Jennifer Mclean- ‘Joy and tragedy in a Single Week’ COVID-19 - Interviewed by Anand Chhabra

‘The Memory of the Just is Blessed’ - Service Sheet Jennifer Mclean’s best friend of 33 years who contracted the virus in March 2020.

Jenny Mclean a nurse from Wolverhampton had a very eventful week in March 2020 it took place a week before the National Lockdown and of COVID-19 pandemic that brought an experience of much raw emotion. A week that included the loss of her best friend (who will remain anonymous here) to COVID-19 as well as the birth of her granddaughter that she was unable to witness. This is her story in her own words:-

How Covid-19 affected me is that I lost my best friend of 33 years. We spoke at the beginning of March then in the middle of March and then my birthday was on the 24th of March and she didn't text me. I thought that's unusual because the 20 or 30 years before we have always spoken to each other on our birthdays or we've gone out and we've done something, so we always contacted each other on our birthdays and then on the Friday I rang, and her daughter answered the phone.

In her innocence she told me she got COVID-19 and she's gone into hospital. I personally was struck dumb by that statement and I immediately sent a text to my best friend. She was in hospital when I sent a text to see her and I didn’t get a reply and apparently one day they moved her from one ward to another ward and she lost her phone and what transpired was an emotional rollercoaster. 

I heard her daughter told me things over the phone that day about her mother’s symptoms and as a nurse I thought to myself that doesn't sound very good and I couldn’t say that to her daughter because that's her daughter and I had to keep that knowledge and that was quite hard. It was just because I wanted to protect her daughter, protect her son and her husband, the whole family. Although as a nurse I knew very well what they were telling me about the symptoms she was getting wasn't good.

I later had a phone call from another mutual friend and ours that she told me our friend had massive bleed on her brain and it wasn't looking good and her kidneys and organs were failing and they are going to have to turn the machine off. I was at work at the time and I just burst into tears and I just had told the staff I can't stay here anymore when I got home within 2 hours she passed away and I never got to say goodbye I never got to stroke her hand, I never got to give her a hug or kiss her or for us to reminisce about something or laugh and share joke about things. She was simply here one minute and then gone the next.

I was never able to say I'll pray for you, never able to say I'll come and see you and nobody was even allowed to go see her at the hospital and since I had that conversation with her daughter until the day she died it was like a horror story unfolding. 

My friend was a nurse previously, but she had stopped working for some time and so she wasn't working and as far as I knew. She went to a wedding on 13th of March and I sent a text to her in the morning on the day of the wedding, just to say to her have a lovely time. I sent a text on the 13th of March and she sent me a text me back and she said I'm glad you remembered I'm looking forward to it but I haven't been feeling very well for the last few days previous to this, she went to the wedding she wasn't very well at the wedding and she came home, she was feeling very very unwell, she had health issues before like everybody else as she was 63 and you could say that was part of it the reason why COVID-19 affected her in the way it did but we are not fully sure. 

A Forever Friendship  

Jennifer Mclean pays homage to her best friend of 33 years who she lost to COVID-19

. © Anand Chhabra

We became friends I would say in 1986, although we met her husband first in a church conference, and we met at this conference we became friends and her husband invited us to their house for dinner. I was pregnant with my daughter Natalie and that was 1986 and we became friends and the beginning of our friendship was like we had known each other for years and years.

 At the time we met I was a general nurse she was a mental health nurse and that was the only thing in common we had and then we became friends and our friendship just grew and grew. In 1987 she was pregnant with her daughter and so both our young children grew up together and she used to come to my house, and I used to go to hers and so our friendship grew through that connection. 

Our children also became friends, but they will never as close as we were. I used to ring her up and that we should ask how her a son is doing and also go through a whole family asking about them and she's a say my son's doing this and my daughter's doing this or my daughter’s doing that. 

 We have been to Jamaica on holiday together and watched the sun come up on the beaches there. I got pictures of her playing together on the beach in Jamaica we are in our swimsuits, you can see us splashing on the water on the beach since then we've been really fast friends and once a week, we would call each other. 

Both our families know about friendship and that was our friendship in the last 18 months we hadn't spoken to each other that often that was because she made friends with another young lady who need a lot support and she said to me she said I'm going to go and help and support her because I know you're ok but of course we still rang each other all the time. 

 I remember now I would leave a message if she wasn’t available, in my message I would say ‘its only me Jen’ and she would ring back and start with ‘its only you Jen!?’ We always used to laugh and joke with each other, we never fell out or I can't remember falling out with each other, we also had a mutual set of friends it was a very beautiful friendship and she was like a sister that I never had and so she was that very sister I didn't have I had. I had two sisters, I had her and I had another friend and now they're both gone. 

