Midwood Hospital Waited A Week To Tell Family That Mother Had Died

A beloved 89-year-old Brooklyn mother passed away at a Midwood hospital, and administrators waited seven days before notifying her children, according to the New York Daily News.

“The thought that she laid there cold and dead — it’s a horror,” said Michael Hawa, 64, son of the deceased Catherine Hawa. “It’s just too sad to digest.”

Hawa passed away on November 16 at New York Community Hospital (2525 Kings Highway) and was left in the morgue. Hawa’s daughter Jeanette was about to head over to visit her mother on November 23, when she received a call from a worker at the hospital who told her the news and how her mother was left in the morgue for seven days. The worker apologized to Jeanette. Michael received the same call that day, with the same message and an apology.

Hawa lived on East 5th Street in Kensington until moving into a nursing home two years ago. She married a Penn Central railway clerks’ union member named Edward Hawa in 1946, who passed away in 2000.

A wake and religious service was held for Hawa at Herbst-Trzaska-Waldeck Chapels in Bay Ridge last Monday and she was properly laid to rest at The Evergreens Cemetery on Tuesday.