The fact in regards to the horrible indignity of the loss of life of a liked one

We were in love. That simple fact must be understood for the full horror of the following story to be felt.

We’d met back in 1986, 38 years ago, at Heathrow airport, of all places. Jane was American while I’m Liverpudlian. Our love was all encompassing and instant despite the inconvenient fact that she was already married. But we were not the kind of people who would let enraged husbands, US government or immigration departments come between us, and in 1987 we were married and living happily ever after.

Recognising the stupidity of working for other people and being parted from each other for most of the day, we started our own company, Mighty Quinn Management, in Southport, Merseyside, working in publishing, TV and music. Our love grew, if that were possible. And then, like a bomb blast, in 2001 Jane was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Operation after operation and radiation followed. Then Jane was put on a daily dose of statins, which ended up having 52 side effects and led to a burst bowel. By 2015 Jane’s medical history looked like a stack of old telephone directories piled on top of each other. By 2024, she was housebound, and life consisted of bed to living-room chair and bathroom. 

Having said that, we still laughed every day, including the 21st of January when she later collapsed on her way back from the bathroom. The emergency services responded very quickly but after 90 minutes of CPR, the game was up. Not for a second did I wonder what had happened. At 74, after 23 years of hellish medical problems, Jane’s body finally gave out.

One of the medics said I would be contacted by the coroner within three days and that they would give me further instructions. It being the year 2024, I guaranteed the medic that I knew I would receive no call within that time limit.

Next came a knock at my door. I opened it to find a policeman who told me he needed to take a statement. His first question: ‘What is your preferred pronoun?’

I told him to have a guess and that I’d be happy going along with whatever he chose. Four days went by without any word from the coroner. Wanting to move ahead with things, I called her up at the number given. ‘You are number 45 in the queue. Your call is important to us.’

One hour later, I was speaking to a human being who put me through to the coroner’s assistant’s office. ‘There’s nobody here today. Please try again.’ 

Same rigmarole the following day but this time the coroner’s assistant (CA) was in. I asked to speak to the coroner herself. 

‘Oh no. The coroner doesn’t speak to people.’ The CA did explain, however, that she was waiting for our GP to sign off Jane’s body so that they could instruct me to move ahead with the undertaker. ‘I’ll chase up the GP today,’ she promised.

I had already decided that there would be no funeral as such. I wasn’t even planning on being at the crematorium. I didn’t like the theatrics of a coffin moving along the conveyor belt and closing curtains. They simply weren’t Jane. All I wanted was to instruct the undertaker to bring me the ashes, swiftly. I didn’t like the thought of Jane still being in a body bag in some ghastly morgue.

That evening, a Friday, at five to five, the phone rang. It was the CA to tell me that she had spoken to the GP and he wasn’t happy to release the body as he didn’t know the cause of death. He claimed he hadn’t seen Jane at the surgery in over a year and so was calling for a postmortem.

I hit the roof.

Under no circumstances was I going to allow these people to butcher Jane. They had cut, probed and prodded her for 23 years. Enough! The truth was, Jane had  been at the GP’s surgery three days before she died. She was in such a bad way that she couldn’t make it from the car to the door of the surgery and a nurse had needed to come out to take blood samples as Jane sat in the car. Also, she had been seen at the surgery many times in the past year.

A look at Jane’s medical history would have clarified the matter.

There’s only so much a body can  take at 74. I hurried round to the surgery, demanding to see its head, Dr Roseberry.

The receptionist disappeared to inform the doctor of my request to talk to him.

Fifteen minutes later she returned to say that he was ‘too busy’ and couldn’t talk to me but that he hadn’t been aware of this problem and thought it must have been a junior doctor who had refused to sign off on Jane.

I was assured he would raise the matter at the doctors’ meeting first thing on Monday morning. I told the receptionist that I would be there. ‘That’s not allowed,’ she replied.

The following Monday at 8am, I turned up at the surgery anyway and wandered the building until I heard voices from a meeting room. I entered and was told I wasn’t permitted in there. I said I was not leaving until they knew how badly both my wife and I had been treated by the surgery in the past week.

I explained that, after 23 years of intense health problems, Jane’s body had simply given out and that it was my desire, as her grieving husband, to get through this bureaucratic nonsense as swiftly as possible. I told them that one look at the extent of Jane’s medical records should prove enough to sign off on her body.

