Cog*

As I type this, 99 year old Captain Tom Moore has completed 100 laps of his garden, ahead of his 100^th birthday, and raised over £18 million for NHS charities. It’s an astounding achievement, and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by his determination, and the way people worldwide have come together and rallied behind him.

There are, and will be, many more positive stories to come out of the strange times we find ourselves living in, and they are being reported daily across the news feeds, and we need to hear them; we need cheery news, and news that we can cheer. And I hope to write posts of a more positive bent, than I’m about to, in the coming weeks because my daily reality is not all gloom and doom, but today I’m going to focus on loss, because loss is also a part of my day too.

We’ve all lost a lot of things recently. Intimacy is the first thing that springs to mind. I can’t remember the last time I gave someone a hug. It was such a commonplace part of greeting family and friends, as was a kiss on the cheek, before social distancing became an all too familiar concept. I almost never gave it a thought before Coronavirus came calling – maybe once in a while I might wonder whether I knew someone well enough to hug them hello or goodbye, but that’s about all. Casual physical contact with another person is such a natural and important part of our daily lives, and I never realised, before now, how often I reached out for someone, or how much I would miss the ability to do so until I lost it.

Alongside this is the loss of socialising. I’m lucky in that I’m not alone in lockdown, I’m now living with a good friend, but I only moved into his home a couple of days before the government announced the start of lockdown. It’s down to luck that I’m not marooned on my own throughout all of this. That would have been really tough on my mind and spirit. As it is, even when I’m not alone in the house, I miss people. The bustle of the streets and the shops, the bus journey to a friend’s house. The simple act of sitting and drinking coffee with friends in a café has been lost. Gone.

Personal liberty is another big loser here. I do go out for a morning walk, and once a week I head to the supermarket to do a shop, but these are now allowances. I am being allowed to do these things, within the letter of the law. A police person has it in their power to stop me and ask me why I’m out of the house, and if my journey is necessary. This is an unthinkable development in this country (though not in others) a fundamental freedom that we took for granted has been lost, and it doesn’t sit well with many of us. While we all understand and agree that we must stay home, we simultaneously treasure the deep seated belief that we should be allowed to go about our business, outside the home, without question or infringement. But our new reality, the new normal that is our life, means this simple freedom has been lost.

And now the hardest loss. My mother passed away in the early hours of Easter Sunday. Her death wasn’t unexpected; she was 88 years old, and had been struggling against declining health, and mobility, for a year or more, and even though I was expecting bad news nothing could prepare me for that early morning phone call from my sister. The pain and sadness since then has been intermittent, absent for much of the day but lying in wait to ambush me when I least expect it. Yesterday, I thought of a question I must ask her about her family tree, and then reality crashed back in with a vengeance that was overwhelming. She died in a London hospital, and although Covid 19 was not the cause, we were very strongly urged not to visit her in case we took the virus in with us, or picked it up ourselves while we were in there. For the last two weeks we couldn’t even speak to her easily because there wasn’t a phone on the ward. We had to rely on the immense kindness of a nurse who would ring us on her own personal mobile and then relay our messages to Mum. Mum couldn’t speak but the nurse said she could understand what we said and could nod in response. Nothing about this scenario is what I imagined for her last days, and certainly isn’t what she wished for herself. Consequently there is a remote quality to her passing. It happened elsewhere, a distance away. I neither saw her, nor spoke to her, her belongings cannot be collected until some future time when it is finally safe to do so. I cannot travel to her home to be amongst her things, to feel her presence in those surroundings, to be comforted or heartbroken by them. It has happened, and I know it has happened, but it is very like it hasn’t happened at all because everything seems so unreal at this time. I’m mourning her, but it’s as if I am slightly removed from the event itself by circumstances.

Yesterday, it was announced on the news that everything possible would be done to allow family to spend time with a dying loved one if they are in hospital or a care home. This news has come a few days too late for me, and my siblings. The chance to see mum for a final time, and say goodbye, would be such a gift for us right now. Instead I’ll have to live with the regret of words left unspoken, and the guilt about not having pushed harder to be allowed to visit. These feelings will stay with me, and unlike the other losses I mention above, the loss of my mother won’t be reversed.

When the lockdown is finally eased, as it must be, and life returns to something like normal, there will, I’m sure, be much celebrating, and a fucking monumental worldwide party. In the UK, I’m picturing something like the VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations near the end of World War II. There will be fireworks along the Thames, pratting about in the fountain in Trafalgar Square, Royals will wave from a balcony, and I’m sure the Red Arrows will perform a fly-by. There will be thanksgiving services in churches across the land, and arena music shows by sundry pop acts. There will be street parties across the country, and bunting, and singing and dancing, and nine months later the birth rate will soar. All right and proper, and all good. But there will be a time of reflection too, a counting up of the costs, a time to demand answers, and point fingers, and a chance to crown national heroes. There will also be the opportunity for many of us to mourn the loss of our loved ones properly, with the space that we need, and the respect that they finally deserve.

* I wrote in a previous post that the Internet has given us the chance to preserve what might otherwise be lost to time. My mum’s childhood nickname was Cog, and there are only three relatives left alive now who would use that familiar name anymore. I hate to think that it will inevitably fall out of usage and memory, so I want to preserve it here.