I listened to my mum take her last breaths

A DISTRAUGHT daughter listened on her mobile phone as her mother took her last breaths after losing her battle with coronavirus.

Sophia Essel, 30, played Tina Turner’s Simply The Best down the phone as her mum faded in hospital isolation.

Kay Elmer, 51, had seemed fine when she chatted to her daughter two weeks ago.

But just hours later she developed a debilitating cough and a fever.

Within days, she was in intensive care fighting for her life and on March 26 life support was turned off.

Sophia, from Wirral, Merseyside, said by the time she and brother Jamie, 33, arrived at Darlington Memorial Hospital, in County Durham, Kay was unconscious.

Nurses turned her bed to face them as they stood behind the glass.

Sophia said: “I asked the nurses to put mum’s phone on. I called her on her mobile. They answered and we played all our favourite songs to her until she took her last breath.

“She went out to Tina Turner’s Simply The Best. It was my nan’s funeral song and it always calmed Mum down.

“Her last text said, I love you, always and forever.”

Kay, who Sophia described as the life and soul of the party, regularly holidayed in CapeVerde with her husband John, 67, and had been in London shortly before she developed the deadly virus.

Sophia, a DJ, urged everyone to heed government advice to stay at home.

“I want to spread awareness and get people to stop being silly,” she said. “This isn’t meant to be just one sympathy story about someone who’s lost their mother.

“The more people ignore the guidance, the longer it’s going to be before I’m allowed to have a memorial for my mum. It’s already a life that’s been taken away from me in the wrong way.”