Stolen Goodbyes
Karen Rice
Welcome to the award-winning Stolen Goodbyes with Karen Rice, foreign affairs journalist, and podcaster.
Each week inspiring wives, husbands, partners, children, and newly-weds intimately recount the shock and anguish of death to Covid 19 without warning or goodbye. Each season we push the boundaries to explore, explain and uncover a myriad of aspects of grief to Covid 19.
Forced to grieve in isolation, these people detail needless mistakes and decisions that cost lives including patients being placed on Covid hospital wards when they were Covid-free or others condemned to an early death by the secret use of Do Not Resuscitate forms. Some were left to die alone, the ultimate social taboo.
This unique, legacy podcast is a social history record of the widespread suffering caused by the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, an infection that changed the world as we know it.
It is also an important space where ordinary yet extraordinary people are remembered and celebrated for everything that made them quintessentially unique and irreplaceable.
The participants of this podcast have bared their souls in a bid to stop their loved ones from being written off as just another statistic when they were much-loved individuals whose premature deaths could help to save others from the same fate while holding those responsible to account.
This Covid 19 podcast helps participants and listeners to come to terms with a grief like no other.
Created, produced, and hosted by Karen Rice, the Stolen Goodbyes podcast won gold in the fiercely competitive Best Lockdown category of the British Podcast Award 2021.
Stolen Goodbyes is described as: "outstanding ethical and trauma-informed journalism. Karen Rice manages to capture a historic event in real time by listening with empathy. Future generations will listen to this podcast and know what it felt like to live through this pandemic." Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
Please listen to, review, and share this podcast with your network, it really helps!
If you would like to make a donation (no matter how small) to the running costs of this passion project, please visit: https://karen-rice.com/podcast/
You can follow Karen on Twitter @Ricekmc and Stolen Goodbyes on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3ITXSFC Facebook: https://bit.ly/3kGGwnG and Youtube: http://bit.ly/3Yq0jW5
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Top 10 Stolen Goodbyes Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Stolen Goodbyes episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Stolen Goodbyes for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Stolen Goodbyes episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Boris Johnson - Partygate
Stolen Goodbyes
02/24/22 • 36 min
On this special episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, people who lost their loved ones to Covid 19 in the first wave of the pandemic give their view on the Partygate revelations surrounding Boris Johnson and his government and Johnson's so-called 'Freedom Day' of 24 February 2020.
Johnson is currently refusing to say whether he will resign if he is fined by the police for breaking Covid 19 lockdown laws with a string of parties at Downing Street. Since the party revelations emerged, Johnson's story has changed from claiming all guidance at No10 was followed to him admitting he attended parties but thought they were work events and were therefore not against the rules.
The Covid 19 bereaved intimately recount what they have been through in the past two years: The Stolen Goodbyes, not having sight of their loved ones once they passed, not being able to dress them or have a lock of their hair, no wake, funeral, or memorial, not being unable to hug a loved one due to restrictions, a total lack of support in isolated grief. While they lived and continue to live this nightmare, Downing Street staff enjoyed party time, again and again.
Guests on this episode are: Linsey Simmonds who lost her father Kevin Morans on May 3, Eileen McNamee lost her mother Anna Shewan on May 21, Jane Smith who lost husband Gof on April 4, Sally Gardiner who lost husband of four months Trevor on April 27, Carole Caudwell who lost her mother Irene Cain on April 15, and Debbie Lewis who lost her father Barry on April 5.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes.
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Boris Johnson - Delayed Lockdown
Stolen Goodbyes
02/24/22 • 25 min
In this special episode, people who lost their loved ones to Covid 19 in the first wave of the pandemic recount how Boris Johnson's delayed lockdown in early 2020, has impacted their lives forever.
The UK's first confirmed cases were on 31 January 2020 but Johnson waited almost another two months before performing a screeching u-turn to put the country into full lockdown on March 23. This was all too late for the following people:
Linsey Simmonds who lost her father Kevin Morans on May 3, Eileen McNamee lost her mother Anna Shewan on May 21, Jane Smith who lost husband Gof on April 4, Sally Gardiner who lost husband of four months Trevor on April 27, Carole Caudwell who lost her mother Irene Cain on April 15, and Debbie Lewis who lost her father Barry on April 5.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes.
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Ten months without our husbands
Stolen Goodbyes
03/02/21 • 50 min
On this episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, Karen talks to Emma Charlesworth in Kent in the UK, and Pamela Addison in New Jersey in the USA, who both lost their husbands to Covid 19 in April 2020. Both of their husbands were in their mid 40s when they died.
Despite the distance between them, the women have bonded through a shared sense of loss, support and grief including how both their husbands experienced their first Covid 19 symptoms on the same day, March 22.
In this special interview, the two friends intimately recount the highs and lows of grief to Covid 19, how they are getting through daily life, how their children are coping and their hopes for the future.
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James D Vance
Stolen Goodbyes
02/23/21 • 39 min
On this episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, Karen is joined by Jerri Vance from West Virginia, USA, who lost her husband James to Covid 19 on New Year’s Day 2021.
Jerri tells how James spent his life serving others, first in the Marine Corps, and then as a police officer, and was a proud and protective father who always went the extra mile to make his family's lives better.
Tragically, Jerri relates how a week after developing a cough, a fit and healthy James had been hospitalised with doctors telling her he had Covid Pneumonia which made his lungs look like blown glass.
