Which specific moment from this will stay with you forever?

[RosieLemonade]

Positive or negative.

The worst thing, by far, has been my dad passing away (non Covid and very unexpected)and not being able to see my family, then having a reduced size funeral with no wake. Not the send off he deserved and awful that we can't all be together. Knowing this must have happened to many others only makes me more sad

When my mother's yearly breast cancer scan was cancelled 3 days after 1st lockdown. When she finally got it (September) it was too late, she died 4 months later.

Back in early March we were travelling back from a funeral on busy trains, reading about cases rising in Italy and India blocking paracetamol exports. The trains very suddenly felt far too crowded and far too high risk. That was the last time we were indoors anywhere public without a mask. It was a tipping point, we put ourselves into lockdown that week, a while ahead of the announcement.

19th December when Boris announced Tier 4 started that night. I'd asked my sister arriving to swap all family Christmas gifts each day to come on 20th instead of 19th. She wasn't even planning to come in, just a distanced wave and present swap because we were concerned about cases rising. But it became illegal because of the travel, and obviously 2 months later we still can't, so all their presents sit upstairs. I've coped through every other restriction, but that one was the hardest and really made me cry.

The few weeks before lockdown 1 when my place of work got quieter by the day (gym). Picking up son from Uni and discussing on the way home how long the lockdown would last for (4-6 weeks we thought!). Boris announcing lockdown and also when he got sick. Furlough being announced and feeling relieved. Listening to the 5pm daily briefings and the death numbers kept rising. Talking about food and planning meals constantly.

Positives are finally seeing friends/family outside in the summer and seeing my son do the same. Also enjoying a low key Christmas Day at home for the first time.

This lockdown cold and muddy and never ending.

@lynsey91 my heart breaks for you x I lost my dear mum, never had a dad but feel for you, losing both your parents xxx

Walking out of school just before lockdown 1, wondering what was ahead and when we'd be back, feeling very anxious. Being VERY surprised by how much I enjoyed having to stay home- previously I'd thought I needed to fill every minute. A joyous, socially distanced, family BBQ with extended family at the end of lockdown 1-with no hugs to say hello or goodbye. I actually strangely remember summer 2020 as being almost normal?! Lovely sunny days, buying a 'pool' for the garden- which felt like the best thing EVER! Getting up when we felt like it, getting in the pool, chilling, catching rays and having drunken BBQs. Lock down 3 however is an entirely different vibe. I'm not a fan of winter lockdowns! Please let summer 21 be kind to us!

Lots.
The first horrible doom feeling for me was scanning my first covid patient. This was before lockdown. I can remember waiting in the scanner for the ITU team to arrive with the patient and feeling sick, looking across the room at my colleague and knowing he felt the same.
The day after dropping a bag of vitamin D, thermometer, paracetamol and hand sanitsier on my parents doorstep telling them it wasn't a good idea for me to go in. Mum is CEV and dad has moderate asthma. I cried as I drove off. Called my DH and told him our America holiday in the May was going to be cancelled, he said " it will be fine" ha.
The Boris lockdown announcement. I had opened a bottle of wine, I knew what was coming as my work already had a lot of covid in. I cried at that too.
My mum having to give me a pep talk over the phone on the way to every shift as I was having panic attacks. We had so many critical patients and not enough ppe.
I can remember wishing I could just break my ankle or something so I wouldn't have to go into work.

We also had some lovely times.
VE day was amazing. We live in a tiny little drive with 6 houses. We all sat at the end of our drives with music playing, pimms etc.. and sat and chatted from 6pm until 11pm. Saying socially distanced the whole time.
I remember sitting outside with my family watching the thunderstorms in the distance after all of the hot weather just chatting. It just felt so lovely.
We had a bbq most nights
The first clap for the NHS. I wasn't expecting it to come of much but it was so loud. It made me cry.

I've basically spent the last 12 months crying far more than I usually would.

