Coronavirus: Five minutes for final goodbyes

After days of chaos and confusion at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne, Filia Xynidakis’s children now can only wait for news of her passing.

Klery Loutas. Picture: Paul Jeffers

After days of chaos and confusion in which their mother was ­neglected at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne, Filia Xynidakis’s children now can only wait for news of her passing.

Daughter Klery Loutas said her mother wasn’t ready to go, with the 77-year-old’s vital organs still functioning but dehydration accelerating her dementia.

“The thing is her body is not giving up … but the dehydration just accelerated the dementia in her brain and it’s irreversible now,” she said.

Ms Xynidakis’s family saw her every day, bar four, for 2½ years during her time as a resident of St Basil’s before visitors were banned because of the pandemic.

But even then, Ms Loutas said, Zoom calls meant the family could see how Ms Xynidakis was going.

Ms Loutas said everything changed after a serious COVID-19 outbreak was ­declared at the Fawkner centre and it was taken over by federal health authorities on July 22.

Phone calls to the centre went unanswered, and when Ms ­Loutas could get through she was given contradictory information.

Eventually Ms Loutas managed to get into St Basil’s, where she found her mother was being given food she couldn’t eat. She also found pills that hadn’t been taken by her mother’s bed.

“I thought: oh my god, my mum’s not dying because of ­dementia, she’s dying because of dehydration and nutrition.”

Ms Loutas with her mother Filia Xynidakis, whom she says was neglected at St Basil’s.

On July 26, Ms Xynidakis ­finally was moved to Bellbird ­Private Hospital, where a wound specialist was needed to treat her pressure sores.

Ms Loutas said doctors at the hospital in the far east Melbourne suburb of Blackburn told her the five days of neglect had accelerated Ms Xynidakis’s condition. “What they said, the neglect has accelerated her dementia and put her in this state,” Ms Loutas said.

Despite being COVID-19 negative, Ms Xynidakis was moved to a coronavirus treatment hospital. The family is unable to visit her for longer than five minutes and their last moments together are limited.

“We’re Orthodox so we usually give communion and prayer, read over them, and that’s been taken away from her too,” Ms Loutas said. “Are you serious? Did this woman not deserve any dignity at all?”

Ms Loutas said stress and grief meant she couldn’t sleep, leaving her unable to care for her three teenage children properly.

“They need me to function but I just can’t,” she said.

“I’ve literally checked out from being a mum with them because I’m so preoccupied and worried about Mum, it’s just hideous.”

Ms Loutas said Ms Xynidakis migrated from Crete in 1970 and married George Xynidakis, now 81. The pair built a life together in Melbourne and were inseparable.

Ms Xynidakis taught at the Greek Orthodox School Evangelistria in Northcote, later Thornbury, and Mr Xynidakis drove the school bus.

“I’m just so scared now when Mum passes that Dad will go from a broken heart, I’m so scared of that,” said Ms Loutas. “I don’t want to lose him too.”

Ms Loutas said her mother, whom she described as loving, caring and selfless, prioritised family above everything else.

Ms Loutas said she was trying to scratch a silver lining out of the darkness for her own peace of mind. “The only thing I can come up with is that even on her death bed she’s teaching me and her grandkids what it’s like to be a family, and what it’s like to help one another and speak up for someone when they can’t.”