PHARMACIST’S WIDOW WHO HAD TO BREAK THE SADDEST OF NEWS
Kanan Patel will never forget the moment everything changed for her and her two daughters.
‘I was sitting in the dining room with the girls when the doctor rang to tell me my husband Jay had passed away,’ says Kanan. ‘I was in shock. I sat there shaking, holding the phone, for a good three minutes in silence. I felt numb. then I burst into tears.’
Kanan and Jay had been married for over 20 years. He was her best friend — ‘a simple guy, calm and collected — and well-liked in the community’. Jay worked as a pharmacist in epsom, Surrey, where they live. now Kanan had to tell their daughters, Rya, 20, and Kiya, 17, that their beloved dad had passed away at the age of just 52.
It had all happened so fast. In March last year, Jay had got what he thought was a cold: a sniffle, shivers and loss of smell. He didn’t think it was Covid.
‘It was so early in the pandemic that no one really knew the symptoms,’ says Kanan, 50. Within days, Jay was bed-ridden, yet they still didn’t know if it was Covid for sure. at that time, you could only get a test if you went into hospital.
An NHS 111 doctor advised him to stay home. Yet two days later, Kanan recalls, ‘he looked like an absolute skeleton’. He asked for water but could only drink it from a spoon. She called an ambulance. ‘they came quickly. His oxygen levels had dropped. I went to get his things ready. By the time I came back, he was walking out the door in his slippers. that was the last time I saw him.’
Kanan was not allowed to visit but they were able to have one phone call the night before he went into intensive care. ‘He couldn’t speak much, as he could hardly breathe, but he told us to pray for him. that’s how I knew he was really scared.’ afterwards, he sent her a text, telling her: ‘From now on, positivity.’
Kanan knew what Jay had meant. ‘that I had to stay strong for my daughters,’ she says simply. and that is what she did. the day after Jay died was Kiya’s 16th birthday, and Kanan decided it wouldn’t be fair not to celebrate. So she bought a cake and put a photo of Jay next to it. ‘I had to go to the toilet to cry. It’s the only place I knew no one would find me.’
the next few months were gruelling, emotionally and practically. Kanan was also caring for her father, who lived with them, as well as trying to help the girls process their grief.
‘I let them sleep as long as possible, the later the better, because when they woke up, it would all come flooding back to them,’ she says. the smallest things could be devastating. ‘Once, we went food shopping, and when we passed a drink Jay liked, Rya turned to me and said: “Mum, we’re never going to see him again.” It was awful. In those moments, I feel like I have to hold it together. I told her: “He is always with us: we won’t forget him.” ’
Christmas was particularly difficult as Jay loved the holiday. ‘I still did everything he would have done,’ says Kanan. ‘ We put up lights, a tree, cooked a roast. One minute we’d be crying, the next we’d be laughing.’
two weeks ago, Kanan also lost her father, from a heart attack. ‘It has been the worst year,’ Kanan says.
‘I often think of Jay’s last message to me, telling me to stay positive. He was a fighter and I’ll fight for my girls. It’s that which keeps me going.’