The pain of losing a loved one means no death is ‘acceptable’

Let’s just be clear Covid19 kills in a horrid way. It’s not an easy death for many, but at times just as bad is the real, very real pain it leaves in its wake. If you have not lost someone close let me tell you about grief.
When I lost my brother it was in the hospital that I was told. I was sat in a little room with my father. A nurse came in and told us both. I had never seen my father break down until then. We both cried but in the back of our minds there was still a small belief they had made a mistake.
They then asked us if we wanted to see him. We were led into the resus room. There behind a curtain was Robert, my 35yr old kid brother. He was 18 years younger than me so not only a brother but like a son to, as well as at times my best friend. He looked asleep other that the sweat and grey tinge to his skin. I leant down and cuddled him. He was still warm but so still. I broke down again, now it was real.
If you asked me to describe the room I maybe couldn’t, but I can the colours and smells. I remember blurs who may have been members of staff.
Neither me or dad wanted to leave.
Then we had to walk to the car, holding my dad’s hand for the first time since I was 6, then putting my arm around him so to steady us both. We were silent. We realised we had yet to tell my mum. That had to be in person not over the phone.
Already my body was screaming in pain but my mind was overwhelmed, almost for a fabulous but brief time emotionless. Only fabulous because what was to happen next destroyed my soul all over again.
We walked into the house and my mum was sat in the back room, she looked up and guessed straight away, yet I still told her. I have never in my life heard such a cry of pain emitted from another human. She fell to her knees and sobbed.
I cannot remember the rest of the night nor getting home.
Thankfully the next day the doctor prescribed me diazepam which to a degree helped a little. The next few days were busy arranging things, with so many emotional breakdowns in between. We had to clear his house, sort out the paperwork, deal with his fuel bills, all sorts of practical stuff that with hindsight in an odd way gave enough distraction that we could at least breath, without the support of each other and my closest friends we would have not got through it.
I couldn’t however go to my toilet without triggering and being dragged back to resus to see and feel him for the last time. My bathroom was the same colour I remember resus as being. I was diagnosed with PTSD. Constantly going back to the night, to resus, to his house.
I couldn’t and still can’t sleep without going back to having the police break into his house, to see his weakened body being carried out on a stretcher or being told he had died.
I was initially so angry, to the point I told the patients waiting to see his GP just how the GP’S incompetence led to my brothers death. And even a year on I am not just convinced of that but can now evidence it.
Not a single day even now passes without me becoming tearful, me regretting not saving him, not telling him I love him enough. Most days I still cry my eyes out. I miss him more now than any teenage angst at losing your first true love.
It effects my health conditions both physical and more so mental now.
The pain hurts as if I have been punched and punched over and over. It’s like fight or flight, without an opponent or path of escape.
I never realised how much losing someone could hurt. Every day I wish not to be here, to go join him, but I know if I did I would be condemning my folks to even more pain that they would not survive, and putting my kids through the same experience as me. I cannot do that to them no matter how much I hurt.
Every morning after him visiting me in my dreams I wake to the reality he has gone.
Neither my mum nor dad will ever recover from this.
They ache to see his son but sadly my brothers ex makes that difficult to impossible more and more, despite playing the grieving widow at his wake, and telling all and sundry that she would ensure his son would carry on seeing his fathers family. All I can say is that was a cruel lie.

This is my personal ongoing journey and experience of loss. My only other real losses prior to this was my ex wife and I losing two babies at full term. Anne and Leo. They were and are loved by both of us, that loss was beyond painful, and with losing them we lost dreams and maybe our future as a couple, but we only knew them for who we expected them to be, whereas with Rob he was a pain, a git, but also amazing, loving, a proud dad and sadly a very ill young man who was continually misdiagnosed by those who should have known.
I have written this as an abridged insight into losing someone you love, for any reason. It’s why I started Volunteer Riders UK, a bikers group that has so far delivered over 6,000,000 items of completely free PPE without any cost, to the NHS, the military, to carers, nurses, community teams, front line workers, shop workers, bus drivers, school and college students, the vulnerable, the sick and the disabled, we still do this daily despite the Government making claims everyone has PPE.
So when you tell me there have only been 60,000 deaths over the yearly average so far despite Covid19, please remember that’s potentially 60,000 families, multiplied by however many family members all going through the same pain I have described.
In what dimension is that acceptable?
It is not.
I hold that if the UK had gone into full lockdown and quarantine in March 2020 the vast majority of these deaths (to date at time of writing 71,567 on 30th December 2020) could and would have been avoided. Almost all of those families would not have experienced loss.
1 death too many is inexcusable, but this is beyong criminal.
So forget tiers, put the entire country into full lockdown now, not a week Wednesday, quarantine the UK. No flights, no ships and close the tunnel.
Definitely no schools, colleges or universitis should be open.
Where people have profiteered, been criminally negligent or deliberately broke the rules prosecute them. That means business, individuals and the bloody leaders of our government.
This pandemic is real. People are dying. Families are suffering. No more lies, no more conspiracy theories, no more selfishness. No more greed and corruption.
Please feel free to share.
Keep my name upon it for its my experience.
Jonesy Jones

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Jonesy the Dog of Socialism

I am in my 50's (ok 51), I have life challenges but still continue to be a father, a biker, a socialist and a human being. I fight hate and injustice in any way I can. I am me.

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