Bereft
The beginning of summer, I am working with the bereavement team at The Royal London Hospital packing boxes with the possessions of deceased patients, I am working with my friends and living by myself in London. The end of summer, I am back at my family home, the leaves turn from green to yellow and we receive a call at 2 am to notify my family of my grandmother’s death.
I decided very early on to stay in London and volunteer with the COVID active response team at Barts Volunteers. The work we did varied day to day, from carrying food donations to staff and stocking ICU, to collecting prescriptions and working with the bereavement office to return belongs. To say I enjoyed the work is not entirely accurate. It was hard work, both emotionally and physically, and everyday seemed to present as another mountain of problems to solve. However, I loved the people I met, the experience I gained, and I was inspired by the spirit of the people around me, who could continue and carry on day after day.
Packing the boxes of possessions was always a surreal experience. Each box was labelled with a name and reference number to be packed away in our storage room; stacked like a library of books, each one unassuming and alike to the others around them but all unique. Some were nearly empty, with just a mobile phone and piece of jewellery; others had a series of boxes, each one next to the other, filled to the brim. It always made me wonder what the reason for the difference in inventory size, and what was the difference between the former owners? Was there any at all?
As caring humans, we treasure the moments we spent with someone before they pass. We hold those painful times close and take joy in the small moments which cut through the sorrow; and it was difficult seeing next of kin come in to pick up belongings, without those moments and without the closure many of us hope to have. Handing over the belongings always left me with mixed feelings; on one hand, I felt like I was providing closure, but on the other I was part of making it real that they were gone. Every box I handed was a painful reminder of the final moments that they had missed, through no fault of their own. I carried countless boxes and bags of possessions along with the other volunteers, my grandmother was only one more in a different time and place.
My grandmother was a caring and fiercely independent woman, living by herself for over 30 years and driving a car right up until lockdown. She was already frail by the time we went into lockdown in March, but no one knew what was wrong, that the falls were caused by a drop in blood pressure, caused by metastatic bowel cancer which had spread to her lungs. We did not know about it until she had her final fall where she was diagnosed with Covid-19 and cancer. She spent two weeks in an isolated ward before she had been diagnosed negative, and a kind Ward Clerk snuck us in so we could see her. All the nurses said how lovely she was, how she was her usual assertive self, asking for a bread roll for her soup.
For two months, we had her at home with us, and I suddenly found myself in a different role. No longer was I the passive outsider to the personal effects of the pandemic, but right there by her bedside. I helped answer her phone and sort her affairs, sat with her there while the nurses came round, changed dressings, and gave medication. She and I spent hours in each other’s company, her reading her crime novel and me doing work, not saying anything most of the time but finding comfort in the silent companionship. Knowing that it would not last forever.
When she went to the Hospice and we were faced with all the restrictions, my family like many others, all struggled - most of all my grandmother. In those final days I both hated and loved the NHS. The bureaucracy and righteous fear-mongering stopped us visiting as much as we wanted to and with everything being harder to negotiate, we were made to feel bad about holding a dying woman’s hand. Even getting a GP to assess that the difficulty in breathing from my grandma was anything but COVID was impossible.
However, the kindness nurses and doctors showed us will stay with me. How a carer changed her shifts so she could look after my grandmother personally or when one of the district nurses made sure all my grandmother’s blood tests and COVID swabs were done the day they were issued. Of all the people I met, I kept running into volunteers, or at least people doing similar jobs that I had done. It was a strange shock to suddenly be faced with the other side of the conversation, what would I have thought if I met someone like me at the volunteer’s desk? I suddenly felt very vulnerable and unsure of myself, completely unlike the volunteer I had been. I had the bliss of ignorance and the ability to disconnect myself from the grief around me.
I wonder if I can ever be that person again. I doubt I can.
Would my Grandmother still be alive without COVID-19? It is impossible to say, she was an incredible woman who was incredibly ill, and the question is just one more in a long list: Could I have been there more? Should I have stayed at home? Would it have changed anything? Looking back at my time working with the bereavement team at The Royal London, I think about my grandmother in those wards and her possessions being collected. Did I handle them with enough care and attention? Was it wrong to chat and laugh with my co-volunteers while I carried out the final items of someone’s family member? Then I think back on how hard we searched for the wedding rings which seemed to always get lost on wards whilst I wear my grandmother’s ring and I think, all-in-all, we did a pretty good job.
