What one moment will always stay with you from this?

[Ostryga]

Mine was realising panic shopping was everywhere, and that I needed to buy an entire food shop for Dd and I before lockdown.

I cried when I found a shop with chicken and milk.

The fear I felt of the virus at that time, and also not being able to make sure we had food is something I hope to never repeat.

@DarceyDashwood

I think the surrealness of the school drop off on that last day they were in school last March before lockdown. The weird atmosphere at the gates and no one really knowing what was coming. Never would have believed it would be 3 months until they were back in school.

This. It was nearer 5 months here, and picking up from after school club the last day was the thing that got me. It is a private club, and the staff were being typically great with my DC, despite believing that the business would possibly fold and they would be out of jobs.

I was so relieved for them when they announced furlough the next week.

Also, the last playdate before lockdown. We had a birthday party planned, and cancelled it and just invited one family. I was on the verge of tears when they left, as I had no idea when we would see them again.

Also, I have vivid memories of starting work at 6am, to get some hours in before the kids woke up, and spending the first 30 min reading horror stories from Italy, and then the UK, and crying. Stories of husbands/wives/mothers/fathers disappearing in an ambulance, never to be contacted again.

Oh, and I'll never forget the kick in the stomach the weekend before Christmas when they announced the change to the Xmas rules, and the second school closures either (scotland).

So many moments.

Seeing my DP (who has COPD) go to work as a bus driver utterly convinced he was going to get COVID. The company he works for did nothing initially to protect their staff and a lot of his colleagues became very ill and some died.
I would be beside myself with dread. He did contract it (inevitably) as did i and that was a whole other level of fear. As it turned out we got through it although it looks like he has now developed an auto immune condition which could be coincidental but equally could be as a result of long Covid. I guess we will never really know.

For me it was the queens speech. It made me so emotional.

We were never really affected by the panic buying thankfully. Our corner shop always had a big stack of loo roll, I swear they were buying it on the black market 😂 and I had signed up as a VIP customer with a local fruit and veg delivery place so I always had fresh food delivered on a Monday morning. We already had a chest freezer and got meat from the butchers to stock it up.

We got into the habit of a fortnightly meal plan and shop so if we did all fall ill there would be enough in to last. We still do that now.

I was gutted for my youngest DD though, her birthday is 23rd March so all her birthday plans were cancelled literally on the day of her birthday.

I wish it was just one. Though I have been fortunate enough not to experience any close losses.

Collecting my children from school (primary 1, aged 5 and primary 4, aged 8) that last day in March 2020. The kids were coming out with huge bags of work. Teachers were clearly upset. But the worst was the primary 7 kids (10/11, last year of primary school in Scotland). They were sobbing, distressed, shocked...no last term in their beloved small rural school, no school trip, no leavers events, no final assembly with the slide show about their days at the school, no introduction to high school. On the last day of term they were usually traditionally piped out, with the whole school and parents applauding. The school always had a big focus on the leavers, whole school fundraising etc, with the quid pro quo that it would be your turn eventually. I don't think that anyone ever imagined that it could all just be cancelled like that. I know it's not a death or anything, but those poor kids. It broke my heart.

Childcare was a huge stress for me. I'm a keyworker -NHS consultant as is DH. My kids (8, 5, 1) were left without keyworker places because my 5 year old has severe ADHD and they couldn't accommodate him. I spent day after day calling and messaging people -my youngest's nursery had just sacked all the staff and mothballed rather than furlough them, I called all the staff too. I got lots of Yes, I'll do it...followed by messages like "my partner doesn't want me in a keyworkers home" and other reasons. One person after another until I ran out of options. I felt like we were untouchables.

My work was entirely unsupportive about this and still expected me to be there. Except we were not allowed to do any actual work. In my 20 years of working with the NHS I have never seen anything like it. Suddenly managers had absolute authority to stop us doing our usual clinical work, even phoning patients. I remember sitting in my office and crying, having eventually put some very dubious arrangements in place for the children, just to have to go there....and do nothing.

