Corrie’s Maureen: A candid confession of heartbreaking loss…
Corrie favourite Maureen Lipman has spoken movingly about her devastating goodbye to her partner of 13 years…
‘It’s unbelievable having to say goodbye in gloves and a pinafore,’ said CoronationStreet star Maureen Lipman, as she spoke in heartrending detail of just how she had to say her final farewell to her dying partner, Guido Castro.
The shocking pain of that situation, laid out in black and white, is one that families all over Britain have had to suffer during the pandemic.
The 75-year-old Dame revealed she had to don full PPE to say goodbye to her partner of 13 years. She could not even hold his hand.
Guido, 84, had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease before passing away in January, despite surviving a long, gruelling battle with Covid.
Maureen had been with Guido since 2008, four years after the death of her husband of 30 years, screenwriter Jack Rosenthal.
She said of Guido, ‘He survived Covid in a care home. But he didn’t really survive – it knocked the stuffing out of him.’
The UK may have celebrated ‘Freedom Day’, but Maureen is one of many who will be mourning the loss of someone they loved during this pandemic – and haunted by the kind of torturous goodbyes nobody should have to suffer.
Despite her pain, Maureen is not bitter at the government’s handling of the crisis, though – even if she claimed they could have done better.
‘The scientists’ opinions are all different. I don’t know that anybody could have got this right. It’s a nightmare.’
Following the death of her husband Jack in 2004 to bone marrow cancer, Maureen was understandably inconsolable – and said she couldn’t ever imagine being in another relationship.
But then she fell for Italian-born businessman Guido, after the two were introduced at a mutual friend’s dinner party. And in 2010, Maureen confessed, ‘I am very grateful to have met two soulmates in my one life.
‘Sometimes I think these things are out of our control and are ordained from a storyline somewhere… But I don’t question it. As long as it’s good, it’s got to be better than facing life alone.’
How sad that she is facing that crushing loss – and ‘life alone’, yet again…
‘I have met two soulmates in one life’