I think this has been a particularly difficult lock down, this third one. I know for me it has been, and most people I speak to tell me the same. Is it because it has been during the winter, at the beginning of the new year, when we all hoped upon hope, that by then, we would be through the worst of it? Instead we were only at the beginning of the worst of it and so it has laboured on and we have had to sit it out. The dark wet days haven’t helped. The feeling of restraint have at times been suffocating, but I tell myself, it is all we have to do, sit it out, in the comfort of our own homes. For me, it is a comfortable home and I consider myself very lucky in that fact. Others, however, do not have such a comfortable or even safe home to sit it out in. So for them it is even worse. Then there are the front line workers, particularly the doctors, nurses and all hospital and care staff. I think of them, when I feel that I am being hard done by. They have to venture out, since the beginning of this pandemic, almost a year ago, and do their ‘job’. What about how they must feel. Leaving home, their children and families, to work with an unknown entity, a dangerous and often deadly virus. Their feeling of angst and worry, fear and frustration must be magnified on a daily basis, their mental health as well as their physical health must be taking a battering, we know, it is taking a battering, and so, we must sit it out and do our bit, to help them. To aid them, by not breaking ‘the rules’.
Yes, it feels like our wings have been clipped and the sense of isolation is huge. Feelings and emotions with regards to gatherings are palpable. Close relatives dying and we cannot attend funerals, pay our respects and be united in grief with loved ones. Weddings and other celebrations, curtailed, very intimate numbers or non existent. The world we live in at the moment. But that it all it needs to be, a moment in time, a snapshot of a period in our lives, that we will over come, with cooperation and with science, in the form of hygiene, distancing and vaccinations.
Many people have adapted well and taken up new hobbies, skills and even businesses. I myself, set up a card making business during the first lock down. It gave me something to do. (insta@taylormadecardcreations, Facebook: Caroline’s Card creations). To marry my photos and my words together to make something positive and to send a positive message to a loved one during a very negative time. This kept me and my mind occupied and gave me a sense of purpose in my day.
As a people we are resilient and we have to remember that. We have to hold on to the knowledge that things will get better and this, is only temporary, that if we all work together, we will of course, reap the benefits, together.
I attach a poem I wrote a few weeks ago, after a close relative passed away, but I feel that not just in death do we feel the darkness and the mist, we feel and have felt it it often during these times of lock down. As we learn that ‘life goes on’ after the death of a friend or loved one, we too must know that life will go on, as it did, before the pandemic, it will just be a matter of time.
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I watched the birds on the treetops
Surveying all around
What are they looking for,
Something on the ground?
High up in the heavens
Just taking it all in
Is it quiet and peaceful up there
Or is that felt within?
The mist is descending
Like a blanket it falls
I can barely see in front of me
I just slow to a crawl
No more can I see you
As the trees go out of sight
All is shrouded in darkness
As you turned out the light
So you may soar even higher
Far above the soft white clouds
And I’ll look up to the heavens
And hope that you’ll look down.
