Family’s thoughts with ‘funny, witty’ relative lost to Covid
WAKING up on Mother’s Day today there will be someone missing for the Honeyman family as it is exactly one year since they lost their beloved mother to Covid.
Thought to be Scotland’s second Covid victim, greatgrandmother Eileen Honeyman, 74, had been enjoying a get-together with her daughters just weeks before being admitted to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
She was initially admitted due to concern with her breathing as she had been diagnosed with nodules on her lungs. But in early March last year her family were told that her condition was worse than they had originally thought. She was diagnosed with cancer which had spread and given months to live.
On the weekend of the anniversary of the first Scottish Covid death, the family have bravely spoken out.
Agnes Honeyman, one of Mrs Honeyman’s six children, said: “Everything seemed to happen so quickly. We were dealing with mum being told she had moths to live and it was very early days of people talking about coronavirus.
“We were told that as soon as her pain was under control they would be able to let her go home where we would be able to look after her.
“She was due to go home but on March 12 she complained of feeling worse and she was taken for an X-ray. A few people in her ward had been swabbed for Covid and we were told they were 99% sure mum didn’t have it. We are a large family and had been able to visit her without restrictions at that time and were told repeatedly she didn’t have the virus.
“Mum wasn’t getting any better and we were all gathered at the hospital with a few of us at at time able to sit with her – she died on the evening of March 14.”
Devastated at their mother’s sudden death, they had their suspicions that it might have been Covid-related and were told by an undertaker that it was the cause of death. They also believe it was hospital acquired.
“We had all been in to see mum in the final days, but then we found ourselves having to self-isolate for 14 days as mum had contracted Covid,” added Agnes.
“In the end none of us developed symptoms but we took it upon ourselves to isolate rather than run the risk of spreading it unknowingly. It meant we had to wait at least two weeks to have a funeral because we were all in isolation and even then there were- such restricted numbers that her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren could not attend.”
The one thing they would like to do is come together to remember the 74-year-old, from Glasgow’s Drumchapel area, and celebrate her life.
“Today will be hard as it is Mother’s Day and although we can meet up with another household outdoors we can’t hug. We couldn’t even hug our siblings at her funeral as we were all socially distanced. It was held in full lockdown and we couldn’t have flowers, except a rose each to lay. However, it is our hope that we can come together and hold a service in celebration of her life when it is safe to do so.”
Daughter Marion McDonald paid tribute to her mum, saying: “Our mum was a wonderful, funny, witty person. She loved to live in the spur of the moment and even in her 70s was raring to have a go on a motorbike – but we had to stop her! She had six children, 25 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren. Mum was loved so much and is missed greatly. The only comfort we have is mum is now with our dad her soulmate William, who she affectionately called Bonzo.”
THE man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda protested against his looming trial on terror charges, saying he does not expect justice after his request to postpone the trial was rejected.
“Because you have denied me my basic rights to fair trial, I hereby declare that I don’t expect justice in this court and I’ll not return to this court,” Paul Rusesabagina told the special chamber of the High Court that is hearing his case.
Rusesabagina’s lawyer, Felix Rudakemwa, had asked for six months before the start of the trial in order to prepare his defence.
He said Rusesabagina’s legal papers had been confiscated by prison authorities.
The 66-yearold Rusesabagina, once praised for saving hundreds of ethnic Tutsis from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide as a hotel manager, faces nine charges and 20 years in jail if convicted.
They include the formation of an irregular armed group, membership in a terrorist group, financing terrorism, as well as murder, abduction, and armed robbery as an act of terrorism.
Rusesabagina is detained in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
Earlier this week the court ruled that Rusesabagina was not kidnapped when he was tricked into boarding a chartered flight from Dubai to Rwanda, clearing the way for his trial to start.
He disappeared in August during a visit to Dubai and was paraded in handcuffs days later in Rwanda. A lawyer for Rusesabagina argued in a pre-trial hearing last week that his client should be freed because he had been kidnapped in a process that violated the law.
Rwanda’s government has alleged that Rusesabagina was going to Burundi to co-ordinate with armed groups based there and across the border in Congo.
A pastor who is a state witness told the court last week that he worked with the Rwanda Investigation Bureau to trick Rusesabagina onto a private plane that he believed was going to neighbouring Burundi.
The pastor, Constantin Niyomwungere, alleged that Rusesabagina had acknowledged that rebels backed by his opposition platform had killed Rwandans. “Myself, the pilot and cabin crew knew we were coming to (the Rwandan capital) Kigali.
“The only person who didn’t know where we were headed was Paul,” Niyomwungere said.
The case of Rusesabagina, a Belgian citizen and US resident who is an outspoken critic of long-time Rwandan president Paul Kagame, has drawn international concern.
His family says the case against Rusesabagina is politically motivated and that he has no chance at a fair trial because of his outspoken criticism of Kagame and human rights abuses.
They also fear he might die from poor health behind bars.
SINCE the Middle Ages, Scots have been entertaining themselves during the long winter nights with a dialectical tradition called “flyting”. This is a form of conversation in which you knowingly subject your friend or colleague to verbal violence and insult. Weepy millennials should not try this at home.
Flyting began in the 16th century as a contest between poets, or “makars”, to see who was capable of the most imaginative invective – a bit like rap. It became a widespread mode of social intercourse among working people in homes and hostelries. The abuse is, of course, an ironic form of affection, of bonding – a demonstration that your relationship is so strong that you can playfully abuse each other. But it’s something that is almost impossible to explain in the age of social media and the tyranny of the literal. And with the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill now passed into law, flyting is finally grounded.
Scotland now has the dubious honour of being the only country in the Western world where the state polices what you say even in the privacy of your own home. One of the most egregious aspects of this legislation is the explicit removal of a “dwelling defence”, the clause in the old Public Order Act which ruled that speech in the privacy of your own home is of no interest to the law. The Justice Secretary, Humza Yousaf, evidently thinks Scots have been planning Nuremberg rallies in their kitchens so he dropped it.
Even in its now much-amended form, the Hate Crime Bill is an offence against civil liberty. It introduces a new crime of “stirring up hatred”, a concept which has become ever muddier as this Bill has staggered through committee hearings in
Holyrood. Whenever Mr Yousaf is asked to explain what “stirring up” involves, he invariably cites the need to protect racial minorities from “threatening and abusive behaviour”. Yet threatening and abusive behaviour is already illegal, not least under the 2010 Criminal Justice Act. Incitement to racial hatred is also illegal.
This legislation has nothing to do with incitement and is transparently about restricting expression to placate keyboard warriors and narrow-minded identitarians. The taking of offence has become a national obsession and this Bill is the latest extension of it. It is not just freedom of speech advocates who are worried about its implications.
The Scottish Police Federation don’t want to go around policing “what people think and feel”. Officers are particularly averse to the prospect of entering people’s homes to collar grandad for saying something nasty about Meghan Markle’s skin colour, or mum for saying that people with penises are men. This is nonsense on stilts, but the police will still have to investigate family spats using up valuable time.
Moreover, police are required to