Wilmington Woman Remembers Her Mother Lost To Coronavirus

WILMINGTON, MA — After a year living with her daughter Susan Branley in Wilmington, Elizabeth Flaherty, 89, moved into a senior-living facility in Burlington on March. 11. A 60-year Burlington resident and a very social person, Flaherty's family thought she would enjoy being around people her age, back in her long-time home. She was looking forward to a St. Patrick's Day dress-up contest, which her family was convinced she would win.

The new coronavirus was already in the news, but the day Flaherty moved was the same day that the NBA season was shut down over a confirmed case and Tom Hanks announced he had tested positive for the virus.

As soon as Flaherty got to her new home, "they shut the place down," Branley said. "If I knew what was around the corner, I would've never had her go there."

Branley and her sisters visited every other day, to see their mother through the window. It was on one of their visits, on April 20, that they noticed that Flaherty was having trouble breathing, just from coming down stairs to see them.

"We took one look at her, and we said, 'Look at her breathing,'" Branley said. "I called up the manager of the place and said, 'something is wrong.' Get my mother's coat right away."

They took her to Lahey Hospital, where she was admitted immediately.

Two days later, Flaherty died.

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Branley was grateful that she and her siblings were able to see their mom in her final days. Two other siblings were able to go into the hospital, while Branley and another sister had taken their mother to the hospital themselves. They video called her from her hospital bed, although she couldn't talk due to lack of breath.

"We're very very thankful and very blessed to have had her, for as long as we did," Branley said. "I know a lot of people went through it. A lot of families couldn't even go in with their loved ones."

But their mother was healthy before the virus arrived, Branley said.

"She was basically in good health. There was nothing really wrong with her," Branley said. "Seventeen years ago she had lung cancer, but she survived that."

Without the virus, Branley believes she would have had another decade with her mother.

"She was snatched from us," she said. "I felt so strongly she would live to be 100."

Flaherty was a very social person, her daughter said.

"When she walked into a room, she would light up," Branley said. "She loved to be around people. She was lucky that she had a big family. We were lucky to have her."

>>Read Elizabeth Flaherty's obituary

Flaherty had six kids, including three daughters who lived in Burlington, Wilmington and Woburn.

"She loved her family," Branley said. "She loved to go out with them, to be around them. She loved to shop. She loved to go out to eat. Growing up, she was very strict, but she kept us all in line."

Branley joked, however, that her mother loved her dog Raven even more than any of them.

"She loved that dog," she said.

Flaherty was a devout Catholic, going to mass every Sunday at Burlington's St. Malachy parish even when she lived with her daughter in Wilmington.

She had a group of friends who she'd known for 70 years, from a job in Boston in insurance when she was young. They would go out every month, Branley said.

"We were lucky and she was lucky," Branley said about her relationship with her mother. "She was lucky to have her daughters."

After her mother passed away, Branley got the virus herself, as did her sister. Branley isolated from her family and recovered without having to go to the hospital.

In June, when their mother would have turned 90, the family went to the beach and sang Happy Birthday.

"That was her send-off, her celebration," Branley said.

"She didn't deserve to die the way she died. nobody dies, but it was just the way it happened," she said. "I went from not knowing a single person to losing the person closest to me beside my husband."

The family hopes to have a celebration of their mother's life, on the anniversary of her passing, if the virus is sufficiently under control.

"At least we have each other," Branley said.

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at 412-265-8353 or chris.huffaker@patch.com