 When you lose this kind of friendship, I just explained you feel like somebody has taken your right arm or your left arm, you’ll ever get it back and you have to learn to live with it. 

It’s been hard  not been able to be able to tell her how I felt about us and our friendship and relay that on the phone at least before she passed away, not even been able to see her again. She was the middle child of six or seven and everybody that knew her loved her family, her friends, her nieces she's got at least sixteen different nieces. They all loved her they were absolutely devastated when they heard about her death.

I also remember when I went back to Jamaica to bury my father the funeral was on the Saturday and on the Sunday I rang her and she would have normally have rang me and I went on the Saturday to tell her how everything went.  I thought that was odd not hearing from her so rang her again at a later time in the day (along with the time difference) and I never got a reply and I and then on the Monday she rang me.  And she said you need to sit down for this one and I said why and then she told me  and said I have got the breast cancer and again I felt as if I was going to be sick when I heard that and then she came back and although I was grieving she while was going through the treatment, she still had time for me and that's what you call a friend. Thankfully she came through that experience

 If I had a hospital appointment she was there with me and if she had a hospital appointment I was there with her and that was the ‘done thing’ that was a relationship one day I remember going for a hospital appointment with and she had a problem with her tear duct and the nurse came along and put something in her  eye I should in her eye. I leant against the wall and I thought I was going to be sick and she said I'm not coming to you with another appointment because I said I it was too painful, and I felt her pain and I felt her discomfort when that happened. I said to her that made me weak that did and I just can't cope with her knowing you were suffering and such as a friendship I remember another time when she was having chemotherapy and I just sat there looking at her thinking I can't believe my friends having chemotherapy.

Jenny Mclean honours the memory of her best after a difficult process of burial for the Jamaican community ©Anand Chhabra

A Jamiacan burial 

I have a little video of her coming down the hill in the hearse at the funeral and all you can hear somebody crying out on the video on there and that's me crying when she's about to be cremated and her brothers and sisters are all heartbroken. Her son who is thirty-six said to me I feel like I've been railroaded, and her husband was numb and although they were estranged he just looked like a shadow at the funeral. So this COVID-19 this thing has changed the way we look at anything now.

As a Jamaican community we celebrate life when people are born we celebrate them at Christenings we have a party to celebrate birthdays, we also celebrate deaths in the sense we mark the death of a loved one. We are there to support you as a community to eat with you, to drink with you, to cry with you and when we take you to your final resting place and we sing for you and we've see you have a good send off. Our community has been devastated by COVID-19. We have just to sit in a church and we're not allowed to sing, we're not allowed to pay a tribute, we're not allowed to celebrate the life of that person or celebrate the way we which we would have done.

It's the most awful thing and I felt like they're worth in life hasn't meant anything because you can't celebrate and mark death in the way we used to. I felt physically sick at the funeral. At a Jamaican funeral, we get together as a community physical put their coffin down into the ground and we don't allow a tractor to put the dirt on top of them. The women, the men of the community get together, brothers will get the shovel and they will physically put the dirt on top of the coffin as a mark  of respect, along with the wider community of people standing by who will do the same. They will have a drink if they need to have a drink and then we go to a place to eat together and if there are other into music, they will play music. We normally would say a tribute and so this was none of that. We were stood in a church ten people as this was the maximum allowed, just ten of us at the funeral stood in the church and that was it and we stood there and that was it. Her sister gave a tribute and that was it and then I walked out and stepped out the door. Her coffin was laid on the side just to be cremated.

It took me about a month or 6 weeks to get my head around what was happening. 

My friend chose to get cremated because about 2 years ago maybe 18 months ago she wasn't very well and she had vertigo and she told me, ‘Jenny I thought I was going to die.’ Those were her exact words and she said you know what I've done I've gone out and I've paid for my funeral, I want to be cremated and I took a deep breath in but I thought ok I'll respect her decision and she said I want to be cremated I've chosen my hymns that I want to be sung at the funeral I've chosen everything and I've paid for everything and I supported her fully, because that’s the way supported each other. I said that's what you want and she said that's what I want and my clothes that I want to put are at the bottom of my wardrobe so when she did in her 60s. 