Jerri heartbreakingly shares how she always believed James was coming home and that doctors believed they could save his life, saying James was: “supposed to be our success story.”
After his death, Jerri discovered phone messages in which James told friends how scared he was, but he never revealed his fear to his family, their protector to the last.
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Irma Marquez en Español
Stolen Goodbyes
02/16/21 • 37 min
En este episodio del podcast Despedidas Robadas, Karen está acompañada por el guatemalteco Mauro Márquez, quien perdió a su madre Irma, de 72 años, a causa del Covid 19, en Oklahoma, Estados Unidos, el 10 de enero de 2021.
En un episodio desgarrador, Mauro cuenta cómo compartían una relación muy estrecha, ya que su madre era sorda y dependía de él para entender el mundo, mientras que ella le ayudaba con su miopía.
Trágicamente, Mauro explica cómo esta madre tan generosa no pudo comunicarse con los médicos cuando enfermó de Covid 19, ni pudo leer los labios porque todo el personal médico llevaba mascarillas.
Mauro también cree que el Covid 19 ha impedido a su madre cumplir sus últimos deseos de ser enterrada con su difunto marido en Guatemala.
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Irma Marquez
Stolen Goodbyes
02/09/21 • 34 min
On this episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, Karen is joined by Guatemalan Mauro Marquez who lost his mother Irma, 72, to Covid 19, in Oklahoma, in the United States, on January 10, 2021.
In a heart rending episode, Mauro recounts how they shared a very close relationship as his mother was deaf and relied on him to make sense of the world, while she helped him with his short sightedness.
Tragically, Mauro explains how this most giving of mothers was unable to communicate with doctors when she fell ill with Covid 19, nor could she lip read as all the medical staff wore masks.
Mauro also feels Covid 19 has prevented his mother from realising her last wishes to be buried with her late husband in Guatemala.
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Goff (Godfrey) Smith
Stolen Goodbyes
01/26/21 • 42 min
On this episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, Karen sits down with Jane Smith who lost her husband Goff to Covid-19 in April 2020. Jane talks about the reputation Goff had in their town of Farringdon, Oxfordshire, as a first responder and painfully revisits the days and hours prior to his passing. A larger than life character, Goff loved nothing better than helping people out. Jane is comforted by the fact Goff didn’t suffer, but she feels guilty about the fact she couldn’t be with him in his final days.
Jane has had post-traumatic stress counselling to deal with the manner of her husband’s death. She feels that if the Government had locked down a fortnight earlier, Goff would still be here.
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Leo Adams
Stolen Goodbyes
01/19/21 • 30 min
On this episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, Karen talks with Brielle Adams, the adoptive daughter of Leo Adams, who passed away due to Covid-19 in late March in the United States at the age of 85. Brielle recalls how Leo loved Brielle from the moment he met her and nicknamed her" "Piggy Boo."
Leo went on to foster and adopt her despite being in his 60s.
Brielle, who suffers from addition, explains how Leo became her rock in life and someone who always believed in her, always telling her: "Bri, you got this."
Brielle now plans to keep her father's legacy of helping people in the community alive when she starts a new job as a teaching assistant.
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Terry Haslam
Stolen Goodbyes
01/12/21 • 22 min
On this episode of Stolen Goodbyes, Karen speaks to Katie Haslam from Wiltshire who lost her father Terry to COVID-19 on 8 April 2020. He was 70.
Katie speaks fondly of her kind and generous father who doted on his baby granddaughter but who had suffered a stroke in later life.
Katie speaks of her utter shock and confusion after hospital staff said her father was okay despite testing positive for COVID 19 before he died a few days later.
The pain of his death was made worse for Katie’s mother as she couldn’t say a proper goodbye to him as he thought he was coming home.
Katie believes the government should have enforced lock down earlier.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes.
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Boris Johnson - Trauma
Stolen Goodbyes
02/24/22 • 33 min
On this special episode of the Stolen Goodbyes podcast, people who lost their loved ones to Covid 19 in the first wave of the pandemic recount how they have been left traumatised by the exceptional circumstances of their loss. They feel they were not only robbed of a loved one but of everything that goes with a death.
Loss to Covid 19 has been described as a grief like no other. That grief, affecting almost six million families across the world, is yet to be unpacked and understood.
These amazing people bare their souls in order that the public can truly understand the emotional, mental and physical fall out from Covid 19.
They are Linsey Simmonds who lost her father Kevin Morans on May 3, Eileen McNamee lost her mother Anna Shewan on May 21, Jane Smith who lost husband Gof on April 4, Sally Gardiner who lost husband of four months Trevor on April 27, Carole Caudwell who lost her mother Irene Cain on April 15, and Debbie Lewis who lost her father Barry on April 5.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stolen-goodbyes.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Stolen Goodbyes have?
Stolen Goodbyes currently has 38 episodes available.
What topics does Stolen Goodbyes cover?
The podcast is about Covid, News, Corona, Health & Fitness, Podcasts, Virus, Pandemic, Dead and Death.
What is the most popular episode on Stolen Goodbyes?
The episode title 'Peter Owen' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Stolen Goodbyes?
The average episode length on Stolen Goodbyes is 40 minutes.
How often are episodes of Stolen Goodbyes released?
Episodes of Stolen Goodbyes are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Stolen Goodbyes?
The first episode of Stolen Goodbyes was released on Oct 14, 2020.
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