We broke the rules in May 2020. And if I'd written about it then I would have got an absolute pasting from some on MN.
BIL, DH, me, DD1 and DD2 (then 9 &10) spent early May outside my mother in law's ground floor care home window.
We were keeping her company, and holding her hand as she slowly died from Covid. Covid that had been brought into the home by patients discharged from hospital. It ripped through and in a month they'd lost 14 of their residents.
We stood in the nursing home's garden for a week 6-8 hours a day waiting for her to die. It was slow. And not something I would have brought the children along to if anyone else had been allowed to have them.
In the end the care home manager let BIL get fully PPE'd up and go in as he's single with no family to support if he died - the manager's words. He had been furloughed and isolating. He was able to sit beside her as she slipped away in the middle of the night.
That manager breaking the rules was the kindest, most compassionate act we could have experienced. She didn't die alone.
The funeral was done by the book after BIL recovered from Covid that he caught from his mother. We had twelve guests, distanced and no wake.
May 2020 was pretty shit.