Dr Roseberry looked me in the eye throughout, with a seemingly compassionate expression. Next to him stood the head of his management team, whose face remained impassive.

At the end of my diatribe, I informed them that I wanted three things resolved that day: an apology from the practice for putting Jane and me through such turmoil; information as to how the junior doctor involved was to be reprimanded; and the release of Jane’s body to the coroner. Dr Roseberry came over, shook my hand and told me: ‘I will make this my priority today.’

At 5pm that day, I received an email from the surgery letting me know that, after due consideration, they were not going to release Jane’s body and were insisting on a postmortem. No mention of the junior doctor. No apology, but instead signed off with the following paragraph: We hope you can accept this as a final decision from the Cumberland House GP Partnership as a whole. We would also ask that you do not enter a clinician’s consulting room without prior appointment to discuss your own personal medical matters.

I contacted the CA and told her that under no circumstance did I agree to an autopsy. I suggested that they look at Jane’s medical records and come to their own decision as to why a 74-year-old woman died after suffering so many years of ill health. In response I was sent a goddamn brochure, a cover-all with zero relation to my wife’s problems. I demanded to speak to the coroner herself. ‘That’s not allowed. She doesn’t speak to people.’

A week later, at 8.30 in the morning, I was called by the CA and informed that the postmortem would be going ahead within the hour at Whiston Hospital in Merseyside.

I called up Whiston and spoke to the head of the postmortem team. For the first time since my wife’s death, I found myself talking to a human being. He told me he would delay the postmortem until I could race to the hospital. Once I was there, he and a colleague sat me down and listened to my story. He nodded in agreement that the problem lay with the GP’s management team. ‘A not uncommon problem.’ He agreed that no common sense was in place with the people I had been dealing with.

The CA had told me that if Jane had been 80, the cause of death would likely have been written off as old age. I had explained that two decades of medical problems had aged her way beyond her years.

And so, Jane’s body was torn apart so that these box-tickers could have one final piece of paper to sign off on. The coroner’s office sent me the following report: Jane’s cause of death is listed as a pulmonary embolism, type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Those findings help nobody. However, the abuse of my wife’s body and the fact that I couldn’t protect her from these apparently compassionless people remains with me 24 hours of each day. And then things got worse, thanks to the Co-op’s so-called Funeralcare. 

Via email, I received the most crass piece of marketing. It was a ratings chart, like you might find in a teenage magazine to score your favourite pop star: from five stars for excellent to one star for poor. But this chart wasn’t for pop stars; it was to rate the funeral care for Jane Quinn. They actually used my wife’s name on this sickening illustration.

When I wrote back to complain, I received no reply. Three days later I walked round to the undertakers to complain in person. When I asked the lady in charge why my private email and telephone number were being bandied about inside the Co-op system, she simply replied: ‘That’s our policy.’ She was unable to give me names higher in the Co-op chain of command for me to take up the issue with.

So what do I want?

Simple. I don’t want anyone else to suffer in the way I have. I want GPs, coroners and funeral directors – who are supposed to help the bereaved – to stop acting in this insensitive, impersonal manner. I’m sure I’m not the only person to go through these horrors while grieving for a loved one.

After 23 years of being a carer for my darling wife, I suddenly had no say in the treatment of her body.

That is unforgivable.

YOU magazine contacted the people named in this story and these were their responses:

• Cumberland House Surgery said: ‘The case has been fully examined by NHS Cheshire & Merseyside in its processes for dealing with patient complaints and concerns. The outcome of those processes is that the matter has been adequately and appropriately resolved.’
• Co-up Funeralcare said in relation to the use of Tim Quinn’s details: ‘We take data protection and usage very seriously here at Co-op. We can confirm that Mr Quinn’s email and telephone number have not been used beyond the agreed terms.’
• In relation to his difficulties with their complaints system: ‘Our client has received communication from both Co-op Funeralcare’s managing director as well as our senior complaints manager.’
• They added: ‘Our funeral service manager assured Mr Quinn that his complaint would be escalated to the central complaints department but she could not provide an individual’s name in that moment as at that point, was unaware which individual in the team would be managing the complaint.’
• Sefton Coroner’s Office was invited to respond but did not do so.