Hello,

I lost my sweet brother to cancer in 2020 during the COVID lockdown. He had been admitted to hospital as he had been experiencing confusion. It was determined he could no longer live on his own. We thought it was early dementia but his confusion cleared considerably and he was waiting to find a new home in Supportive Housing. 

He had worked in Canada's far north for most of his adult life and we had lost each other. When he retired, we managed to find each other and reconnect. The only other family member still alive has a serious mental illness and whom we had both been estranged from for many years. So, all we had was each other and it was such a gift to spend time together and reminisce about our shared childhoods and all the loved ones we had lost many years ago. Then the lockdown happened in March and we were no longer able to see each other.

During that time he began to have difficulty keeping food down and suffered significant weight loss. After he finally was taken for a CT scan, 4th stage esophageal cancer which had spread to his liver was discovered. It was estimated that he had 6 months left. It was decided and he agreed to have a stent inserted. For a week he was still having difficulty until the doctor was notified and he thankfully rushed him back to have it "fixed". He died about 2 weeks later. I was allowed to see him the day before he died. I was on my way to see him again when I got the call.

Those are the facts and perhaps you can read the agony beneath the words. He and I were lost and felt forgotten in the midst of a pandemic. We tried to support each other through a phone line, a phone he held close to himself next to his pillow. We spoke every day, sometimes several times. It was our lifeline. The first thing he said to me when the nurse helped him call from the hospital back in November, trying desperately to hold back tears, was, "I thought I had lost you again!". Well...it turned out...he would, other than a disembodied voice on the other end of a phone line.

The last time I saw him, hours before he died alone, he had a beard and his nails were so long. He said all those "things" had stopped since the lockdown. The care packages I had sent him sat unopened on the other bed in the room. Just think what comfort and care I could have provided, had at least one family member been allowed to remain a caregiver, with proper precautions. Just think how the excruciating pain of being torn apart after having been reunited after "losing" each other for so long could have been eased, every moment together so very precious.

I struggled through this experience one day at a time with the support of a treasured friend. Imagine the struggle my brother was dealing with, alone! I reached out to anywhere I could, to try to find who it was I needed to talk to that could answer my questions and ease the burden a bit for us. I couldn't find that support until the day before he died when someone online, can't remember who, told me who to call in palliative care. She was a godsend, who had been on my brother’s unit frequently but had not yet been directed that there was a need to see him for "assessment". I met her on the last day that I saw my brother alive. I regret I couldn't have found her sooner.

It seems there is something wrong here. My concern is not for myself. I know what grief is having experienced it frequently over my lifetime and knowing how to take care of myself. My concern is for the countless others who have been struggling through this pandemic, some who are confused and must try to cope with an inability to understand why all those loved ones and soothing familiarities have disappeared. Others understand and can only try to survive the suffering without contact with those who mean the world to them when time is often limited. Their sense of hope is found in a touch, a hug, a smile, to remind one that they are alive, that they are loved, that they matter.

Those that make the decisions need to understand the lessons that are not found in a book. They need to get beneath what they see and what they perceive, to reality, where it exists inside of each of us where we feel, where we are most human!!!

There will be another pandemic. My prayer for all of us is that no one has to experience and feel the trauma of abandonment to suffer alone in silence again. It breaks my heart! Also, my prayer is that lessons will be learned about end of life care that will benefit those who deserve the best that we can give.

I hope this helps, somehow, to communicate the depth of suffering that one decision from "on high" can create for so many in their senior years, for those facing death, and for those who love them.

Thank you for this place to honor the memory of my bother. His heart was broken too, more for those residents he lived with who struggled every day, with the absence of those they yearned to be with, than for himself.

With sincerity