In this episode of Stolen Goodbyes, Karen speaks to Debbie Lewis from Buckinghamshire who lost her father Barry to COVID-19 in April 2020. He was 74. His death came five months after she lost her mother Patricia to cancer. Debbie speaks fondly of her community-minded father who befriended the sick and lonely in his local area. A practical joker, Barry was never happier than when he was making people laugh. Debbie recounts the details of how her fit and healthy father fell ill with Covid 19 and how he insisted: “I’m not ready to go.” He kept how ill he really felt from his family. She struggles to cope with losing her father and not being able to say goodbye and then to have to grieve in isolation. The hospital asked the family to sign a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) form. The family had heard rumours DNRs were being used to clear hospital beds.Debbie believes the government’s handling of the pandemic has been "absolutely shocking.”Following her father's death, Debbie has set up a nationwide support group called COVID-19 Families in the UK. She takes comfort from the fact she is helping other people in the same position. She feels guilty that she was unable to support her father and sister due to lockdown restrictions. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Om Podcasten
Welcome to the award-winning Stolen Goodbyes with Karen Rice, foreign affairs journalist, and podcaster. Each week inspiring wives, husbands, partners, children, and newly-weds intimately recount the shock and anguish of death to Covid 19 without warning or goodbye. Each season we push the boundaries to explore, explain and uncover a myriad of aspects of grief to Covid 19. Forced to grieve in isolation, these people detail needless mistakes and decisions that cost lives including patients being placed on Covid hospital wards when they were Covid-free or others condemned to an early death by the secret use of Do Not Resuscitate forms. Some were left to die alone, the ultimate social taboo. This unique, legacy podcast is a social history record of the widespread suffering caused by the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, an infection that changed the world as we know it. It is also an important space where ordinary yet extraordinary people are remembered and celebrated for everything that made them quintessentially unique and irreplaceable. The participants of this podcast have bared their souls in a bid to stop their loved ones from being written off as just another statistic when they were much-loved individuals whose premature deaths could help to save others from the same fate while holding those responsible to account. This Covid 19 podcast helps participants and listeners to come to terms with a grief like no other.Created, produced, and hosted by Karen Rice, the Stolen Goodbyes podcast won gold in the fiercely competitive Best Lockdown category of the British Podcast Award 2021.Stolen Goodbyes is described as: "outstanding ethical and trauma-informed journalism. Karen Rice manages to capture a historic event in real time by listening with empathy. Future generations will listen to this podcast and know what it felt like to live through this pandemic." Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.Please listen to, review, and share this podcast with your network, it really helps!If you would like to make a donation (no matter how small) to the running costs of this passion project, please visit: https://karen-rice.com/podcast/ You can follow Karen on Twitter @Ricekmc and Stolen Goodbyes on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3ITXSFC Facebook: https://bit.ly/3kGGwnG and Youtube: http://bit.ly/3Yq0jW5Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.