Pain of loss endures for grieving family

Invercargill woman Jocelyn Finlayson with her grandson.PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Invercargill woman Jocelyn Finlayson with her grandson.PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Will Finlayson watches and understands as New Zealanders celebrate hopefully beating Covid-19.

But he and his family are still mourning his mother Jocelyn, who died of the disease in Dunedin Hospital on April 22.

"It’s never over for us ... the glue that held our family together has gone."

Jocelyn Finlayson (62) was a doting grandmother who son Will said had "just got over the hard stuff" and as 2020 began was in a position to relax and start enjoying life.

One night in March, just days after Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, Mrs Finlayson and her husband decided to have dinner at an Invercargill cafe.

At a nearby table was a group of revellers who were about to head to Bluff to attend a wedding.

No-one knows for sure how Mrs Finlayson contracted Covid-19, but what came to be known as the Bluff wedding cluster was the only other case of the disease in Southland at the time.

"It was the same restaurant, it seems fairly obvious," Mr Finlayson said.

Of Mrs Finlayson’s household contacts, her husband Denys, and Mr Finlayson and his partner all contracted Covid-19.

"She was very, very sick and she was also pregnant so it could have been very bad.

"I got nothing and my father had a headache for a couple of days and lost his sense of taste for a little bit as well, so the symptoms were quite wide."

However, for Mrs Finlayson, who was immunocompromised, Covid-19 was devastating.

"She started showing symptoms on the 28th and she was in bed for 3-4 days," Mr Finlayson said.

"Then she got the results back and she was in hospital pretty quick, and after two days in hospital she was off to Dunedin."

What time remained to Mrs Finlayson was spent in intensive care in Dunedin Hospital — to say that time was an emotional rollercoaster for her family would be an understatement.

On three or four occasions the family thought Mrs Finlayson would die the next day, only for her to recover.

Cruelly for her, the family — who due to Alert Level 4 restrictions had had to stay in Invercargill — and for the team of doctors and nurses who cared for Mrs Finlayson, once again, just before she died, they had thought she was starting to improve.

Mrs Finlayson had spent 19 days in hospital, 17 of them on a ventilator, but fell critically ill on the day of her 43rd wedding anniversary.

Denys Finlayson and Will sat down that night for a glass of wine to mark the occasion, when the family received the call it had dreaded, to come to Dunedin and say goodbye to Jocelyn.

"We were talking about her recovery and the very next afternoon was when they said you can come up now," Mr Finlayson said.

"We had a conversation about how good she was and then literally the next day she died."

Mr Finlayson has talked publicly about his mother several times since her death, his message being Covid-19 is real and without every precaution being taken could return.

"I get angry when I see people not scan, it’s so simple and obvious."

mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz

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