‘I said goodbye to my brother through a window’

An image of Padraig, who works in Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, standing on a bench outside his brother’s hospital window has been widely shared on social media.

It is a stark reminder of the trauma faced by grieving families saying goodbye to their loved ones at a time of the coronavirus restrictions.

Padraig, unable to visit his brother, brought the bench over and placed it beneath the window, climbed on it and looked through the window at his brother for the last time.

“I felt I was there; it was the only way I could say my last goodbye to him. I shed a tear and said goodbye Francis,” he told Joe Duffy on RTÉ’s Liveline.

One of seven brothers, Padraig said when another brother had died, the remaining six carried his coffin.

Due to restrictions on funerals, they were unable to do the same for Francis.

“That just stuck with me ... being brothers, you’d love to carry your brother in,” he said.

There was no formal funeral service. The family had to wait until the coffin was lowered into the grave before they were invited forward for prayers. There were 10 to 12 people there, Padraig said.

Before going to the graveyard, the hearse brought the coffin to the Floraville estate in Clondalkin, where Francis had lived.

Neighbours came to their doors to applaud as they drove out of the estate. They remembered Francis as a man who had tended the daffodils and tulips at the entrance to the estate, with one neighbour calling the radio show to describe the scene as, “one of the saddest things” she had ever seen.

“It was a nice send off,” Padraig said.

He urged people to take heed of social distancing requirements.

“We have to be on our guard,” he said.

We’re all vulnerable but the elderly are particularly vulnerable and we have a duty of care to them.

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