Now the COVID pandemic is gone, What are your worst, or best, memories?

[Alondra]

I was talking to my eldest son today and we somehow ended up talking about the worst moments we lived trough Covid. For me, the worst was living in Australia with DH and our two youngest, while he was in Madrid. I was beside myself with worry knowing we couldn't do anything. Zoom helped.....but only for a short while. I've never had as many sleepless nights as I had then.

For my eldest, being in a complete lockdown in a 60 square metre apartment without us or knowing what the future would be, was his worst. He did mention as a positive that he now knows most of his neighbours and is close friends with several, something it wouldn't have happened before lockdowns. :)

From the distance now, what are the things you won't forget, good or bad?

Have you had counseling for your fear? It is understandable but it is something none of us have control over.

Would you really be happier with an already crumbled economy shutting down. Don’t forget for many of us no work means no pay. The government simply cannot afford for every single case to self isolate and our young people cannot afford to miss another minute of education. My DS has just started Year 7 and so many children are behind socially and academically not to mention SEN children losing almost 2 year’s of therapy such as speech and language in which early intervention is vital. And the list goes on …,

Best - reconnecting with a family member I'd lost contact with prior. Also loved spending more time at home with OH and kids.

Worst - DM passing suddenly (not covid related) and having to see the world change without chatting to her about it each evening.

The best thing for me was the strengthened relationship with my son who was 3 at the first lockdown. I had struggled with the baby and toddler years and was back at work which I found easier than home. In effect I was loosing myself in work as a coping mechanism. In hindsight I had had PND, following IVF and birth trauma and then a number of operations for my little one. I was
numb and didn’t even know it. When Covid hit I honestly did not know how I would cope at home. However, despite the challenges, it was almost a second chance with my son. Everything was reset and I felt I learned how to be a mum, how to connect with my son. Our time together became enjoyable. Coming out of the lockdown I found I had a new perspective and could balance home and work. We now have a wonderful relationship and I will always be thankful for that opportunity (whilst sad that it was so different for so many). I appreciate how lucky we have been.

I am amused by long covid truthers, they're something else.

Best: DH getting 6 weeks off work when DD was only 3 months old. He was only able to take a weeks paternity when she was born so it was really special to have that time.

Getting to talk to my sister a lot more as she was working from home so she'd call me during the time she'd usually have been commuting.

My most vivid memory is going out to pick up a takeaway with DH and DD on a Chinese festival day (it must have been quite early on in lockdown). On the way we walked past an old temple, it was dark and the temple was totally deserted but candles were lit and incense was burning. It was a magical site and I wish I'd taken a photo.

I also liked the togetherness I felt during covid. We were very separated from my family as we live overseas (that was horrible) but our neighbourhood really pulled together. We were invited for celebrations with another extended family, we made really good friends with our neighbours and also the cafes and restaurants that we continued to support remember that and we have such a good relationship with them.

I think I have a tendency to look back with rose tinted glasses...😂

What do you mean by 'truthers'?

@Spudlet surely you mean the third lockdown at the start of your post. We had three. I do see on here that its parents who tend to forget this as they got to send their kids into school in November 2020 while businesses still had to close.

Best memories are not feeling forced to visit relatives in another country and nobody trying to claim my time and energy for theirs.
😁

They let him in and not DH because if BIL caught COVID and died he didn't have a family to support

🙄

Remembering how almost everyone became a potential grass even for the daftest laws? I forget sometimes and then it comes back to me :-/

Best was the advent of WFH which has been transformative for me.

Best

The quiet and lack of traffic. Even in spring 2021, central London was empty
Not having to get up at 6am to commute
Having time to cook properly
My neigbours - we had an agreement that if anyone was isolating the others would shop for them

Worst
WFH - shredded my MH because I was supposed to maintain the same level of work on a crappy laptop, working on my sofa and with zero management support
Realising how easily people could be turned against each other and how some people positively relished being dictatorial bullies.
Reading all the twee posts about how lovely it was to have time to spend with the DCs making memories in the garden while being in a gardenless one bedroom flat and working more hours to get work done, which didn't allow much time for making bloody banana bread or learning Mandarin or whatever it was were supposed to be doing to improve ourselves with all that free time.
Matt fucking Hancock and that pink tie.

Another ‘best’ - since all
the pools were closed and we didn’t want Gdcs then 4 and 5 who could swim after a fashion, to lose water confidence, we contributed towards a mini pool in their garden - a great success every year since.

I absolutely loved the slower pace of life and staying in.

Work was busy (NHS)

I have only happy memories of that time.

Best: the weather in lockdown 1! April 2020 was lovely weather. I also quite enjoyed the lack of control over anything initially. I have OCD and it was totally unprecedented for everyone - my brain kind of gave a big sigh of relief. I couldn’t compulsively plan my way out of it and I didn’t even try. After the initial shock wore off though and it became the new normal my ocd came back though lol. Funny memes too. That was good. It was fun to send them to my friends in the early days of the pandemic when we were all kind of in it together.

