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HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
'I've lost Nine friends to the pandemic'
I know nine people who have died from Covid, three were close.
I was waking up everyday and someone I knew had gone. My late mum used to start every phone call with ‘do you know who’s dead?’ It was getting like that.
Seriously, it was very difficult. My partner and I are close so we’d talk about it but there was a lot of silence. I’m not going to lie. Sometimes it was so sudden. One friend was fine on Saturday and she’d gone by Tuesday.
I went to one Covid funeral the other week but I haven’t been able to go to the others because of the restrictions. I saw another through a pane of glass.
Made me think
For me, I’m overweight and male, it’s made me think about my mortality. I’ve always been one for living in the moment and living life to the full since I lost a sister when I was young. I like to think I’m level-headed but this has been like: wow.
It’s made me a lot less tolerant of people who aren’t taking it seriously. I’m walking and I want to punch joggers. We do this lockdown properly - my partner is high risk. We’ve had a routine and have found it OK but one thing I miss is giving someone a hug, that physical contact. I’ve not seen my kids for eight weeks. I couldn’t go and help my neighbour next door when she fell over. I felt terrible.
Something is missing
People die all the time, of course. But you have no chance to say goodbye with Covid.
Normally, if you hear someone’s ill, you go and visit them at home, in hospital, wherever. Now you can’t even see how someone is. You leave a parcel, knock on their door and run away to the end of the path. It’s like a not very good game of ‘knock down ginger’.
And, usually, even more importantly, if someone dies you celebrate their life. Not having the chance to meet up with others who have shared that persons’s life is very difficult, there’s something missing.
We need ceremonies
Families are outraged they can’t carry coffin. Whatever faith you have or none, we need these ceremonies. Ceremonies to honour our dead are part of our evolution as a civilised species. You can do a lot online but not this. It’s difficult not to be able to touch people.
There’s an old saying that you pass three times: once when you die, a second time when you’re buried and the third time when the last person stops talking about you. It’s important to keep that last stage as long as possible. Remember people. Talk about them. Hopefully, one day, have a party for them.
| This article reflects the experience and the views of the individual. It is not health information from the Men's Health Forum under the terms of the NHS England Information Standard. |
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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