I did have one huge positive. We were able to use the time to really focus on, and trial various medications for my son's ADHD. When he did return to school in August 2020, he was a different child. He went from being on the brink of exclusion to top sets for everything. It was really good for him and I now wouldn't hesitate to keep him at home if I felt that was needed again in future. Actually, I think that the whole experience has been a firm reminder that ultimately we are the only ones responsible for our children, and the authority of schools and the education system is a mirage.

The friday before the schools officially shut i was invigilating a gcse mock

I got a bit tearful (didnt cry, just had that nose tingling feeling…i wasnt walking round the hall blubbing) thinking of all their hard work and the uncertainty

Being phoned at 4am to be told DH was in the ICU on a ventilator and very very sick, but I couldn't come in to see him in case it was Covid.

He survived thankfully but died a few weeks later at home. I'll never get over not being able to be with him when he was so sick and frightened.

Our DD had to leave college and took no exams. She was concerned the would lose her university place. She didn’t.
DD started working at a local supermarket when her pub job disappeared overnight.
Either me or DH would drop her off, some mornings at 5, then collect her 7 -12 hours later.
Even having someone on the inside in retail didn’t help us with toilet roll. It got to the stage where I bought 20 dishcloths, cut them in half and explained to the rest of the family that they would be put into a bucket after use and boiled in the washing machine overnight . Luckily it didn’t come to that, I managed to get 18 rolls in B&M .
Poor dog not having a haircut for months, he did eventually get a welfare groom and I had to complete a form that the groomer could produce if she was challenged.
Me not having a haircut. DH had a go and so did our DD. My hairdresser telling me that she’d had people phoning up and offering mental amounts of money if she would sneak into their houses.
No traffic. I can see a mile in either direction at the end of our road, most mornings one the way to work, nothing was in sight

our local police last summer telling an 80 year old lady she wasnt allowed to sit on a bench in a park in the open air . A 13 year old dying alone in hospital without his parents present. Followed a couple of months later by the "eat out to help out" scheme when it had been ludicrously obvious for months that indoor transmission was the biggest risk. We really lost our basic humanity and common sense(whatever that is!)at times.

Mine was the 1st weekend after the 1st lockdown.

It was about 9pm so dark in early April. I was out on a walk with DS1. We were walking down our nearest high street which is normally rammed, full of takeaways, a pub, late night co-op, lots of cars and people etc.

But nothing was open. Not a person or car in sight apart from us. Complete silence.

It was scary, like something out of the Walking Dead or a post apocalyptic film. We just looked at each other with a WTF face.

There were 2 defining moments for me.

The first was an entire morning. The Friday before lockdown. My team worked 8-5. Supermarkets weren't 24 hour. They opened early but for elderly, disabled and key workers until 9am. Then there was nothing left at the end of the day.

So I stood and worked out a rolling rota so everyone could get out of work and do a food shop. I couldn't believe I was having to do it, but did. Then me and a collague were in asda just watching in disbelief. A man kicking off at the tills because he felt the 'you could only buy 2 of this' rule should only apply to brands. So he wanted 2 boxes of Stella, 2 boxes of carling, 2 boxes of fosters etc. Absolutely yelling and the poor girl in the check out, then getting dragged our by security.

People stood in queues, at the tills looking looking bewildered and afraid and just empty shelves everywhere. And I was completely relived when I got to the bread aisle and there was some. It was like some sort of weird dream.

They biggest moment though was picking ds up from his dad and hearing his laboured breathing. The days ds had been with his dad, I had fallen ill and ended up at hospital while ds was with his dad. My breathing was awful.

Exh said he was fine and not ill. Then the day I had to pick ds up and bring him home i got ds in the car and heard his breathing I felt like I had, had my stomach ripped out. I couldn't believe his dad hadn't sought medical attention.

I called 111 on the way back to mine, they told me to get home asap and sent an ambulance. They stayed for 2 hours with ds having oxygen so he didn't have to be transfered to hospital as he would have had to have gone alone, at that point. He wasn't better, but able to stay at home.

We had neighbours staring from outside, paramedics in the full PPE. Reminded me of the end of ET. My dad came and sat outside in the car, just so he was close by.

The noise he made when trying to breath really made me think I might lose him.

For the next week me and the 2 kids, just set up at home. I wouldn't even let ds sleep alone. I couldn't sleep because worrying about his breathing. It was the most awful, scary week I have had, as a parent.

