Family’s heartbreak at loss of Good Samaritan Seamus

Seamus Loughrey’s family also spoke of how they have lost the man they looked up to, a Good Samaritan who never sought praise, and urged people to play their part to help spare other families the sorrow and loss they are now enduring.

Seamus Loughrey’s wife, Myra, and his sons were left in awe of, and felt forever indebted to, the staff at ICU. They also paid tribute to the family of their neighbour, Eugene Ferry, another extremely popular Derry man who died after contracting coronavirus, for their comforting words and prayers at a time when they were going through their own loss.

Speaking on behalf of his family, Mr Loughrey’s son, David, said his mother will forever cherish the hour she had to spend with her husband the day before he passed away. He also revealed that his father’s final word was his beloved wife’s name: ‘Myra’.

As well as being well known for his years taxiing with Foyle Taxis, Mr Loughrey was also the lollipop man at Long Tower P.S., where he was an extremely popular figure.

Originally from Rathowen in Creggan, Mr Loughrey lived with his wife and younger sons in Glenowen. The father of three sons, Chris (34), David (27) and Jason (19) and grandfather of Ayden and Alex, he would have turned 63 on Christmas Day and David said they were now facing the “double whammy” of the first Christmas Day where they won’t get to see him blow out his birthday candles or sit down to Christmas dinner with him.

Mr Loughrey was previously diagnosed with COPD after giving up cigarettes several ago, but had a relatively active lifestyle. He tested positive for COVID at the end of October after his breathing deteriorated suddenly one night.

Describing the man his father was, David said: “He would have talked the head off a donkey. My mammy always said he knew half of Derry and the other half knew him, and he would have been a very civil man. He would always have done somebody a good turn and he would have never been bad to anybody. He was always very thoughtful, very helpful.”

David elaborated that this manifested itself in ways his father rarely spoke of, like offering to take special needs children to school and appointments in his taxi. “I remember one time he came in here and he told me something that had happened to him weeks before. He was out working one night and there was a man stood on the bridge. My Daddy stopped the car and said, ‘Are you alright, mucker?’ And the man just stood and shook his head and said, ‘Naw’. So, my Daddy talked him off the bridge and stayed with him until an ambulance came. I said to him, ‘How come you came home and never told us that?’ That was just his mentality. He would have been a Good Samaritan in his own wee way but never for any praise or pats on the back or anything.

“My father was always a very hard worker. He was a taxi man for about 17-18 years and he has been lollipopping for about 10 years. In more recent years he wasn’t able to get out and about as much but he still did the lollipopping as he loved to see the wains every morning. He was great with children.”

David said that, because of his father’s COPD, back in March he was one of the people who received a GP letter telling him to shield for 12 weeks which, he said, his father found mentally very tough for a man used to being so independent.

His father first presented with flu like symptoms on Sunday, October 25. David recalls: “It wasn’t like him because he wasn’t one to get sick or colds or flus. He had got his flu jag a week or two before and I said to him that, maybe, it was just a wee run out of that and to take a paracetomol and see how it went. Then he started coughing that night. I remember saying to him, ‘we are going to have to get you tested’. The next day, I took him and got him tested and the test said he was positive.”

At the time, Mr Loughrey’s wife, Myra, was isolating at her father’s home as both of them had also tested positive. “So, my mammy couldn’t leave and come home, and both my mammy and my daddy were self isolating from each other for about two weeks before he went into hospital. It was only then she came home,” David said.  

“My father had got progressively worse as the week went on. His taste had changed, he couldn’t eat, he was feeling sick, it was awful on him. My mammy and granda had shook it off and my grandfather was 82, he was fine with it, but my father took it very bad.

“Then, one night, the four of us were in the house and I heard him calling, ‘hello’, and he was sitting in the bathroom, sheet white and shaking like a leaf. He said he had come up to wash his face and hands and get ready for bed and he felt very breathless. That was the Thursday night at the start of November and me and Jason helped him into bed and I said to my mammy, ‘we have to ring an ambulance’.”

