‘I lost my uncle to Covid but I don’t want his life to be defined by his death’

Since his passing, his niece has been passionate about raising awareness of what happened to him.

Six years ago today, March 23, Northern Ireland along with rest of the UK entered the first national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19.

The pandemic catapulted Northern Ireland along with the rest of the world into a new way of living but it also brought waves of heartache to thousands of families.

As the first deaths from coronavirus began to be recorded in early 2020, heartbroken families were forced to mourn the loss of loved ones in a very different way and faced an unnatural grieving process.

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Covid restrictions also saw families separated from their loved ones in hospitals and residential care facilities while attendances were also severely restricted for funerals.

Every death left behind a grieving family and friends and since then many of those impacted have chosen to speak openly about the loss of their loved ones, both young and old.

Raymond McAleese from Glenavy was just 52 when he passed away at Antrim Area Hospital in September 2021. He died within a week of contracting the virus.

His niece Lauren Mallon, 26, says her uncle “had no human rights in life or death” and since his passing, the young Co Antrim woman has been passionate about raising awareness of what happened to him.

But she also said she feels her uncle was “written off” as a recovery prospect because he had Down’s Syndrome and that the most vulnerable like Raymond were “let down” during the pandemic.

Speaking to Belfast Live to mark the sixth anniversary of lockdown, Lauren shared fond memories of her much-loved uncle who had lived with her family for most of his life before moving into care for what turned out to be his final two years.

Lauren said: “He had Down’s Syndrome, but it was definitely not a defining feature of his life. In many ways he thought he was normal and I suppose that’s because we treated him like he was normal. To us he was no different and we never knew him any differently to what he was.”

She added: “You can’t explain a pandemic to someone with a learning difficulty because to him it’s like: ‘what do you mean? you’re not sick, I’m not sick, why?’ so it was just really difficult for him to comprehend.

“He loved seeing us. The first thing he always did was give you a big hug, and he would have been giggling and laughing. He was always so excited to see everybody so not having that contact during lockdown was a really difficult time for everybody.”

In September 2021, Lauren’s mother Paulette was informed that her brother had contracted Covid and was being moved from his care home to hospital.

Lauren recalled: “They moved him to hospital and they put him into A&E and my mum had to go down actually and sit with him for a while because he couldn’t understand that he couldn’t walk about. A couple of days went by and he seemed to be doing OK.

“They started to talk about, right, he does have Covid but he’s on oxygen and if we can keep his levels pretty stable, we can give him oxygen in his care home so we could move him back.

“But then they said, ‘oh no he’s really, really unwell’. My mum was very concerned at that point and she just remembers saying ‘do you mean he’s dying, is that what you’re trying to tell me? They said ‘yes at this point it’s unlikely that we think he’d recover’ so then it was really just a waiting game for the inevitable.”

Lauren added: “He died on Sunday, September 26 2021 at 6:29 in the morning. My mum’s parking ticket for the hospital was dated or time stamped 6:31 so she missed him by two minutes because of how rapid it was at the end.

“Definitely the communication there was not what it should have been and it’s something that we struggled with then because everything was so sudden towards the end.

“When we reflected on it, we realised there were several things in that experience that were just really not right and I mean all my life I’ve been an advocate for him. I never really appreciated it until he was gone.”

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Lauren is a member of the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice (NICBFFJ), a group campaigning for accountability on decisions made locally in response to the pandemic.

She said: “I think in a large way the world has moved on from Covid and we all just think ‘oh it was back then’ but for so many families like mine, it’s still an ongoing experience.

“Being around other families that understand that and want to listen – it’s not that your family and your friends don’t want to listen, but I think everyone moves on – it’s nice to be around people that actually are sort of still stuck in that moment.”

The inquiry into the crisis this week said the ‘stay home, protect the NHS, save lives slogans’ used during the Covid-19 pandemic “sent the message that healthcare was closed”.

The message, which was created by Cabinet Office officials without input from health leaders, was part of the reason people were “deterred” from accessing healthcare during the pandemic, according to the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry findings.

Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett said UK healthcare systems “teetered on the brink of total collapse” and coped “but only just”.

Her latest 387-page report says the devastating impact on the NHS was “unsurprising” given the “parlous state” the service was in at the start of the crisis.

The inquiry was formally launched in July 2022.

A report published in November last year found chaos at the heart of government and a failure to take Covid-19 seriously cost 23,000 lives in the first wave of the pandemic.

Lauren added: “Being part of the inquiry has been eye opening in a lot of ways to understand exactly what went on and the impact of it on people’s lives.

“It’s definitely been a good thing for me to channel some of that feeling of injustice into getting some answers, not just for me, but for other families and people involved.

“A lot of people are saying that those in charge at the time did the best they could with what they had but I think from hearing a lot of the evidence out of the inquiry, perhaps that wasn’t the case, and there needs to be lessons learned here.

“This is a great opportunity for us all to learn for any kind of emergency, not just a global pandemic, so a lot of the work now that we’re doing here in Northern Ireland is to reform some of those civil contingency plans.

“What we really want is people to say is ‘OK, we could have done that better, and here’s how we’re going to do it’. That’s all we really want because we can’t bring back our loved ones, they are gone.

“As much as what happened to my uncle Raymond was terrible, I don’t want his life to be defined by his death either. He was so much more than that and so being able to share his story and tell little stories about him and the things that he did, it’s an honour and a privilege and something that I feel very proud to do.

“Anytime that I think about him I just think he’s probably up there going, ‘go on, you’ve got this’.”

Video: Justin Kernoghan

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