@darksideofthemooncup

Seeing my DP (who has COPD) go to work as a bus driver utterly convinced he was going to get COVID. The company he works for did nothing initially to protect their staff and a lot of his colleagues became very ill and some died. I would be beside myself with dread. He did contract it (inevitably) as did i and that was a whole other level of fear. As it turned out we got through it although it looks like he has now developed an auto immune condition which could be coincidental but equally could be as a result of long Covid. I guess we will never really know.

I feel for you and your DH

Reading this thread has me in tears. We've all been through so much.

Yes, it really puts things into perspective. How bad it has been, for so many people. Just praying for it to come to its end now.

Sitting on the driveway at work the day before A level results day 2020 so we could have a conversation with our masks off - government had just announced universities were supposed to accept centre assessed grades over their stupid algorithmic grades. We had done about five solid days' work allocating places based on those original grades and had about 16 hours before the clearing lines opened to figure out a plan and system for dealing with a completely different set of grades - which we didn't have access to and had no way of knowing how/when/what form we might get them in.

That and the January opening of schools for one day (I actually remember dancing round the kitchen because they announced nurseries would stay open - first time they ever bloody mentioned them, usually you listened to a plan for schools and had to guess about nurseries.)

And finally a miserable walk around the same park we trooped to week in week out over winter - it was snowing, youngest was crying, and this was the only entertainment available all day.

We were sent home from work during the week before the lockdown on the 23rd. I took my stuff home that week and am still wfh now as I can do my job from home - but due back in in Sept.
The clinically vulnerable colleagues were told on the Monday they had to go home to work for 12 weeks and I remember my colleagues face as she said "How will I cope with 12 weeks of this?!" It seemed so surreal then. But so normal now. And we all coped.
The fear on my parents face as we passed in supplies on the doorstep. The realisation that to keep my CEV parent safe I couldn't go in their house. Thankfully the actions we took protected them and they have a much better chance now of surviving covid as they are vaxxed and there are known treatments to help.
I work in the public sector - some of the discussions I had about the legal and practical changes needed to service delivery in those early days will stay with me for ever.
Picking my daughter up after the last day at school and driving home with everything about to change the world as we know it.

I think the main thing is how we all now know normal life can be gone in an instant. I imagine it was like going to war was. We have been sheltered from real hardship like war and famine in the west for a long time and have the expectation that "It couldn't happen here". Now we know it can. I think alot of the anti lockdown/anti vax sentiment is anger at that realisation. We are not immune by our privilege and wealth as a nation.

I wonder how that knowledge will shape our children's lives as they know life can be suddenly massively change - in a way that we never experienced until we were adults.

I'll never be the same person I was before coving. My priorities have changed.

Positive: The birth of a beautiful grandson and the fact that it propelled us into a child support bubble and I could be with my son and his family again.

Negative: The amount of misinformation out there!

Covid! Not coving

It was a Sunday very early on, I was going to get petrol and Michael Balls on radio 2 was being particularly mawkish at the end of his show….to end it he played ‘you’ll never walk alone’ and I sobbed with this feeling of fear, worry and panic.

The realisation that to keep my CEV parent safe I couldn't go in their house.

I found that really hard. My childhood home was out of bounds. The place I fled to when my exh turned abusive. The people I cuddled, even as an adult when I needed support. All out of bounds. To protect them.

Really gutting.

@feelingdizzy

Telling my teenagers that their Dad had died from Covid .

I'm so sorry

Getting the email at work that they would be closing the office for the foreseeable future and that first day working from home

I was in Cambridge during the first lockdown, and I went for several long walks around the city centre at around midnight. There was absolutely no one else there at all. No one. It was the weirdest, strangest thing, and I will never forget those walks.

The 13 year old who died from covid with no family present just nurses and doctors and his funeral where he was buried with no family, people helping wore hazmat. His family had covid too. Those pictures of him haunt me.

I think further down the line I’ll look back and remember the incredible amount of time the children had off school, but also the amazing weather and glorious walks as a family we all did.

Taking the rose tinted spectacles off I should also remember three job losses, severe family disruption and the initial panic that family members may die.

Reading through all these have had me in tears. The pain so many of us have been through. I'm so sorry for everyone who lost someone