Family gets to say their final goodbyes
A Taranaki woman got to tell her dying mum that she loves her after fighting to be reunited for a final time.
‘‘It was emotional, very, very emotional,’’ Renee West said yesterday. ‘‘I just held her and hugged her, with tears rolling down both of our faces and I think the whole family actually. It was a very surreal feeling.’’
West travelled back to New Zealand from Melbourne with her two sons, Deacon, 9, and Macoy, 5, after her 59-year-old mum, Lesley Haughey, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
She was given weeks to live and begged her daughter to return home. But under Government rules, after arriving in the country West was put into an approved facility to self-isolate for 14 days. She was due to be out of quarantine on Saturday, May 9.
She had applied for an exemption before returning and was twice turned down before the Ministry of Health (MOH) gave its approval last Wednesday.
On Thursday afternoon West and her sons were driven from Auckland to her mother’s Stratford
home after all testing negative for coronavirus.
‘‘I said thanks for being the most amazing mum, and she was saying how proud she was of me. Then she told me ‘I’m glad you came earlier because I’m not sure I could have held on until Saturday’,’’ West said.
‘‘It’s a relief. It’s so good.’’ West hadn’t seen her mum since last June when they holidayed in Bali with her sister, so the first thing she did when she saw her mum was hold her.
‘‘We got to have a conversation. We got to say ‘I love you’.’’
Since being reunited, Haughey’s condition has continued to deteriorate.
‘‘The last two days she’s pretty much just slept. You might get one or two words out of her but you can’t have a conversation with her.’’
West never gave up hope she would see her mum again and was grateful for all the support she received from friends, family and even complete strangers.
‘‘I had a good 30 private messages from strangers, people I didn’t even know, offering to drive me from Auckland to Taranaki, people sharing their condolences and just beautiful messages,’’ she said.
‘‘We’re blown away by the support.
‘‘I’m definitely grateful. Obviously it would have been nicer to have a bit more time with her and have it done sooner but I’m grateful it happened when it did and not a day later.’’