My granny died, but hardest part was a lonely funeral

FIRST PERSON

My granny died, but hardest part was a lonely funeral

Shobita.Dhar@timesgroup.com

21.04.2021

On April 19, my maternal grandmother developed Covid-19 symptoms. She was 96, her blood oxygen level had dropped to an alarmingly low 76 and she was gasping. Fifteen minutes into the drive to the hospital, she passed away. But it was not the saddest part.

The challenges peculiar to Covid-19 became apparent the moment my parents, 69 and 67, with whom she used to live, decided to take her to the hospital on their own. They live in a third-floor apartment and the car was parked in the basement. The next-door neighbours were all down with Covid-19 and they had asked me not to come — I have a child whose health they didn’t want to risk. With help from just one person, they managed to get her in a wheelchair and then to the car.

The hospital was 23 minutes away, but she didn’t make it. Doctors told my parents to take her body to the cremation grounds right away because it could be a Covid-19 case. We couldn't know for sure because grandmother passed away before we could get her tested. My parents wanted to conduct some form of last rites before the cremation, so they took her back home but not to the apartment. They parked the car in the basement, with my granny in it, and decided to organize a small funeral right there. My father cranked up the AC of the car to keep her body protected from heat.

This is how I saw her when I got there with my husband and father-in-law. Five chairs had been placed on one side of the car. Five relatives came over after a while. Broken and grieving, nobody hugged. No priest agreed to come perform the last rites. We did that on our own. We had to give grandmother the ceremonial bath before the cremation. My mother, two of her sisters and I tied a bedsheet from the car to a pillar in the basement to create a private space for that. We did all we could to give her as dignified a farewell as possible.

We stumbled along with her body to the cremation ground, where five pyres were already burning. We picked up the wooden logs for the pyre, but as they were heavy, a stranger, who was there to cremate his own, helped us. We were overcome with gratitude. After the cremation, we left.