Grieving siblings say the Midwood hospital where their mother died kept her body in its morgue for seven days before telling them of her demise.
Catherine Hawa died on Nov. 16 at New York Community Hospital — but staffers at the 134-bed acute-care facility on Kings highway didn’t notify her children, Michael and Jeanette, until Nov. 23, the brother and sister charged.
For years, Hawa, whose friends and family called her Kay, sold greeting cards at downtown Brooklyn department store McCrory’s. She was involved in neighborhood groups like the Friends of Kensington, a Kensington Library fundraising group of which she was president.
Her son has early childhood memories of Hawa telling him about going to downtown Brooklyn immigration offices to sign papers vouching for Jewish refugees from Europe.
“She would tell me she felt sorry for the Jews who had been in concentration camps.”
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3 Responses
Stupid question: her children didn’t call her or the hospital in a week and had to find out from the hospital!? Who, pray tell, was looking after her?
What seems more disgraceful to me is that a woman in the hospital didn’t have a visit, call, or inquiry from any of her kids for (at least) a full week.
If you don’t stay on top of your own mother’s condition, spare everyone the royal indignation about the hospital not notifying you.
Grieving Siblings?
Perhaps had they come around a little more often than once a week to check on mom they would have known sooner.
Shameful.