They wait for hours on the pavement, on the grass, hoping for a glimpse of a loved one. A wave. A kiss blown into the wind. From these fingertips to your wrinkled cheek.

Can’t even place their hand against a windowpane as one would when visiting a prison inmate, separated by glass, speaking through a phone.

Safe distancing between the living and the dying, the critically enfeebled.

But these aren’t prisons. These are long-term nursing homes. And those inside aren’t inmates; they’re residents.

Some of their kinfolk have been present when the deceased are removed in body bags, bundled into the back of a funeral home hearse or a coroner’s van.

This is too much to bear. Enough.

We should no longer demand it of them, the locked-down senior citizens and their segregated relatives.

A society with even a shred of kindness must find a more compassionate means of allowing intimate contact between the dying and their anxious loved ones.

Saying goodbye is a precious ritual for everyone involved. A Skype, a Zoom, is a poor substitute, often depending on the availability of a personal care worker or sympathetic nurse, themselves over-worked to the bone with coronavirus outbreaks at more than 100 long-term homes across Ontario.

The price of fatal contagion is being paid excruciatingly high by our vulnerable elderly. As of Thursday, nearly half of Canada’s 1,191 coronavirus deaths had occurred in elderly care facilities, far beyond what public health officials had projected.

Thirty now at Eatonville in Etobicoke. Twenty-two at Seven Oaks in Scarborough. Twenty-nine at Pinehurst in Bobcaygeon. Thirteen at the Markhaven Home for Seniors in Markham. Thirty-one at Residence Herron in Dorval, Que.

Of course, it’s of primary urgency to halt transmission of COVID-19, especially as infection strafes nursing homes.

But it is unforgiveable to abandon our parents and grandparents to the insatiable hunger of a pitiless disease.

At the very least, they should be permitted human touch with a loved one, if even through three layers of latex gloves and from behind a plastic face shield.

Because it can be done safely with proper protective gear.

As so many of the long-term care homes have already reported outbreaks, the risk would be to relatives exporting it. It’s a risk I’ve no doubt some would take, for themselves, while agreeing to quarantine afterwards. Isolation is not much of a price to pay in such traumatic circumstances.

This belated yielding to deep emotional needs was granted on Wednesday by British Health Minister Matt Hancock, who outlined new proposals allowing people with gravely ill relatives in care homes to fulfill their “right to say goodbye” in person. The revised guideline for the home-care sector states that, while homes should limit unnecessary visits, “we are clear that visits at the end of life are important both for the individual and their loved ones and should continue.”

The British government on Thursday announced the national lockdown already in place would be extended at least another three weeks. The United Kingdom has the fifth highest official mortality toll globally from COVID-19: 13,729 deaths, a figure that covers only hospital fatalities, so it excludes nursing homes.

The government is well versed in the pandemic, although sluggish out of the gate in prevention and containment shielding. Officials have clearly reviewed all the reports, the warnings, the World Health Organization advisories, and still they made this profound decision.

Because there’s dying of COVID-19 and dying alone of COVID-19 and the latter is inhumanly unendurable.

Because of stories like this: The wife of a dying man at a home in Buckinghamshire who passed some of her perfume to a care worker asking that a dab be placed under her husband’s chin to evoke a final memory of her.

It’s one thing to lose a beloved in a faraway battlefield, not knowing where a soldier fell, although, unlike the two world wars, casualties from Afghanistan and Iraq are repatriated rather than buried in military graves overseas.

But these are parents and grandparents dying, not 50 metres away, but in a foreign land, in a manner of speaking.

The Department for Health and Social Care in the UK said the move is an attempt to help care homes be as flexible as possible, allowing visits when a resident is approaching death, with proper infection control measures. Fulfilling Hancock’s pledge is, as always, as everywhere, a matter of securing personal protective equipment, in the face of a global shortage.

“Wanting to be with someone you love at the end of their life is one of the deepest human instincts and it’s a moment that will be with you forever,” Hancock told a press conference. “Done right, it can help those left behind to cope and it brings comfort to those who are dying.

“Coronavirus, of course, has made this much more difficult, and I’ve been really moved and upset by some of the heartbreaking stories of people dying without a loved one nearby.”

For all the solemn words spoken by public health officials in Canada, condolence expressed for the elderly who’ve died in care, they don’t really seem to have grasped the human component of the thing.

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They are clinicians and scientists and doctors, politicians as well.

But they have lost touched with their humanity.

Premier Doug Ford in recent days has revealed enhanced steps the province will take to try and staunch mounting horrors at long-term care facilities, including more testing in targeted homes, deploying medical “SWAT” teams where needed, and that all long-term staff restrict themselves to working at only one facility over the next 14 days, to avoid further spreading of the virus. But that edict won’t even kick in until next week and appears not to apply to temporary workers.

At least five Toronto hospitals have now banded together to support healthcare workers at long-term care homes.

“The past few weeks have been very, very difficult for all of us,’’ Ford told his Thursday media briefing. “It’s heartbreaking to hear the tragic stories of suffering and loss. This terrible virus is a ruthless killer and we’re all at risk. But the sad truth is this virus preys on the most vulnerable. It preys on the defenseless and it’s the most vulnerable, those who cannot look after themselves, who are at the highest risk right now.

“For our most vulnerable, for our seniors, our parents, our grandparents, how far we go, how hard we fight will mean the difference between life and death. And we owe it to them.’’

I don’t doubt Ford’s sincerity, the genuineness of his distress. But some of the lapses in oversight, in forthrightness, have been shockingly inexcusable. At Eatonville, family members have complained they weren’t informed about the COVID outbreak until more than a dozen residents had already died.

Henry Tomaszewski describes the traumatic experience of a mother who’d been resident at Eatonville for 14 years.

Maria Tomaszewski, 83, had suffered several strokes, was partly paralyzed, but still managed to get herself to the dining room in a wheelchair. A couple of weeks ago, with Eatonville on lockdown, Henry saw her through the front glass door of the lobby. On the phone she’d pleaded, “Please come visit me. I’m scared.”

A week ago Monday, Henry was told his mother had a slight fever and a cough but there was no mention of COVID-19. Then, the bulletins grew more alarming; she was on oxygen, she was gravely ill, she’d gone for several days without fluids. Yet she hadn’t yet been tested for coronavirus infection.

Henry and his brother Les were, in fact, allowed to see her at the home at that point, despite the institution being on lockdown. “It was horrible, her eyes were shut, her mouth was open, she had oxygen prongs in her nose and she was gasping for breath.’’

Last Thursday, late in the evening, at Henry’s insistence, the home called an ambulance and Maria was transferred to Trillium Health hospital. By then, she’d finally been swabbed and tested positive. A health care worker at the home had told the family they only swabbed six residents a day.

At the hospital, Henry couldn’t understand why more aggressive medical intervention wasn’t taken with his mother beyond pain medication. The attending physician explained that he had two wards of COVID patients. “Your mom is going to die.” Best they could do was keep her comfortable.

It took six days for Maria Tomaszewski to pass away.

Henry also has a 97-year-old aunt at the same home. “She’s starting to show symptoms. I feel so sorry for everyone there. It’s a cesspool for the virus.”

We owe all these helpless souls more than a fight.

We owe them the caress of a loved one. We owe them grace and mercy in defeat.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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