Son’s heartbreaking experience of losing father to Covid-19

As Kenya marks one year since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in March 2020, over 1,700 people have lost their lives in Kenya and more than 110,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19.

The Coronavirus does not respect age, colour, religion or gender. These numbers represent real people. One Kenyan man shared his heart breaking experience on Twitter about testing positive and losing his father to Covid-19.

On Friday 12 March 2021, Sham (@just_sham_it) published an emotional thread on Twitter narrating how Covid-19 led to the death of his father. This is his story...

“Yesterday I had to wear a personal protective equipment suit and light the funeral pyre to cremate my father.  My father died on Monday afternoon after fighting Covid-19 and other complications in the ICU for two weeks. We are heartbroken.

He died alone with none of us at his side. He couldn’t even have his phone in the ICU.

Two weeks ago, he went to the doctor’s office as he was ill and collapsed there. As his breath returned, the doctor suggested CT Scans and other tests.

A day after my father’s birthday, he was admitted into hospital as they wanted to monitor his health. We left him in the care of the doctors and nurses. As we were waiting for him to be moved into the ward, he lay there on the stretcher with tubes giving him oxygen.

My father told me to take care of mum

He grabbed my hand and said, “take care of mum”. His eyes were glassy with tears but he wasn’t crying. I smiled, put my hand on his chest and told him, “You’re getting out of here soon! This is just precautionary. We’re going to go to the coast together soon.”

The next day, my father, mother, my uncle and my tests came back Covid-19 positive. We weren’t nervous as the doctors seemed calm and assured us about procedures and whatnot. My mom, uncle and I went into isolation as dad was kept in the hospital.

I spoke to him on the phone that day and he was in good spirits. He was already sick of being sick and wanted to come back home so badly. He kept saying take care of mom. Always looking out for others.

A day later, my dad called me at 9:30pm and said that he was struggling to breathe and that his fingers were going blue. I spoke to the doctor, and they said that they were going to do some tests.

ICU beds in hospital were full

Mom and I went to the hospital and waited in the car in the parking as my sister who was Covid-19 negative spoke to the doctors. His oxygen levels had dropped drastically, and they suggested that he be moved to the ICU.

The doctor told us that all the ICU beds in the hospital were full and asked us to help look for an open bed somewhere.

We called various hospitals and friends, and finally at about 12:30am we managed to find one. At 3:30am, dad was taken in an ambulance to the ICU.

That was the last time I saw him. In the parking lot of a hospital at 3:30am as they wheeled him on a stretcher into an ambulance. From a distance, we shouted to him that we love him and as he tried to respond, he only managed to cough.

Fear gripped us now. Mom and I and my uncle isolated and worried about dad. No phone meant we couldn’t even reach him and tell him we’re here and not to worry about us. My sister went to the hospital and got information about him and the doctors updated us every evening.

A week after being in ICU, his oxygen dropped again. Even when he was on the high flow oxygen. We got a call from the hospital asking for consent to intubate him which we gave right away as the alternative was him struggling to breathe.

Dad suffers a cardiac arrest

The next time we heard from them was several hours later when they called my sister and told her that dad had suffered a cardiac arrest while they were intubating him but they managed to stabilize him and that he was unconscious and sedated.

Four more days passed. Every time my phone vibrated, I felt afraid. We were all trying to heal but the worry of something happening to dad and what he was already going through was slowly eating away at us. Mom was sick, uncle by now had to be admitted into the hospital.

We couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, weakness in my body was heavy, sick with worry. We couldn’t go to the hospital because we were all positive. Couldn’t communicate with him, couldn’t be with our loved ones and extended family. Isolation breaks the mind even further.

The fear I have developed of my phone ringing or vibrating… I have never felt weaker, helpless and broken as I did in those long stretched out moments.

Until Monday this week. On Sunday, we got a call saying that dad had now got a blood infection and that his kidneys were very weak and may not be able to fight it off by himself and so they were going to start dialysis.

On Monday afternoon, my sister got a call from the doctors saying that he wasn’t responding to the dialysis and that she should go to the hospital. Mom and I went to get ourselves tested again so that if it was negative we could go and see dad too.

A few minutes after getting the test and coming back home, my sister called. Dad was gone. I walked into my mom’s room and from the look on my face she knew and we both burst into tears and broke down.

The screams and cries of my mother

I’ve never seen, nor felt that type of searing pain that cuts into the fabric of your mind and you can’t understand what reality is. A fog fell. The screams and cries of my mother at that moment will stay with me forever. That night our results came back as negative. Was too late.

They had been together for 40 years. And in those 40 years, they did everything together. Anyone who knows our family knows that mom and dad never separated, they worked together, came home together, did small tasks together.

They taught me so much about what the meaning of love is. Of deep, true and pure love.

Yesterday we cremated his body. Only a handful of people were allowed to come due to governmental protocols in such situations. It was morbidly surreal. Wearing those PPE suits, hardly being able to breathe, vision obscured, felt like I was in outer space.

And here in front of me was my father’s body. A man I had seen from when I was a kid, the head of the family, just inanimate. It didn’t look like him. I couldn’t sense his calm presence.

He touched so many people’s lives but none could be in attendance. I keep getting messages on my phone from people I don’t know saying how he helped them with this or that.

Someone told me that he lost his father and that my dad was like a father to him in those moments. Dad was a simple man. All he craved was peace and quiet and to help others in need.

He wasn’t ostentatious; he didn’t want to live the most lavish of lifestyles. He was just humble, peaceful and connected to a grace that none of us could see. He forgave everyone who ever wronged him.

Mom would get frustrated at him when people tried to take advantage of him. She protected him from the wolves. Mom is broken.

Yesterday as his body burned, she spoke to him. She told him how much she loves him and that she’ll see him again and that their bond will never break even in death. That they will unite again.

The past two weeks have been the most torturous of our lives. I personally have never broken down like this. Every day it was a new battle that his body needed to fight. Every day I watched as my mom sat in worry and fear. The lack of sleep made us even more on edge.

Every day I was afraid that my mother’s health would get worse. And I, unable to do anything in the face of this monstrous illness, just let time move.”