Losing a family member is always heart-breaking and distressing.

Losing a loved one during this coronavirus pandemic adds even more heartache and thousands of families are going through it.

I lost my stepfather, Donald Welch, on April 6 after a short battle with cancer. He was in Weldmar’s Joseph Weld hospice for four days, where we could only visit two family members at a time. The team there were wonderful, and we can’t thank them enough for all they did and all they continue to do.

But when he died, there was no funeral, the arrangements he wanted could not go ahead, instead we came together as a family over a video call and played the songs he had wanted, but we could not console or hug each other. We can’t come together as a big family and share memories, photos, thoughts and feelings.

A funeral is normally a given after someone dies and, in some ways, gives those mourning a sense of closure and acceptance and can be the start of a new normal routine. The absence of a funeral leaves a void that won’t ever be filled.

We can’t continue with a ‘normal’ routine as things are not ‘normal’. We know that a lot of our grief is being held back until we go to work and come home and he is not there to greet us as he normally would and make cups of tea, he isn’t there to take us out for breakfast, make us a sandwich or join us for a family meal out when restaurants re-open. This is not the life we know him in and when that life does come back, it will be difficult.

The way we are coping has changed and there is no ‘normal’ way to feel or to process how we are feeling. We are struggling with being isolated and all the things that have come with the lockdown as well as losing a member of the family. It becomes hard to process it all and it becomes easier to shut it all out and to just carry on thinking of when we will do the shop or where we will go on our daily exercise, continuing with the life we haven’t known him in.

The lockdown is delaying our grief, it’s taking away the time immediately after the death that you can grieve with friends and family. Not going through the normal procedures after he died has meant that the full impact of him passing hasn’t hit us yet.

This isn’t to say everyone who has lost someone is feeling this way, I would just like you to know you are not alone and to take a little bit of comfort in that.

So, for all those who have lost someone during this pandemic, my thoughts truly are with you.

Until we can all be surrounded by family again, all you can do is take one day at a time.

If you need help and support due to a bereavement, visit cruise.org.uk or call 01305 260216.