‘The thing that hurts the most is he died alone’

“FIVE years on it still hurts” are the words of a Fermanagh woman who lost her brother during the pandemic.
Anne Elliott-King lost her brother Basil Elliott after he contracted Covid-19 following a long period of ill-health.
“It still hurts that we couldn’t have a proper funeral for my brother but to be honest people are tired of hearing that and unless you have lost a family member you don’t know what it is like,” Anne explained.
“It is a different sort of grief to have in normal circumstances because in normal circumstances you have the wake, you have the support of people around you, you have got the proper funeral, you have got the service you have got shaking hands and hugs at the graveside. We didn’t have any of that so the grief is magnified.”
Anne has found comfort in having the Covid Bereavement group to turn to for support.
“If I say I lost my brother to Covid the first thing they say is ‘what age was he?, had he any other problems?’ and it is almost as if they didn’t matter and that is why the Covid Bereavement Group is so important to me,” she said.
“We are all in the same position. We lost a lot of elderly people through Covid and that in itself is bad enough but not to be able to have our usual services and our usual funerals and our usual mark of respects that still hurts.”
Anne believes that Covid is something that many want to leave in the past which isn’t as easy for people like her who have lost a loved one.
“Five years on things have changed very much. We are hearing things that the Covid enquiry that have shaken us to the core,” Anne explained.
“We are all in the same position. My brother was in a care home even though he died in hospital. The thing that hurts the most is he died alone.
“We also have a group called ‘Memory Stones’ which is wonderful because it says to us that the people that we lost mattered. Life has moved on and people really want to put it behind him, and those with long Covid that are still suffering, nobody wants to talk about it anymore.”

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