. She breathed her last cocooned in love and comforted by her faith that had been central to her life and legacy. On the morning of her funeral, it felt like we had stepped back in time as her many family, friends and neighbours emerged onto the street to walk the short distance to the church which was full to bursting. Her life was celebrated in style, healing our grief with precious memories of her rich and fulfilling life.
The normality and humanity of Eileen’s peaceful passing brought to life the stark contrast of the circumstances surrounding the demise and death of my own mum Elizabeth during the traumatic events of March 2020.
Mum had lived with heart failure over many years but it was managed and didn’t stop her enjoying life. She had many friends and was still making tray bakes and scones for the church drop in. Amazingly she had only stopped being a Sunday school teacher a few years earlier thinking she might just be a little too old.
I finally managed to persuade her to visit her GP on 10 March as her chronically swollen ankles seemed worse than normal. Her medications were changed and further tests arranged. A return visit to the GP on 18 March saw a very different set of circumstances. The practice was virtually empty but a very caring GP spent over two hours working out how best to manage her condition, spending much time on the phone to a cardiologist at the local hospital. The problem was that she needed to be in hospital but due to covid risk it was deemed unsafe to admit her. So, they worked out a treatment plan to take place at home with no medical supervision; a plan I suspected was unsafe and from the look in his eyes, so did the GP.
Mum was oblivious to the dilemma, delighted to trust this kind man who was clearly struggling with a decision that wasn’t of his making. It was therefore rather a shock when he came to complete the DNAR (Do Not Attempt Resuscitation) form. Mum’s life was clearly at risk so it made sense to anticipate a life threatening event. Mum wasn’t thinking about dying but at 93, I was sure she’d need little persuasion to sign the form. I’m familiar with the process of completing DNARs so the unnecessary terrifying manner in which he approached the process came as a shock. In short, he firmly told her, ‘if you don’t agree to this, any attempt to resuscitate you is unlikely to work and if it does you will be battered, bruised and left in a vegetative state'. ‘Well, we don’t want that do we’, said mum who obediently signed his form.
Treatment plan agreed, this otherwise concerned GP took the necessary prescription in person to the pharmacy along the road but we waited until early evening before her medicine was ready. Cleary anxious about treating mum in the absence of the careful monitoring she would have had in hospital, he kept in frequent contact. I was much relieved when he finally agreed it was too late in the day for her to have the two prescribed doses within six hours of each other. Perfectly competent to follow the GP’s instructions, mum took the medication the following day as instructed.
Mum died two days later, most likely of a heart attack as feared. Now, I’m under no illusion that she may have died anyway, even if she had been in hospital. But I was fairly certain that this unsupervised treatment plan was likely to kill her whereas covid may not if she was unlucky enough to catch it in hospital. This balance of risks wasn’t ours to make and in fairness, it wasn’t the GP’s either.
The day of her death on 21 March was eerily quiet because people had already stopped moving around. Mum’s was a sudden death which necessitated police involvement but we waited almost 6 hours for the police and the NHS24 doctor to arrive. Resorting to humour to manage the awfulness of the situation, my sister and I haggled over her toilet rolls. Late evening, a doctor, 2 police officers and two undertakers joined us in mum’s tiny sitting room. They were nothing short of kind and not at all concerned about being together in this stuffy confined space, a situation that would be forbidden two days later. The doctor, who was clearly run off her feet, even took time to sit down and debrief our sad and difficult day.
Dad’s death in his 102nd year some two years earlier involved many necessary but wonderfully therapeutic processes; visits to and from the undertaker, minister, lawyer, registrar, florist, caterer and so on. Not to mention the endless cups of tea with family members and friends who called to offer their condolences and reminisce about his life.
The aftermath of mum’s death took place in a deathly void of the human contact that is so necessary following bereavement. With the shutting down of life came the shutting down of the grapevine, meaning that many of her friends didn’t even know she had died. Even condolence cards, so important in processing grief, were minimal. This probably wasn’t helped by the myth that a card through the post was a possible killer.
Mum was a valued member of her church and her minister was very supportive. Her funeral was his first during the lockdown period and her burial beside dad in the peaceful country graveyard close to their home was the first in the area. With such a large family, it was impossible to prioritise the randomly picked number of eight permissible mourners so we settled with only five of the closest to avoid a family feud. We were however out numbered threefold by funeral directors and a double squad of grave diggers who were strangely at a loose end with a killer virus at large. The minister, oblivious to the scarcity of numbers, boomed his brief message at a volume more suited to the crowd who should have been there and lifted the crows from their roosts in the neighbouring trees. Regardless of the wide open space and without a cough or sniffle between us, we had to stand a meter apart while mum was laid to rest with dad.
Because she didn’t die of covid, Mum wasn’t considered to be a hero. She was one of the thousands of people whose lives were snuffed out when we failed to consider the consequences of shutting down the world. Four years on, the normality of Eileen’s passing has been the catalyst to acknowledge the stark contrast of mum’s journey. We have to accept that forbidding access to necessary rituals and patterns of human behaviour, complicates the natural process of grieving and takes us longer to make our peace with death and recover from our loss.
I believe mum’s death was premature but I’m glad she missed the last four years which would have been intolerable for a person with vitality that belied her years. I hope the story of her passing will act as a reminder never to forget that what happened was dreadfully wrong and always to remember what it means to be human.