mzeiya
Elder Lister
A day after my father’s birthday, he was admitted into hospital as they wanted to monitor his health. We left him in the care of the doctors and nurses. As we were waiting for him to be moved into the ward, he lay there on the stretcher with tubes giving him oxygen.
He grabbed my hand and said “take care of mum”. His eyes were glassy with tears but he wasn’t crying. I smiled, put my hand on his chest and told him, “You’re getting out of here soon! This is just precautionary. We’re going to go to the coast together soon.”
The next day, my father, mother, my uncle and my tests came back covid positive. We weren’t nervous as the doctors seemed calm and assured us about procedures and whatnot. My mom, uncle and I went into isolation as dad was kept in the hospital.
I spoke to him on the phone that day and he was in good spirits. He was already sick of being sick and wanted to come back home so badly. He kept saying take care of mom. Always looking out for others.
A day later, my dad called me at 9:30pm and said that he was struggling to breathe and that his fingers were going blue. I spoke to the doctor and they said that they were going to do some tests.
Mom and I went to the hospital and waited in the car in the parking as my sister who was covid negative spoke to the doctors. His oxygen levels had dropped drastically and they suggested that he be moved to the ICU.
The doctor told us that all the ICU beds in the hospital were full and asked us to help look for an open bed somewhere.
We called various hospitals and friends and finally at about 12:30am we managed to find one. At 3:30am, dad was taken in an ambulance to the ICU.
That was the last time I saw him. In the parking lot of a hospital at 3:30am as they wheeled him on a stretcher into an ambulance. From a distance we shouted to him that we love him and as he tried to respond, he only managed to cough.
Fear gripped us now. Mom and I and my uncle isolated and worried about dad. No phone meant we couldn’t even reach him and tell him we’re here and not to worry about us. My sister went to the hospital and got information about him and the doctors updated us every evening.
A week after being in ICU, his oxygen dropped again. Even when he was on the high flow oxygen. We got a call from the hospital asking for consent to intubate him which we gave right away as the alternative was him struggling to breathe.
The next time we heard from them was several hours later when they called my sister and told her that dad had suffered a cardiac arrest while they were intubating him but they managed to stabilize him and that he was unconscious and sedated.
Four more days passed. Every time my phone vibrated, I felt afraid. We were all trying to heal but the worry of something happening to dad and what he was already going through was slowly eating away at us. Mom was sick, uncle by now had to also be admitted into the hospital.
We couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, weakness in my body was heavy, sick with worry. We couldn’t go to the hospital because we were all positive. Couldn’t communicate with him, couldn’t be with our loved ones and extended family. Isolation breaks the mind even further.
The fear I have developed of my phone ringing or vibrating… I have never felt more weak, helpless and broken as I did in those long stretched out moments.
Until Monday this week. On Sunday, we got a call saying that dad had now got a blood infection and that his kidneys were very weak and may not be able to fight it off by himself and so they were going to start dialysis.
On Monday afternoon, my sister got a call from the doctors saying that he wasn’t responding to the dialysis and that she should go to the hospital. Mom and I went to get ourselves tested again so that if it was negative the we could go and see dad too.
A few minutes after getting the test and coming back home, my sister called. Dad was gone. I walked into my mom’s room and from the look on my face she knew and we both burst into tears and broke down.
I’ve never seen, nor felt that type of searing pain that cuts into the fabric of your mind and you can’t understand what reality is. A fog fell. The screams and cries of my mother in that moment will stay with me forever. That night our results came back as negative. Was too late.
They had been together for 40 years. And in those 40 years, they did everything together. Anyone who knows our family know that mom and dad never separated, they worked together, came home together, did small tasks together.
They taught me so much about what the meaning of love is. Of deep, true and pure love.
Yesterday we cremated his body. Only a handful of people were allowed to come due to governmental protocols in such situations. It was morbidly surreal. Wearing those PPE suits, hardly being able to breathe, vision obscured, felt like I was in outer space.
And here in front of me was my father’s body. A man I had seen from when I was a kid, the head of the family, just inanimate. It didn’t look like him. I couldn’t sense his calm presence.
He touched so many people’s lives but none could be in attendance. I keep getting messages on my phone from people I don’t know saying how he helped them with this or that.
Someone told me that he lost his father and that my dad was like a father to him in those moments. Dad was a simple man. All he craved was peace and quiet and to help others in need. He wasn’t ostentatious, he didn’t want to live the most lavish of lifestyles. He was just humble, peaceful and connected to a grace that none of us could see. He forgave everyone who ever wronged him.
Mom would get frustrated at him when people tried to take advantage of him. She protected him from the wolves. Mom is broken.
Yesterday as his body burned, she spoke to him. She told him how much she loves him and that she’ll see him again and that their bond will never break even in death. That they will unite again.
The past two weeks have been the most torturous of our lives. I personally have never broken down like this. Every day it was a new battle that his body needed to fight. Everyday I watched as my mom sat in worry and fear. The lack of sleep made us even more on edge.
Everyday I was afraid that my mother’s health would get worse. And I, unable to do anything in the face of this monstrous illness, just let time move.
We were so careful about not interacting with many people, about sanitizing our hands, wearing masks. Dad had even done research and got the proper sanitizers and masks for the house. Somehow, it crept into our family and has decimated our backbone.
I write all this not for condolences, not for sympathy, not for people telling me to be strong. Because we are allowed to be weak in moments such as these. I write this because you have to know what this illness can do.
In two weeks it could have wiped us all out. It took my father, don’t give it a chance to take your loved ones. Be careful out there. We, as society, seem to have forgotten about this disease.
We’ve let our guard down. We’ve moved on. I see it online, photos of big parties, concerts and events, of get togethers, people have let their guard down. We don’t know what devil we drag to the door of our homes until something like this happens.
It always happened to someone else. Now that someone else is my family and I.
In closing this, I want to sincerely thank the doctors and nurses on the frontline. I don’t know what gives you the strength to go back and face this every single day putting in long hours without any reward or acknowledgement. The work you do is beyond anything I can ever do, the strength in your minds and hearts is something divine. I have the deepest of respect for you and thank you so much for trying everything to keep my father alive.
For the words of support too. For the love and care you showed him in his last moments. Thank you.
My sister, my cousins, my uncles and aunt and friends who helped us who were covid positive so much during this showed me what family really means.
Their food packages with so much love, their going to the hospital to keep checking on dad, them dealing with things I couldn’t be there for…so much strength and love for them. Family is so important, however much we fight.