Worst: unrelenting boredom. I never realised trauma would be so fucking boring. Not having anything to look forward to. Cancelled holidays and fun. The way relationships and life has definitely changed despite best efforts to prevent it - you can’t go entire years restricting people’s lives without it having some impact.

OH getting his full salary fid sitting at home doing absolutely nothing. Me getting mine but having to do online teaching. Putting in a lot of time and effort and barely any kids doing anything.

DH phoned his bank to try and transfer some money to pay off his credit card. The security checks were questions like "what was the date you opened this account" what was your GRANDmothers maiden name. etc etc, DH has partial memory loss and just couldnt remember a lot of what he was asked. (actually i cant remember the day and month i opened my account but i can remember the year) We were on the phone for an hour and ten minutes and got nowhere DH gave in and went into the bank

On a personal level my family was fine.

Worst: the interminable and enduring lockdowns which were disproportionate to the statistics - even worse, the public swallowed the fear Hook, line and sinker. As a nation we are now paying for it. The science was utterly misrepresented. Far more concerning than a few wines at Downing Street afaiac.

Best: the silence, the traffic noise ceased, the airplane noise ceased and the birdsong increased. That part was lovely.

Lockdown did not massively affect us. DD and DS did their university stuff on-line, despite dd's uni experience being trashed. DH and I could work from home. We had plenty of space and plenty of garden. The same for our elderly pare ts although MIL got isolated.

The worst - asking to work from home for two weeks while pregnant, to see how things would pan out and being told I still had to do some site visits. I was also told I was over anxious and should seek counselling and stop watching the news. We were in full lock down on the date I was due back into the office. I never did those visits. Also, my husband missing the birth of our second child.

The best - taking my eldest out of childcare for over a year and having so much more time with them as a result. It was just my little family living on the moon for months.

We don't have gardens so people sit outside their homes - little seaside community.
Our neighbours were meant to be shielding but sat outside their house every day. An elderly neighbour with dementia would go for a little walk every day and would stop to speak to people.
The neighbour would shriek at her "Molly, go away we're shielding" Of course she didn't understand so she shouted louder till she was in tears.

I wish I'd reported her for elder abuse.
If you're shielding stay in your house.

Worst: I am lucky I didn’t lose anyone to Covid. I gave birth at the start of the first lockdown. I am of course grateful to the midwives and doctors who worked through the pandemic to help women like me, but that gratitude doesn’t change the fact it was an awful isolating experience. I then couldn’t do anything with my new baby, and I had my older child at home as the nursery wouldn’t take her due to me being on mat leave. Husband a doctor so working crazy hours, and no one else could come round for support. I was so excited for my second baby and it was just nothing like I wanted. Baby had an AWFUL tongue tie, couldn’t even drink from a bottle as he couldn’t form an airtight seal, and tongue tie services were closed. He lost loads of weight and we got readmitted.

I followed every rule, but I also hated the sanctimonious judging from so many people.

Best: so many people did so much to try to help others. We really saw the best of some people.

Although it was hard and the days felt like years, the time at home alone with the children was extended quality time which I can with hindsight appreciate!

Worst: Losing DH’s aunty and no one being able to care for her or pay respects.

Less than ideal: worrying about job losses, DH furloughed, me working from an iPad because DC had the laptops for school and no one could buy laptops. Working longer hours than pre covid to keep the business afloat. Afterwards, our director saying with hindsight we should have been furloughed and banning WFH. There was no hot water, and we had to ask him to buy cleaning products/hand sanitizer.

The lighthearted side: a neighbour telling the local queen bee to do one when being instructed on Facebook to sing on the doorstep. Coworker being a total anti vaxxer and repeating wild conspiracies: ‘there’s someone on Facebook whose arm withered and fell off ten minutes after their jab’. She was adamant someone we knew had died from the vaccine. An upset colleague then phoned a mutual friend of the deceased to offer condolences to be told they were very much alive.

Worst - working in a London hospital through the whole thing. Stripping off inside the door and showering before I would even let my family touch me.

Having daily meetings to get updates on the number of patients in with covid that seems to double daily for a while.

Getting to the point where we had admin teams coming into help prone (turn) patients over as we had too many patients coupled with too many staff off sick.

Then coming home and seeing social media awash with deniers. Or being on the tube with people who refused to socially distance or wear masks and actually being sworn at when asking people if they would mind.

And there are still people out there that just don’t believe us and think the whole thing was some massive conspiracy. For what??

I'm not sure it's gone tbh, I know more people who've had Covid this last fortnight than at any other time.

Best memories - getting furloughed and spending afternoons with my dd in our PJ's having film marathons and not feeling guilty that I wasn't doing anything else.

Worst - not hugging or getting close to my dm who was being treated for cancer. She died in 2022.

Losing an irreplaceable family member FAR too young and having to explain to the endless fuckwits that covid was real.

Catching covid after giving birth so no family could see us.

Nothing good came from it, sorry.

No good memories at all. There was nothing I enjoyed about it. Hated being furloughed, hated being stuck in my council flat with no garden, hated homeschooling, hated that DS didn't see another child for weeks on end, missed my friends.