Father in hospital didn’t learn of his son’s death, passed away 4 days later

Srinagar: The month of May usually brings more business for the Joo family in downtown who trade in Kashmiri handicrafts. This time, though, tragedy visited the family as two of their members became Covid-19 victims.
“The virus has snatched everything from us,” said Mujtaba Joo, nephew of the elderly man from Srinagar who became the tenth victim of Coronavirus a day ago. “I am unable to speak about the tragedy,” he said and broke down.
On Thursday last week, the elder of two siblings died of the virus at the age of 36. His father never found out about it because he was in hospital himself.
A resident of Kralpora in Gaesyar locality of downtown Srinagar, the deceased became the youngest Covid-19 victim in Jammu and Kashmir after contracting the novel virus at Super Specialty Hospital, Shireen Bagh, where he was attending to his ailing father. Doctors suspected ‘Cytokine Storm’ as the cause of his death but couldn’t establish it as they didn’t perform an autopsy.
His father died on Monday, without knowing that he’d outlived his son, the family said.
Now only two female members are left in the family—the elderly man’s wife and daughter.
Dr Saleem Khan, nodal officer for Covid-19 at GMC Srinagar, said the father died of ‘sudden cardiac arrest’ and had stage-4 pancreatic malignancy.
The family is now hoping and praying that they can grieve in peace, and that matters won’t get any worse.
Following the two deaths in the family, 18 of the close relatives including the mother-daughter duo have been sent to a quarantine centre, while most of the close neighbours are in self-isolation amid concerns that they, too, might be infected with the virus. The relatives are now mourning the deaths in a hotel room.
“It is tragic we could not be on the side of our close neighbours,” said Zahid Hussain, a next-door neighbour. “We also could not attend the funeral due to strict government guidelines.”
He said his family and other neighbours had also self-isolated themselves after health officials told them to do so.
Everyone in the neighbourhood feels sad for the mother-daughter duo who are the only survivors in the small family now.
“Their lives have been turned upside down,” Zahid said.
“It seems the virus took away everything from them. They lost the support and breadwinners of the family,” he added.
“They were too young to die. They didn’t deserve this,” Imran Khan, another neighbour, told Kashmir Reader. “They were good people and helped everyone,” Imran said.
He said the family has been ‘decimated’ by the disease.

Manzoor ul-Hassan