Opinion: My father’s rudely interrupted wake: a lesson in the dignities we sacrificed | Nicholas Pickard
When two police officers came banging on the front door of my mother’s ground-floor apartment, I knew we had crossed the Rubicon. The officers put their boots in to jam the door and insisted two elderly friends of my dead father leave the small wake. A neighbour had dobbed us in.
Sometimes it is hard to remember where we were this time last year with the outbreak of the Delta variant, a slow vaccine rollout and restrictions upon restrictions being placed on the public. I had to remind myself of the daily headlines. Police and military were being deployed in Sydney and, at the time of my father’s hospitalisation, a lockdown was established that barred people from leaving their home except for essential activities.
On the third day in palliative care, a nurse complained about his cough and demanded he have a COVID test. This was despite his test upon his admission a week earlier. He was then isolated from all of us for 36 hours while we awaited the result. He was alone.
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My father’s rudely interrupted wake: a lesson in the dignities we sacrificedWhen two police officers came banging on the front door of my mother’s ground-floor apartment, I knew we had crossed the Rubicon. Looking back, it is almost unfathomable to recall what we lived through. | OPINION by Nicholas Pickard
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