This story is deeply personal for Miriama Kamo. On the first day of lockdown this year, her father, Raynol, died.
Like so many others who've suffered loss under lockdown, the Kamo whānau had to navigate their grief around the restrictions.
Every year in Aotearoa, around 30,000 people die, so, what's the impact of not being able to mark a profound loss in the normal ways?
As Miriama discovered, the journey is painful and it can have long-term implications, but as she spoke to others, there was healing too.
In many ways, Miriama was lucky. She made it to Christchurch two days before her father died and just before the borders closed.
“I feel so lucky I got [to see him]. In the days after he passed, this was really important to me,” she said.
Her brother Ward, who was also there at the time alongside their sister Michaela, explained that “there is still a sense of now he was here and now he has gone".
But their siblings Sian and Amos missed out altogether.
It was crushing, but not without its blessings.
“They were singing the way they do in a beautiful way and [dad] was trying to sing along with them,” a laughing Miriama said.
Navigating her dad's tangi at Alert Level 4 was another story. The family held onto their dad's body hoping alert levels would change quickly.
“I had to go home and just grieve away from my father. I hated that first three weeks, it was so hard,” Miriama said.
As her family struggled through, Miriama began to wonder about all the other families unable to gather, to touch, to talk.
If anyone knows about loss under lockdown, it's Paul Te Hiko - dad to Chelsea, partner to Kim, and brother to Alan and Nigel, a respected historian and iwi negotiator.
This is the first time he's spoken at length about his brothers.
Nine of Paul’s whānau got Covid-19, with five ending up ICU.
Among them, his brothers, Nigel, Alan and Paul himself.
Paul’s recollections of the virus are fuzzy.
“I was too much in Lala land really. I was just in and out of consciousness,” he said.
For seven long weeks, Paul was either in ICU or MIQ, but he pulled through.
His beloved younger brothers did not.
First Alan died and then, just 10 days later, Nigel also succumbed to the virus.
Paul watched on Zoom from his own hospital bed.
“It was hard watching it cause I was saying to him, don't you give up brother, don't you tap,” Paul said.
“Nigel was the bromatua of the family.”
The hardest bit is the guilt with Paul not allowed to attend the funeral services.
“Just not being there. They always had my back.”
Dr Kathy Shear is a psychiatrist and grief expert at New York's Columbia University.
“All the circumstances around Covid are really not conducive to helping people move through grief,” she explained.
“They [funerals] help us begin the process of accepting the fact that this person is gone and they're not coming back and the ritual helps you walk through that.
"If you can't walk through that, it's going to prolong the whole process.”
Since lockdown last year, undertakers Francis and Kaiora Tipene have been guiding families through complicated border restrictions and handovers.
But they've regularly gone beyond the call of duty, especially during Alert Level 4, when no one but them could attend tangi.
“The most difficult day is the burial or cremation day, it's up to us to carry out jobs like being the priest or the celebrant reading all the words and different languages and commendation and committal prayers," Francis said.
They did it for family members like Tapaita Lapao'o who lost her mum while in MIQ.
The Kamo whānau held regular hui over lockdown, arranging their dad's tangi.
But, by week seven, they gave up.
Dad had to be buried whether the family could get to Christchurch or not, Miriama said.
It's also been an intense 18 months for Aucklander Jo Odds.
“My husband's father passed away at the very start of the last lockdown, then my daughter was born at the end of April and then my dad passed away in July last year,” she said.
Lockdown stopped Jo attending their funerals in person and now, heartbreakingly, she's lost her mum.
“We're going to, finally, get to go over to the UK to go to her funeral and be with my family now she's passed,” she said.
Jo is raw, reeling and unwell.
“I wasn't sleeping, I felt physically ill and quite nauseous,” she said.
Grief hurts, said Shear, more than we realise.
“It is persistent pervasive yearning, longing and preoccupation with thoughts and memories of the person who died.
"What becomes problematic is if you can't let go of them, and so that’s one of the big things that can lead to prolonged grief," she said.
Shear estimates around 10 per cent of all bereaved, globally, are suffering with PGD.
“Deaths that occurred during Covid, either from Covid or some other cause are at risk of PGD,” she explained.
Jo’s made the decision to go to the UK after watching her father's funeral online, despite the logistical challenges of MIQ and getting Covid-19 tests.
“While I was able to be there I wasn't truly present and it doesn't really sink in, because it's like watching, it's almost like watching telly," she said.
"The screen gives you a distance from what's happening, what's truly happening.”
After seven weeks of waiting, the Kamo whānau agreed to bury their dad with a restricted funeral.
Miriama’s brother has an exemption but she worries how she'll cope if denied.
There's also worry the family is breaking tikanga by holding the body for so long.
But it turns out, what the Kamo family has done has become almost the norm.
Funeral director Francis said they were holding 34 tupapaku (bodies). He said it was time for new tikanga, under the circumstances.
There's healing for Miriama, in knowing she is not alone.
When the day comes for her dad's service, she feels oddly at peace with my decision to stay in Auckland but it’s strange, friends and whānau across the world gather in their own homes.
The Kamos are tech-prepared but the loss hits hard and fast.
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