A positive for us would be my husband being allowed to work from home (eventually) meaning that he’s been able to spend quality time with our baby daughter that he wouldn’t have got otherwise. We have been lucky to have him here as we all navigate parenthood and nursery runs etc. It’s really been good for us on that level.

The moment I realised before the first lockdown that as a society, we were on our own against this thing. It's changed the way I look at politics, the media and the big supermarkets in the UK.

Highpoint? Watching Trump leave the White House and the Bidens step up. Yes, I'm a Brit but didn't the world need some good news?

Negative - being hospitalised with covid, and seeing people moved into the area I was in, and then being moved on to ICU, but in a week never seeing anyone moving in the other direction. Glad that I bucked the trend, but can't help wondering what the outcomes were for them.

Positive - the neighbourhood whatsapp and people who'd lived nearby but never known each other pulling together to help each other. And my work colleagues actually talking to me rather than being left out of office conversations because I was the only one home based.

I live on a noisy main road half a mile from a hospital. It became absolutely silent out there at the start of the first lockdown, except for ambulances rushing past. It filled me with dread, like the apocalypse had really began.

During first lockdown learned that work wasn't the be all and end all. Always thought work defined me but six weeks into first lockdown began to actually relax and contemplate retirement. Not quite there yet but hopefully the end of the year is my goal if possible.

These thing will stick in my mind and I am well aware I am in the lucky zone but .......before it came to the UK and I was saying it was like that film 'Contagion' with Matt Damon and work colleagues were saying I was nuts but knowing it was true...my sis saying half term skiing was too risky... speaking to friends in Brescia who were in fear of their lives. . Going to the supermarkets and the shelves, aisle on aisle being empty and taking pictures to show my husband who couldn't get his head round it. .. when my healthy, although dementia suffering Aunt became ill and died in a care home and we were unable to visit, .. . My son saying we needed to hug my mum when it was allowed first time in first lockdown and hugging her for over an hour both crying. When the hospital told me they had put my mum who had broken her hip but we had been shielding so hard, had been put in error into a covid ward overnight despite testing negative... then sending her home and not knowing . When I had to tell my daughter that her beloved horse has died because some bloody dog walker busy body had fed him over the fence and we had fought all day to save himq.... when the hospital said my lovely MIL had been sedated and placed on her front to assist her breathing when admitted with covid ...and then 2 weeks later her being released back to us...

Having an MOT on my car a few days before lockdown 1. They obviously got the info about what was needed and started moving chairs apart, sanitizing eveything around me. That feeling will stay with me. It was a main dealer so big space.

Being at a gig on 31st Jan 20 where the singer said, "ere have you lot had that coronavirus yet?!" We all laughed. I'd put my hand sanitiser in my bag but left my bag in the cloakroom so we were all being silly and sharing drinks.

The look on DD's teacher's face when she was handing out work the day lockdown started.

Again, the look on DD's teacher's face 5th Jan. I looked accross tge playground to see her standing on tge steps watching happy children run out of school with not a care in the world while the adults. My heart broke there and then. We'd managed a whole term of school with no closures amidst one of the highest infection rates in the country. We'd all been in defiant mood. Determined to carry on. Now look at us.

Last spring, on one of the very hot days in the first lockdown, I went into the communal hallway in my building for the first time in ages and realised that the man in the flat above me had died. I will never forget the smell or the flies. Literally hundreds of flies. I think about it often.

Last year my toddler was on the ward unwell in the hospital with his dad and they wouldn't let me in to see him because it was one parent only. I had been at home with 5 week old trying to arrange someone to watch her and I couldn't drive yet. Felt so helpless, literally meters from my poor boy and they wouldn't let me in until I switched with DH. Thankfully he didn't have to stay in for long.

I used to work at my DCs’ previous school, had been there for best part of a decade. Never went back after last maternity as we ended up moving to a different part of the country over the summer. It was the realisation that we had all had our last days there without knowing it at the time. I remember how bitterly sad I felt saying goodbye to my younger DC’s teacher and classmates over Zoom, and how unfair and just bizarre it felt to end such a long and important chapter of my life so abruptly.

