The death of a loved one is hard to bear at any time, but when you can actually see the threat approaching and yet can't do anything to stop it, it takes on an extra level of sadness. Jane Carrigan's aunt, Rose Hegarty, died from coronavirus in St Mary's Nursing Home in Dublin and Jane spoke to Joe Duffy on Liveline about how Rose's family could see the spread of the virus getting closer and closer to her, and all they could do was hope that she wouldn't get it. Rose loved it in St Mary’s:

"For someone who had been so ill and she had very limited mobility, to have that, just that joy of life come back, it was just great. It was great for us as a family to see it. Like, she did yoga, she liked the newspaper reading group, she loved the gardening group."

Jane's aunt was in her 80s, but, Jane said, "in her heart, she was very young". There was no point in ringing her on a Saturday night, for example, because she would be glued to The X-Factor or America's Got Talent. As much as she enjoyed St Mary's, Rose wasn't unaware of the coronavirus's arrival, despite her relatives' best efforts.

"We were contacted by St Mary's – I think it was March 29th when they rang – to say there was a case in the facility. And then the following day my aunt – we talked to her on the phone every day – she rang us. We debated on the 29th of saying it to her and then we kind of decided, 'Oh maybe we won't say anything'."

Rose was very conscious of hand-washing, she had stopped going to the communal dinner and she had a hand-sanitizer by her bed, so she definitely wasn't taking any unnecessary risks. And she kept herself informed. So when Covid-19 came first to St Mary's, she told her relatives about it. At that stage it was in the unit of the facility that Rose was not in. Then Jane and her family got a call from St Mary's to say that the virus had been detected in Rose's ward. It was difficult to hear about the seemingly-inevitable spread of the disease.

"It was this sense maybe it was creeping closer towards her and she was so vulnerable, really."

Jane spoke to Rose the day she died. She had developed a cough that morning, but by the time she spoke to Jane, she had been given oxygen after dinner and said she was feeling much better.

"She said to me on the last conversation I had with her, she said, 'I'm feeling a lot better'. And she said, 'I'll ring later'. But that was the last then."

Rose became too ill to talk on the phone, so her relatives could only go to see her through the window of her room in her last week. Margot – a nurse at St Mary's, who's recovering from Covid-19 herself at the moment – spoke to Jane and Joe about Rose and you can hear that, as well as the full conversation with Jane, here.

Rose Hegarty died on 27 April. You can read the beautiful letter Jane wrote about her aunt in The Irish Times here.

Niall Ó Sioradáin