The widow of Tobago’s first COVID-19 victim says her husband died and was buried by the State before she got a chance to say goodbye.
In an interview with CNC3 last night, Sherma Greg, said her husband Bernard was the love of her life and today she is lost without him, especially because she did not get to be at his funeral at the Buccoo Public Cemetery hours later after his death at the Scarborough General Hospital on Sunday.
She described him as a strong man who was 69 years with no underlying health conditions.
“He would have been 70 on Christmas Day, he was a Christmas baby, he never had anything, nothing,” she said.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my husband.”
Greg said she was ill days before and started vomiting while trying to shell peas before she passed out. It was Greg who changed her clothes and took her to the hospital, where she remained at hospital for five or six days before being discharged.
“After they release me from the hospital, now my husband have a home in Moriah, he build a home in Moriah, he told my daughter-in-law to bring me home to Hope, which is one of his houses.
“I told him, I call him Daddy, I told him ‘daddy, I would like to go home and see home, is days now I ain’t see home in a while’,” she recalled.
“He did carry me home a morning early. I gone, I see my fowl and them. I notice that he lying down, lying down.
“Anyway, I tell him I not feeling comfortable (to leave) cause here want to put to order, we leave to come and he stop and start to vomit like he had the cold.”
She said they went to their home in Hope, where his brother and sister came to visit with them. It was then that he too complained of not feeling well.
“And we start to talk about doctor,” Sherma said.
She said her husband left home with a cold and a belly pain.
“My daughter-in-law took him to the doctor and he end up in the hospital and I never see him again.
“He told her don’t bring me up there just take KFC for me. We didn’t know it was dead he was going and dead,” she said.
She added: “They tell me Papa dead, well the world went.”
The next morning came word that he was being buried by the Government and that only five members were allowed to attend.
“Well I want to know how they burying him and I don’t see him,” she said.
However, the widow is convinced that her strong husband was infected at the hospital.
“I feel he get it in the hospital because if he had I would have get it. They bury him too quick,” she said.
Greg was the country’s seventh overall COVID-19 fatality.
The Ministry of Health yesterday announced an eighth death overnight Sunday, another elderly person with pre-existing medical conditions.
In its late night announcement, the ministry said 866 people had been tested for the virus and 105 people were found to be positive.