@AlexaPlayWhiteNoise

Alone at my anomaly scan finding out my baby had significant illness and wouldn't survive. Having to go home and tell my husband that. Being so, so thankful that my Mum was able to come be with me as I had him (as well as my husband). Having to take my face mask off to kiss my tiny baby goodbye before putting him in his forever bed. Not letting my Grandma come to his funeral because I'd been in and out of hospital all week and was scared of giving her covid.

I'm so, so sorry for your heartbreak. I'll pray that your life improves significantly from now on. I do believe that when we die we're reunited with our loved ones, and you'll be able to get to know your baby then. xx

So sorry @numberoneson

Going to pick up my DCs' books/forgotten jumpers/chewed water bottles from school when lockdown was announced.

I had already taken them out of school early and it was almost eerie turning up in the assembly hall and trying to remember to stay 2 metres away from familiar faces. Not wanting to treat them as if they had the plague, yet worrying that they might, indeed, have the plague! Everybody was so awkward because it was all very new and we were still a bit stunned by it all. The memory of that day still brings a tear to my eye.

I cried at my sons preschool assembly at the start of March 2020 before the lockdown because I knew things were about to get shit... and they were all so innocent

Just remembered another moment. My eldest DS was in the school choir and was taking part in the Peace Proms in Belfast on 1 March last year, which is a huge event involving hundreds of schools. It was a fantastic show with thousands crammed into the Waterfront Hall. During the interval I took DS2 to the toilets. Of course there was a massive queue, but when we got close to the door, there was a big poster on the wall warning about Coronavirus and what precautions we should all take when using the toilet facilities. It was the first time it really hit home with me that this was serious. And then I had to go back and sit in a crowded auditorium!

The drama lamas and the hysteria and people behaving in the most irrational way I never seen in my live .
In march one women came into the shop shouting and screaming the world is going to end and everyone is going to die by October 2020 there was going to people gasping in the street for breath while they climb over dead bodies .
beening shouted in the street when my mask snap its straps and it fell in puddle and how this person thought I should be band from going out because i could not wear my mask as it was broken and wet .

not being able to do normal my online shop like I always done before this pandemic thats forced me back into the shops .

over jealous people reporting law biding mr and mrs blogs who just walking the dog around the block .
At first my friends thought it was end of human kind .
Then after awhile they started to believe all that 5G conspiracy theory and they didn't believe covid 19 was real . just before Christmas they ringing me up screaming at me that covid 19 was like EBOLA , reciting known facts covid 19 like it was something new .
I get accused of playing with fiire and undermine covid 19 by sending my child who has ECHP into school .
After xmas they throwing all the conspiracy theories about the vaccine and gone back to thinking its all made up . COVID only seems real to them if its made out to be instant death threat .
I know one of them that believes all that bad theories of the vaccine . has now gone to have the vaccine today that been offered to her .
I don't agree with some of the tone and wording government used to Describe cov 19 .
the only positive thing is looking forward and putting covid 19 and this shit show behind us and move on with live , sooner the better . people suffered enough its time to have that optimism for that future .
pandemics brings out the worst people in ways its normally hard to imagine.
I was never happy with this " new normal " that was forced on us where you hiding behind a sheet of glass even when having some hope was considered to be dangerous.
like I have always said once treatment and vaccine is found , everyone be like covid 19 meh , LETS CRACK ON .
I am looking forward to embracing old normality back and saying goodbye to the dark days of asking myself when is this going to end and hopefully not to been screamed at by irrational people anymore . .

@NoseinBook3

I cried at my sons preschool assembly at the start of March 2020 before the lockdown because I knew things were about to get shit... and they were all so innocent

I had my daughters Y1 assembly the week before they shut schools. We all sensed what was coming, but tried to keep it away from the little ones.

I sobbed all the way home thinking of their innocent faces and the pure joy as they saw us all in the audience, and the horror that was coming.

I've not been in the school building since, not seen any live performance, they've not had a birthday party or proper playdate. Heart breaking when I think back to a year ago