Quebec is preparing to cross the symbolic milestone of 15,000 deaths linked to COVID-19. If the whole of society dreams of a “return to normal”, empathy and solidarity towards the disappeared seem to have crumbled over the months for those who are still burying friends, mothers, relatives swept away by the virus. . For them, life has nothing of this long-awaited normalcy.
“The truth is that every day, 30 or 40 families still experience a huge drama. This is the reality of my family. But it seems that these dramas have become the little footnotes of a great history book, ”laments Marc Bouliane, husband and father of three children, still blown away by the loss of Jennifer, his wife who died at 50. by COVID, last February.
Jennifer Hwang had just celebrated her 50th birthday and won an important battle against cancer. “There were no detectable traces of his cancer since July,” he insists.
Infected by a contact during a dinner on December 12, Jennifer had to wait several days for the result of her test, when Quebec was hit by the Omicron wave.
The mother will be admitted to the emergency room on December 22, but it was already too late to give her the treatments that could have helped her weakened immune system fight COVID. Taken to intensive care and intubated on Christmas Eve, Jennifer died of a heart attack 53 days after being infected.
If Marc Bouliane talks about the drama that is shaking his family, it is because he is sorry that we are turning the page so quickly on those who are still falling victim to COVID, and without thinking about the failures that precipitate many of these deaths. . “If we had had access to rapid tests, the result might have been different. We must talk about these deaths so as not to forget them, but also because many are the result of structural failures in our health network, ”he insists.
“We had been married for 26 years and it is difficult every day, says the father of the family. [Ce que je dis], it won’t bring her back. But if it can cause people to make different choices, I’ll have done my job. »
Forgotten?
The sadness of this family is combined with that of hundreds of others who lament that the recent death of their loved one has now fallen into nothingness, observes Mélanie Vachon, professor in the Department of Psychology at UQAM and head of the research project J’ accompanies COVID-19.
“It is as if the meaning given to death by COVID has changed since the start of the pandemic. Part of us got used to a world where people are dying. This trivialization is very difficult for the bereaved to live with,” she says.
Pandemic fatigue, the media eclipse caused by the horrors of the war in Ukraine and the discourse advocating the individual responsibility to protect oneself against the disease contribute to passing its deaths under the radar, she believes. “We have gone from dead who were poorly protected victims, to dead whose responsibility in their fate is questioned”, adds Mélanie Vachon.
The 2020 empathy for Quebec’s senior “builders” has given way to current affairs. Yet of those 15,000 dead, more than 3,300 (22%) have died since Omicron arrived just over four months ago.
In 2021, an official ceremony in tribute to those who disappeared from COVID-19 marked the first year of the pandemic. After 14,000 deaths, the silence of 2022 was painfully experienced by several families, adds the psychologist. “Given to 15,000 dead, it would not only be adequate to offer condolences, but even public apologies to those whose loved ones died alone, sometimes in atrocious conditions in CHSLDs. »
Interviews conducted by Jacques Cherblanc, professor at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC), as part of the international COVID-Grieving research report an “alarming” level of suffering among bereaved families during the pandemic. “We can say that not all the bereaved have experienced normal grief. The impossibility of ritualizing death in a group means that steps are missing in the story of the death of their loved ones. »
All divisive topics, including COVID deaths, tend to be avoided in this election year, adds the researcher. “However, the best way to learn from this carnage is to face it. If we want to say “never again”, we must recognize what happened. Sweeping under the carpet will not be enough, ”he thinks.
In the eyes of Valérie Bourgeois-Guérin, professor in the Department of Psychology at UQAM, “families are also affected, whether it is the first death or the fifteen thousandth death from COVID. Loss is also difficult to live with. »
“It’s normal that weariness sets in in the population in the face of stress, and that we don’t want to think too much about the dead anymore,” she says. But for the government, acknowledging the dead collectively would help raise awareness that many people around them are still going through difficult grief. Not talking about it hurts, ”she said.
This was the case of a woman whose two parents, young septuagenarians, were hospitalized at the same time, in the same room. “My 70-year-old father died in early December, next to my mother. There were only two of us at his bedside, dressed as astronauts. We have no idea what it can be, death in times of COVID. His brothers couldn’t even see him. It was excruciating, surreal, ”explains the one who requested anonymity out of delicacy for her family.
Not just seniors
The figures are reminiscent of the heavy toll attributable to COVID in Quebec. Of the 39,000 deaths that have occurred in Canada since 2020, 38% have been in Quebec, which accounts for 23% of the Canadian population. More than half of the 15,000 deaths from the pandemic occurred in 2020, including more than 5,000 in CHSLDs. But of the 3,271 people killed by COVID in 2021, half lived at home, and this was the case for 60% of the 3,141 people who died since the start of the year.
While COVID is associated with the elderly, the vast contagion caused by the Omicron variant among the youngest has resulted in more than 150 adults aged 20 to 59 being killed by COVID (5and and 6and waves). A record that exceeds that of all previous waves in these age groups. Disappeared in the prime of life, like Jennifer, who leave their families bruised.