Machibet777 Affiliate Hospital was 23 mins away, my grandmother died in 15

On the morning of April 19, my maternal grandmother developed Covid-19 symptoms. She was 96, her blood oxygen level had dropped to an alarmingly low 76 and she was gasping for breath. Fifteen minutes into the drive to the hospital, she passed away. But it was not the saddest part.The challenges peculiar to Covid-19 became apparent the moment my parents, 69 and 67, with whom she used to live, decided to take her to the hospital on their own. They live in a third-floor apartment and the car was parked in the basement. The next-door neighbours were all down with Covid-19 and they had asked me not to come — I have a child whose health they didn’t want to risk. With help from the domestic help, they managed to get her in a wheelchair and got her to the car in the elevator.The hospital was 23 minutes away. She departed in 15, in the back seat. But they didn’t know until they got to the hospital. She had kept her arm on her eyes to keep the sun out, turning her head sideways — my parents thought she had drifted off to sleep. When they got to the hospital, staffers conducted an ECG while she was still in the car. She had flatlined.Taking her in now, they told my parents, meant it would become a medico-legal case, the body would be sent to the morgue and they’d have to wait for an autopsy. My parents stood there, having just lost their kin, the body in the car, wondering what they should do next.Fortunately, a doctor from our family who lived nearby got there to help them out, and took them to another hospital which prepared a death certificate. They told my parents to take her body to the cremation grounds right away because it could be a Covid-19 case. We couldn't know for sure because grandmother passed away before we could get her tested. My parents wanted to conduct some form of last rites before the cremation, so they took her back home, but not to the apartment.They decided to organise a small funeral in the basement of their block. Her body could not be kept out in the heat, so my father cranked up the AC in the car and lay her body there — that was how I saw her when I got there with my husband and father-in-law. Five chairs had been placed in a semi-circle on one side of the car. Five relatives came over after a while. Broken and grieving, nobody hugged.No priest would agree to come perform the last rites and we realised we would have to do that on our own. We had to give grandmother the ceremonial bath before the cremation. So, my mother, two of her sisters and I tied a bedsheet from the car to a pillar in the basement to create a private space for bathing her, while she lay on a wooden trolley. We did all we could to give her as dignified a farewell as possible. medium82174255Security guards and a driver helped us carry her bier to the hearse van — there were so few of us,and most of us elderly. A short ride later, we reached the cremation ground, where five pyres were already burning.We carried her body, again, with help. A member of the staff at the cremation ground recited shlokas — there was some feeling of closure. But there was barely anyone there and we had to pick up the wooden logs for the pyre. The logs were heavy but a stranger, who was there to cremate his own, helped us out. We were overcome with gratitude. After the cremation, we left. medium82174238Had it been any other time, we would have had relatives and extended family around us, to comfort us in our grief. They would have made sure we ate, stocked up on essentials, passed around cups of tea and shared stories about my grandmother. We would have organised a reading of the Gita. But we had none of that. The pandemic has made final goodbyes difficult, painful and embarrassing. It is one death. But we know the memories of this denied closure will linger. And, to me, what will rankle forever is remembering how I could not hug my mother on the day she needed it the most. This is an intangible yet heavy toll that no data can capture.