Paramedics arrived and Mr Loughrey was admitted to hospital, initially to the respiratory ward but, by Saturday night, the family was told he would be moved to ICU.

“They were hoping he would improve in a few days. But we were told that, because of the damage to my daddy’s lungs with COPD, they wouldn’t be able to ventilate him or incubate him and he wouldn’t be suitable to be induced into a coma,” David said. “The only thing suitable was this device like a big hood that blows oxygen over your face all the time. Every time they took that off him to feed him or let him drink, his oxygen levels dropped way down. They ended up feeding him through a tube in his nose.”

David said the doctors, nurses, the whole team at ICU were “absolutely amazing”. “They were on the phone, ringing us every day. we also had FaceTime calls and were able to chat to him. They were so, so good with him.

“The staff there are working 12/13 hour shifts and they are literally comforting people while they die and, then, because there are no wakes, no funerals, they have to do the body preparation as well. Nobody signed up to this, they are having to do the jobs of funeral directors, counsellors, they are doing what the family members would normally do for every single person in their care.”

Mr Loughrey passed away on Thursday, November 19, and the day before, when doctors explained his condition, David asked if his mother could visit.

“I know it’s something they really, really don’t do but, because my mammy had had the virus, she was relatively low risk so they let her in for an hour the day before he died. That was absolutely amazing. A while lot of work went into it. She wasn’t able to hug or hold him but it meant the world to her to be able to sit for an hour and talk to him. They would have been married 30 years in May, but my mammy met him when she was 18 - over 40 years ago. In one way, it’s amazing she got in, but how do you say goodbye in an hour?

“The night my daddy died, the nurses were FaceTiming us all through the night and we were talking to him and telling him how much we loved him, and there were three nurses with him every single minute. They held his hand, and they rubbed his head and they talked to him. They comforted him while we couldn’t and that is something we will never, ever forget. I thought it was lovely my daddy’s last word was ‘Myra’. We were on FaceTime and we were all calling out to him, ‘Hi ,Daddy, Hi, Daddy’ and my mammy said, ‘Hi, Seamus’. He hadn’t spoke a word for a long time and he just said, ‘Myra’!

“It was unbearable and excruciating watching him die over FaceTime, the man you looked up to your whole life. It is a horrible illness.” 

The family have spoken of how important it is that people protect each other from COVID following their own devastating loss.

David said complacency had crept in among many people following the initial fear of the virus earlier this year.

Back in March, when the pandemic first reached here, people were very cautious, but David said that situation has changed now, and that he, like many others, felt that COVID was something that happened to other people, the old, the sick. “It’s only about a year ago we started to hear about this virus in China and I thought, that’s miles away - it’ll not happen here. Look now, my daddy is lying in the cemetery because of it,” he said. “So, I don’t think anybody should be complacent about it. I think people need to understand how serious it is and how heartbreaking it is to watch someone you love die in that way. My daddy rang me in tears one night asking me to come over and take him home and I couldn’t and it breaks my heart still that I wasn’t able to see him when he died. This is the world we live in, this is the reality and it’s awful to think this is going to happen to more people. People are not social distancing. I suffer from anxiety myself so I know it can be terrifying to wear a mask, but there are people saying I’m exempt and I know there are people playing up on it because they don’t want to wear one as it’s an inconvenience. But an inconvenience to you could mean someone not having to watch their relatives die in hospital. It’s not just about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting other people.”

The family’s first Christmas without their father will be tough. “I’ll be 28 this Christmas and my daddy has been here for 28 Christmases and he is not going to be here for any more of them and I can’t wrap my head around that - that we are not going to get him to blow out the birthday candles on the cake, have a dinner with him, eating chocolates and watching TV on Christmas night; all the things you take for granted, you think you will always have, we are not going to have them any more.

“He was buried a week on Thursday, but I’m still waiting for the key in the door and for him to give off about the light being on in the house, or about the dog running round the place. It doesn’t seem real.”