ISOLATION DIARIES: EPILOGUE

Two years ago, the company I worked for at the time, sent us an email to let us know that we were to work at home for ‘at least the next two weeks’.

I remember that Sunday. I’m not even sure why I checked my work emails that day, but I did. I read it in church and thought it over.

As I recall, a lot of controversy was in the air about the government’s slow reaction to news from Europe. On the continent, Coronavirus had already locked down the likes of Spain, France and Italy, so it was no surprise that caution was on the cards, especially from a nervous software company.

Then, by the following week, church was online only, and the next day, March 23rd, a dishevelled-looking Prime Minister was on television telling us we ‘absolutely’ must stay at home. Lockdown had begun. 

Two years. I would never have believed it. I thought it would be weeks, maybe months. One wave, Covid-19 would blow over, everything would go back to normal by the summer.

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At this end of the pandemic, things are different. The Cheltenham Festival goes ahead, Manchester United just got knocked out of the Champions League in front of a stadium full of fans, and there’s an unexpected war on Europe’s doorstep. The shops aren’t stripped bare from stockpiling (we wish we could afford to stockpile this year), and toilet roll is once again in velvety abundance.

Many of us have been triple-vaccinated; many of us still have doubts about those vaccinations, but largely we have adapted our way back to life.

My old company are all still working from home I think. I’ve lost touch with them, but a couple of weeks ago, Peter emailed me to tell me that there were still no real plans to go back to the office. Two weeks had indeed become two years.

It’s impossible to say what these two years have cost us. It will be impossible, for a generation or more - until today’s small children are graduating and looking for jobs. What impact will they feel? How will these formative years have shaped their futures?

And for those of us who will remember it, it feels as though there will always be an enormous black hole in our history. 2019 just morphs into 2022 somehow and suddenly there we were: two years older, two years worse off. Now with added hand gel, zoom-fatigue and face masks.

And then there’s the sadness of all those relatives who never had the chance to outrun this thing. The grandmas and great uncles, the nans and mums and sisters and cousins and aunts, who died alone. It has been a heavy toll.

And for me too. Thanks be to God, I didn’t lose anyone. I never caught it, never came near it, never accidentally passed it on. But I do think my mind has been changed. I do think I’ve lost something of who I was, and gained something of who I am. I do think I’ve been very much rewired. And that too, will take a long time to figure out.

It’s strange looking back. I said two weeks of isolation would ‘send me potty’. I was terrified of Saturdays back then, the gaping loneliness of days alone. Now, partly thanks to Covid, I’m getting married. Unthinkable, but true! Out of isolation came the opposite - a connection closer than I would have dreamed in March 2020.

Always beauty from ashes. It’s worth holding on to that, even as the next global crisis looms. Hope from despair, joy from morning. I don’t claim to understand it, or even see why anyone should believe it. I just know that with the God who brought me through the “not-the-zombie-apocalypse”, all these things are truly possible.