She planned everything the last song we sung when we were coming out of church which we would have sung if we'd gone to church was a Gospel song a church song, 

‘This world is not my home
I'm just passing through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue

    The Angels beckon me
    From Heaven's open door
   And I can't feel at home
    In this world anymore

  Oh Lord, you know
    I have no friend like you
    If Heaven's not my home
   Then Lord what will I do

   The Angels beckon me
                From Heaven's open door
              And I can't feel at home
              In this world anymore’

I think for the black experience that song means something more to black and people of colour, as they are born into social and economic disadvantage compared to say white counterparts and so they end up becoming world weary in life, living in the West. She was going through this life she didn’t feel part of the world she's not fit into the system and that song personifies her faith and her belief that there's something greater to come there's another life in the next life and it's no wonder she was preparing her funeral going to the circumstances and now even to the suffering of COVID-19 she was prepared she was prepared because of her faith. So there is a point on her faith and I suppose that's what that song meant to do my friend her hope was in the next life. 

Now I try to speak to her daughter every few weeks and I speak to husband once every six months or so, just to ask how they are. I feel I owe it to her daughter to keep in touch in the least in I'm not her mum and I don't want to be and if she just needs someone that she wants to talk to then I'm there if she wants to talk then I'm happy if she's doesn't want to happy as well and still want to leave by herself in this circumstance so we talk.

I find that everybody greaves and everybody deals with certain things in different ways. 

 We also have another mutual friend that we know, and I speak to her as well as we both found it very, very heart breaking, and we console each other. So just on a positive note she has been occasionally sending me a song, or a scripture or something that you would just encourage me. There are all the good things that we hold onto the all the good memories and precious memories we have her.

I'm more conscious about even the very words I say to others but if I need someone somebody then I have to impact them in some in a positive way and that's the positively from me what's come out of COVID-19.

 On a deeper personal level, this experience has made me reflect and think about how I live my life now as a person that I get opportunity to get an opportunity to say something I want to say it in love. We don't know when the next time is going to be as we don't have the opportunity to say what we should. Now I have lived with the fact that I didn't have the option just say what I wanted to say to her and about our time together as good friends and so that is still very sad. 

 My daughter Natalie

 My daughter was about had a baby in the same week I had to bury my friend and we were very concerned about the COVID situation as I mentioned I myself work as a nurse. On the Saturday morning of my best friend’s funeral  a few days before, on the Wednesday morning my granddaughter was born! So my emotions on the Wednesday were sky high and, on the Saturday,  they were very low. 

So along with many other families in these unusual times, we couldn't go and see my daughter at the hospital or witness my granddaughters’ birth. When I did finally go and see them, I held my daughter with tears running down my eyes and my daughter said she thought she was going to die!

Her husband couldn't be there with her as he had to just drop her off and leave her. She had the baby there by herself and the next day she had to come home so the range of emotions and our joy wasn't complete because we couldn't be quite be there when it all happened and so there was a bit tension in our joy. 

 Emotions were already high, it was a very crazy week I can't put into words how it affected me so my daughter Natalie had the baby and we were talking on the phone I remember talking to her on the Tuesday the day before she went into hospital. We talked from 6p.m to 3a.m. in the morning on the Wednesday. At hospital she couldn't talk to anybody she was on her own at the hospital and there arose a situation at one point that the umbilical cord was stuck around her neck and she had to be rushed off into the caesarean wing and she couldn't ring anybody call anyone, but she was totally at peace because of her faith everything's going to be ok and she just disappeared in that moment and we didn't know what was going on and everything turned out ok though which was good. 

 Initially they were concerned about the size of a baby when she's about 20 weeks and they were thinking of looking to do a Caesarean section and I have to sign her own consent form and name her next of kin in the and she had to sign  to say she was willing to have blood and all sorts of other things and everything went up outside the door word doctors waiting to come and deliver the baby but we never heard anything about for two-and-a-half hours and then her husband Aiden rang me at 5:30a.m. on the Wednesday and he told us she's had a girl and asked him if he was crying and he said yes. So, I was elated I rejoiced that that I'm glad my daughter came through and she was ok. Then on Thursday I went to work, Friday I went to work and on Saturday I had to bury my friend. I don't want ever to experience a week like that ever again. 

 2020 has been an ‘eye opener’ of a year in and what I can draw from it  is that I've been able to look back and reflect upon my life and where its been and what it meant and of course in another sense it's been in a very negative thing with the pandemic. As a nation or a people who weren't expecting this to happen to us at the time it started, we were thinking about that's happening China it won't happen here and when it did happen here, we were thinking what's happened here!? It certainly had an impact upon all our lives in one way or another.