James Mandeville, 83, lived at the Soldier’s Home in Holyoke, where dozens of veterans have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Mandeville had served in the U.S. Navy and was a Korean War veteran. And every day for the last 17 years, his daughter, Laurie Beaudette, went to see him. Their last visit was March 13, when the Soldier’s Home closed to visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Then Mandeville tested positive for the virus. He was hospitalized at the Holyoke Medical Center. By Easter Sunday, April 12, Beaudette was desperate to be near him. Visitors weren't allowed, so she sat in her car in the hospital's parking lot. She received a call from her father’s doctor.
“He said, 'So what is it that you want?'” Beaudette said. “And I said, 'I want to see my father, because, you know, I just don't want him to die alone. It's just not right'.”
Beaudette was brought to his bedside, where everyone was wearing protective gear. It looked like astronauts were milling around, she said, and she was frightened for her father.
“Can you imagine laying in the bed and having those people standing over you? It's got to be so incredibly scary. And I really felt fear for my dad. You know, just knowing that these were his last days. It's just — I couldn't believe it,” Beaudette said.
It was the last time Beaudette saw her father alive. He died two days later, and she couldn’t be there.
“Everything with this COVID crisis — it's just awful because everything's different," she said. "You can't have like a normal wake and funeral. You just can't grieve normally, and you can't even die normally.”
More than 5,000 people in Massachusetts have died from complications related to COVID-19, and many were alone and isolated when they died. For families and friends who have lost loved ones, it’s an agonizing experience that has left them bewildered over how to grieve and find comfort during the pandemic.
COVID-19 steals the precious final days, hours and moments spent together when a loved one is dying, leaving those grieving in emotional limbo, and sometimes feeling guilty that their loved one died alone.
“Even in the best of times, losing somebody is hard, and grief is challenging. Grief can be a really lonely experience,” said Megan Devine, author of the book, "It’s OK That You’re Not OK."
Grief is a process, Devine said. It can’t be tucked away or rushed. And finding comfort is hard.
“We carry the people we love with us. That's what grief is. Grief is part of love,” Devine said. “So, when we're trying to talk somebody out of their grief, we're trying to talk them out of an expression of love, and that's never going to go well.”
In normal times, many people turn to hospice and end-of-life care for the emotional, spiritual and physical comfort that patients and families need when faced with a terminal illness. In 2010, hospice cared for approximately 22,000 patients — 40 percent of all deaths in the state.
But COVID-19 has changed hospice services, said Toni Eaton of Old Colony Hospice and Palliative Care in West Bridgewater. Eaton said her staff can no longer provide families with assurance that patients won't die alone. Time is often short, and hospice workers' roles are limited.
“Patients are really, really sick. ... So the length of stay, the amount of time that patients are staying with us, has been drastically reduced.” she said. “We're all about comfort and quality and dignity, and that's hard to do when you admit somebody at 8 in the morning, and then you're getting the call at 7 o'clock at night that they've passed.”
Hospice also cares for families after a loved one dies. And that work continues. Online bereavement groups have become more common in the past few months, and counselors are also using technology to speak with people one-one-one.
Beaudette said she’s trying not to think about how her father died. It’s too much for her right now, so she puts it out of her mind as best she can. Come June, around her father’s birthday, she hopes to have a military funeral for her Dad.
“It’s going to be hard because that's going to be making it real. That's going to be the day, I think, it's really going to hit me.”
