Coronavirus Tragedy: Dying Alone And Apart From The Family

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The coronavirus, that great enemy that hits the world with more force every day, is not only leaving thousands of fatalities but also the horror that its victims die alone. The easy spread of this virus has led European governments such as Italy and Spain to take serious measures after the death of those affected.

The truth behind the deaths is very painful. Victims who know their fatal destiny cannot say goodbye to their loved ones. That is our daily bread in hospitals. According to Dr. Francesca Cortellaro, from the San Carlo Borromeo hospital in Milan, this is the great nightmare lived by the COVID-19 patients.

Do you know what is most dramatic? Seeing patients die alone, listening to them as they beg you to say goodbye to their children and grandchildren,”he expressed with deep sadness to the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

A situation that also occurs in Spain where family members often have to say goodbye through a phone call or video call. A pain that does more damage sometimes than death itself, which in this case cannot be worthy.

The wakes are practically non-existent. Those killed by coronavirus must be cremated within 24 hours at the most to avoid further spread. In the case of funerals, they do not allow more than six people and always with a significant distance between them. There are no kisses, no consolation hugs.

A situation that has also changed the ritual of burials and funerals. The former are sometimes solitary, without assistance, and when there is, it is through walls, fences and prudential distances that prevent the approach, always with a minimum of people and all protected with masks and gloves.

Funerals are practically non-existent. Either they are postponed or, as has been offered by some companies, they are carried out through an internet videoconference, like some burials.

Everything around death is at express time. There is no mass, there are no words of encouragement, there is nothing. Grief is made even more painful by the inability to receive the love of yours. A terrible situation for the victims but also for those who remain, since from the other side of the barrier they suffer it with real anguish.

In Italy, the campaign The right to say goodbye has just been created, an initiative that encourages people about to leave to say goodbye to their own through new technologies. One of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Lorenzo Musotto, has spearheaded this proposal that, within all the pain, allows death to be a little less lonely and cruel.

The coronavirus is scary for everyone but especially for our elders. They are the main victims. Their weak and low defense immune systems cannot resist their attack making them their first targets.

In Spain, several nursing homes have been hit hard by this pandemic, taking dozens of people with them. According to the newspaper El País, there are more than a hundred dead elderly people in these centers. Some of their inmates had symptoms but were never diagnosed.

The lack of clarity and transparency in some specific cases has meant that relatives of the victims have resorted to justice to denounce the centers run by their elders. One more murky matter that adds to the long list of tragedies that this disease is leaving.