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We have also lost moments of shared empathy – a space for others to see people who are travelling the same path.
We must not mistake a return to “normal” life as the end of someone’s pain.
I’ve allowed myself to feel the pain of loss and I’ve come to learn that bereavement isn’t something to fear. If anything, it’s to be embraced.
Trish Skinner and her husband sit on a couch, flip open their iPad cover, and open Zoom. Skinner is attending her father's funeral. Dozens of relatives will join her on this call.
One hundred miles away, near the southern English coast, someone holds up an iPhone as a coffin containing the body of Herbert John Tate, 103, is lowered into a wet, clay-lined grave.
The Zoom call is as much closure as Skinner, 72, can get -- at least for now.
"It's not how it's supposed to be," she says. "There's no interaction, physically. And that's the biggest thing that's missing during this terrible time."
I watched my father die of this disease. Here's my story.
As Covid-19 surges around the country, workers in nursing homes and assisted living centers are watching cases rise in long-term care facilities with a sense of dread. Many of these workers struggle with grief over the suffering they've witnessed.
For many not directly affected by COVID-10, it may feel easy to feel disconnected from the confronting daily announcements, as the crisis is effectively hidden from public view.
While the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus continues to climb in Victoria, so too does the number of victims in intensive care, and the families behind the figures are struggling with the knowledge they may never be able to say goodbye.
It takes a special kind of inattention to human suffering to not notice how unfortunate it is that people have been left to face death alone.
Families are already practising social distancing at funerals, with no hugs, no kisses and no handshakes. Funeral services may soon have to be live-streamed only.
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When my mother got Covid in April 2020, I learned what we lose over text.
The suffering that Covid wrought can unite us.
As nurses ourselves, we have never felt prouder to be nurses, and we advocate for services to properly care for their nurses in these difficult times. The dreadful trajectory of this pandemic has reinforced the utter dependence communities have on a skilled and resilient nursing workforce.
Heidi Hussli, 47, died a little more than two weeks after her mother’s funeral, one of several family members who contracted the virus after attending gatherings to honor the beloved matriarch.
These families are turning their grief into action to save themselves and others — and to begin to heal our collective trauma.
I tell patients they deserve to grieve without guilt. But it’s hard to practice what I preach.
I try to make sense of her sudden absence but every hour, every minute, brings some new and usually terrifying development
The restrictions over visitors are necessary but go against the whole ethos of the hospice and what we do
The coronavirus pandemic will leave lasting emotional scars.
Patients, their families and their doctors need to be open about the inevitable as the virus sweeps through our population
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Scoop.it!
