Amputation
Eric Durand-Billaud
The lonely death. The impossible mourning. The cruel feeling of guilt of not having been able to hold a hand, to offer a known, loved, loving, reassuring face, in a chilling universe of masks, visors, tubes, noises, alarms; everything that makes us feel the hospital as so inhuman, while those who devote themselves there offer us the best of humanity. For millions of children, parents, spouses, lovers, friends, the COVID-19 epidemic will have been an unthinkable ordeal of brutality and inhumanity of death. Many families have been deprived of hospital visits or have not been able to accompany their loved ones during their last moments.
It is this experience, initially insurmountable, of the death of his spouse and long-time companion, in the hospital during COVID-19, which is described in this book by Éric Durand-Billaud, a specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The author wanted to share here, with his readers, the slow and arduous journey he undertook to combat what specialists call traumatic grief as well as the solutions he instinctively tried to find.
