Table 2.

Themes and sub-themes with example data extracts.

Major theme (definition)	Sub-theme	Exemplars
1. Saying goodbye prior to death and at the moment of death (impact of coronavirus on relatives’ experiences of ‘saying goodbye’ to their seriously ill or dying relatives)	Control over access	T.B.27: ‘They let us have 10 min with him. It was like he was just asleep. He had so many tubes and wires in him’, Mrs Martin told Today on BBC Radio 4. ‘We just told him that we loved him and it was heartbreaking to hear the children tell him they were going to make him proud. We were really glad to have that time with him’.
	Adapting health and social care services	G.A.10: ‘people are having to use videolinks to say their last goodbyes to dying relatives because hospitals are curtailing visits to curtail the spread of the virus’
	Effects on relatives and staff	DMa.B.29: ‘heartbreaking photographs of a doctor wailing on the doorstep of her New York medical practice after losing her mother to coronavirus emerged on Thursday and lay bare the grief of the pandemic’
	Latent: A good death, a bad death	TMi.A.6: ‘speaking for the first time, her grieving husband. . . said the couple, from near Hertford in Hertfordshire, gazed into each other’s eyes, said “I love you” and exchanged goodbyes “for a few minutes” before she died’
2. Saying goodbye after death (impact of coronavirus on relatives’ experiences during bereavement)	Adaptations to post-death practices and effects on the bereaved	Te.A.1: ‘The Church of England insisted that it is looking at ways to use technology, such as Skype, recordings and memorials, so that grievers are able to properly mourn their loved ones once the current restrictions lift’
	Role of a funeral	G.B.52: ‘They were amongst increasing numbers of grieving people who are being denied the opportunity to say a final goodbye to their loved ones, leaving celebrants, priests and funeral directors to stand in as “proxy mourners”’.
	Grieving alone	Me.A.16: ‘A man is asking members of the public to send his grandma letters to keep her going after her husband died, meaning she now has to isolate completely alone. Isolation is tough on everyone over 70, or in vulnerable groups, but for Zac France’s grandmother Sheila, she is also dealing with grief – and she has to do it without any physical interaction with her loved ones’.