“…a lovely break from life…”
Dave Atkinson, in yesterday’s edition of The Quack, reflecting on COVID lock-down from four years out:
I tend to think of the early lock-down era as a lovely break from life that we were all unfortunately too scared and stressed out to enjoy. I do remember saying out loud I hoped there were lessons from this era we’d carry forward when it all ended. I especially liked the feeling, for a little while, we were all on the same page.
My memories of early lock-down are coloured by grief—Catherine had died only two months before we all went on anxious furlough.
I remain unclear whether enforced isolation was ultimately helpful or harmful to my grieving self: it certainly drew Olivia and I closer together, and allowed us to take comfort in a very small life after wading through a very big life for as long as we could remember.
But I can’t help but be angry at the universe for dealing that hand at that particular time, a time when my soul wanted nothing more than freedom, spaciousness, and the universe thought it right that I be locked in my house, alone with my complicated child, to stew in the opposite of that.