Given that I'm considered an essential worker, initially I was going to the office several days a week for two hours each day to handle tasks which cannot be managed remotely: checking the voicemail on the main switchboard, receiving/processing/distributing mail and the like.
A caller left a voicemail about his mother, who passed away early in March, whose body was MIA until April 9th. I made a point of calling him back, as I didn't want to add to his grief by delaying a response. I called and he was on the phone with his doctor on his landline, and I was calling I guess on his cell phone. He couldn't manage both calls at once and wanted me to call him back.
I said I'd be back in the office two days later--he said please call me. So, once I arrived home, I sat in my car and called him. Turns out his mom died of COVID19, and was in a nursing home. Yet the nursing home couldn't provide any type of paperwork for her body. There were several weeks he had no idea where his mother's body was and out of the blue a funeral director reached out to him. So turns out the nursing home released the body but somehow doesn't have the paperwork? Funeral homes have licenses and most will require paperwork--a death certificate as well as some release forms from the nursing home or hospital before they will receive a body.
This was the same day when we were all seeing articles online and on the news about the backlog caused by so many deaths--and there was that one funeral home in Brooklyn which had a non-refrigerated U-Haul outside their building loaded with rotting corpses. A horror show to read--I can only imagine how hellish it is for family members.
I told the caller about my own mom who was diagnosed and I told him what I did--contacted the NJ State AG, NJ Health Department, as well as the NJ Longterm care ombudsman. I wasn't sure if there was an ombudsman in NY, but gave him the best advice I could give--from personal experience.
The call was at 7 p.m., roughly 4.5 hours before mom died.
This pandemic has us all social distancing and isolating, and yet, those of us immediately impacted by it are holding the hands of others while we all go through this.
As of the time I was notified of her passing, I checked the stats (I may have already mentioned this--it's all a blur, and my mental unpacking of the chain of events is not a linear path at this point), and she was the 69,921st person to pass away from this dreaded disease.
A caller left a voicemail about his mother, who passed away early in March, whose body was MIA until April 9th. I made a point of calling him back, as I didn't want to add to his grief by delaying a response. I called and he was on the phone with his doctor on his landline, and I was calling I guess on his cell phone. He couldn't manage both calls at once and wanted me to call him back.
I said I'd be back in the office two days later--he said please call me. So, once I arrived home, I sat in my car and called him. Turns out his mom died of COVID19, and was in a nursing home. Yet the nursing home couldn't provide any type of paperwork for her body. There were several weeks he had no idea where his mother's body was and out of the blue a funeral director reached out to him. So turns out the nursing home released the body but somehow doesn't have the paperwork? Funeral homes have licenses and most will require paperwork--a death certificate as well as some release forms from the nursing home or hospital before they will receive a body.
This was the same day when we were all seeing articles online and on the news about the backlog caused by so many deaths--and there was that one funeral home in Brooklyn which had a non-refrigerated U-Haul outside their building loaded with rotting corpses. A horror show to read--I can only imagine how hellish it is for family members.
I told the caller about my own mom who was diagnosed and I told him what I did--contacted the NJ State AG, NJ Health Department, as well as the NJ Longterm care ombudsman. I wasn't sure if there was an ombudsman in NY, but gave him the best advice I could give--from personal experience.
The call was at 7 p.m., roughly 4.5 hours before mom died.
This pandemic has us all social distancing and isolating, and yet, those of us immediately impacted by it are holding the hands of others while we all go through this.
As of the time I was notified of her passing, I checked the stats (I may have already mentioned this--it's all a blur, and my mental unpacking of the chain of events is not a linear path at this point), and she was the 69,921st person to pass away from this dreaded disease.
Just... damn. Hang in there, yo.
ReplyDeleteThere is more to come. But yeah. I'm in shock. The pandemic has made everything so much more difficult. I am vacillating between rage and being so neutral/numb it's eerie.
ReplyDelete