Lockdown, 5 Years Later – Our Story

There was a knock at the door. Emma and I froze, looking at each other across the hallway in abject terror. People weren’t supposed to be outside. People weren’t supposed to be in contact with one another. People weren’t supposed to visit. If they did, they’d almost certainly carry a deadly virus that would cruelly and brutally murder our child in front of our eyes, and then maybe us too. I glanced at Poppy, sleeping in her moses basket. I glanced at the door and looked back to Emma, we silently agreed to investigate together. That’s one thing I’ve always loved about her, we always dive headlong into danger together, hand in hand against the world. Tentatively, we opened the door… There was nobody there. Mysteriously, there was just a large brown cardboard box. We took it in, promptly wiped it down with disinfectant, and then curiously opened it. It was labelled, “to the family of Poppy Mingo,” and inside was… Well, inside was a tin of beans. And some UHT milk. And some teabags, some apples, some toilet roll (that was like gold-dust back then, if you remember), some cereal. The list went on. What we had just received was our first government care package. That was because we weren’t allowed to leave the house. At all. Medical professionals had urgently both called and written to Emma and to the parents of Poppy to state that due to their health conditions, both were at serious risk of either becoming critically unwell or straight up death should they come into contact with COVID-19.

This was our lockdown story.

At first, there was optimism. People were baking banana bread, learning new languages, and getting in the best shape of their lives thanks to Mr. Joe Wicks, MBE. Then, there was the darker side of the story. Thousands trapped in their homes for months through fear of a morbid death at the hands of a plague-like virus. It has now been 5 years since the apocalypse came, decimated the population, and left again. 5 years since the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, presented a terrifying announcement on TV screens across the nation telling us to immediately “Stay Inside” and “Protect the NHS”. The roads were empty. The trains stopped. The planes stopped. It has been 5 years since those daily briefings with the human death toll reduced to lines on a graph each evening like some sort of sick reality show.

“When we forget the infection, will we remember the lesson?” – Bring Me The Horizon

This year, there are articles populating social media, celebrating the heroes who “lifted our lockdown spirits” and sharing fond memories of how we kept in touch over the garden fence. Emma and I felt it was time to share our lockdown experience. Our experience wasn’t so jovial, I’m afraid. Our experience was months of self-isolation with a preciously fragile tiny human being, food parcels, hand sanitiser, and an entire summer spent confined within the boundaries of our home. It isn’t too dramatic to say things would never be the same again, for many of us indeed. Looking back feels like remembering a weird nightmare. Only this one was very much real.

This photo has a story behind it. What you are seeing here is our “parent room” at the neonatal unit. Whilst the first cases of coronavirus would trigger emergency lockdowns around the world, we were already locked in. We had a suspected MRSA case and were confined to live in this room. This is low dependancy care toward the end of our NICU journey. From one lockdown to another.

First, there was the Honeymoon Phase. For many, the first few weeks felt like a surreal holiday. Thousands of people were “gifted” furlough leave and made ambitious plans to read more books and do daily home workouts – but many would discover just how many custard creams they could consume in a single day. Like the rest of the nation, I briefly flirted with DIY. “How hard can it be?” he says sporting yet another haphazard injury. Somewhere around month four, time lost all meaning. Was it Tuesday? Saturday? The 57th of April? No one knew. No one cared. People began to enjoy morning cocktails in the garden, and zoom quizzes became a thing, unfortunately.

But for all of the fun and frolicking, there was a darker subtext. COVID, lockdown, whatever you want to call it, in some way, it left a mark on all of us – whether we care to acknowledge it or not. The honeymoon phase brought a false sense of control to some, including myself. At first, we gave ourselves a sense of purpose, even novelty. Work from home. Organize the spare room. Bang pots and pans on the doorstep for the NHS. Bake bread. Bake bread. Bake… Weeks turned into months, and the sense of control began to erode. Every day blurred into the next, and the uncertainty became harder and harder to ignore.

Boop, got your nose! In a positive twist, I am thankful for the close bonding time I got with Poppy. I found it hard – no, impossible – to bond with her through the perspex of an incubator in the hospital. Once we’d gotten home, I realised I didn’t know or have a connection with this baby. One whole year together in close quarters changed that for the better. Now? I would kill a man to protect this child. (Obviously, that’s a joke, I would only simply mildly flail and/or maim them).

The news was relentless and unavoidable. Death tolls. Hospital admission statistics. Restrictions that changed weekly. The bizarre reality was this: Life as we knew it was indefinitely on hold. At first, there was no end in sight, and when there was, the virus came back stronger than ever. Stupid phrases would haunt us, such as “circuit breaker” and “eat out to help out” (dubbed Rishi Sunak’s power hour by my friend Adison). These were the bad ideas of neglectful leadership. Anxiety became a constant bedfellow. What would the world look like when we finally emerged from isolation? Health, finances, relationships with family we haven’t seen for months? For us, at the heart of all this, we had a very vulnerable baby living on oxygen and a feeding tube, who had barely seen her grandparents for more than 5 minutes in the first year of her life. Whilst people took walks in the sunshine, social distancing, and enjoying a “free holiday” from the government, I sunk into depression.

German heavy metal band Heldmaschine wrote “Lockdown” in 2021;
“Lockdown, es macht uns krank, was diese Zeit von uns verlangt?
Lockdown, die Seele brennt, die Welt hat sich der Angst geschenkt!”

Translation:
“Lockdown, it makes us sick — what does this time demand from us?
Lockdown, the soul burns — the world has given itself to fear!”

Some of you reading this may relate then, that the hardest part of lockdown wasn’t simply isolating and trying not to catch COVID – it was what it did to your mind. The lack of structure, the absence of meaningful social interaction, and the endless same four walls. Something changed within me. Something, I fear, that may stay changed far beyond lockdown. Motivation faded. Sleep became erratic at best. Without routine or structure, I felt adrift. Just me, Emma, and a baby that needed tube feeding every 3 hours without fail (including at 3am and 6am). There’s a strange kind of grief that comes with lost time, doubled with the grief of losing the magic of bringing our first-born child home from 3 months in a neonatal unit – straight into a lockdown. Years have passed where we have just existed in survival mode. Even now, I feel like I’m playing catch-up and trying to rebuild some version of a life that should have existed before, whilst simultaneously trying hard to be the best Dad and Husband I can against all odds.

Light blue medical face masks and signs in shop windows would be a visual marker of this brief period of human history.

Moving forward: the ability to walk our own path. That’s what we have. That is what we can control. I don’t think any of us came out of lockdown completely unchanged. Some scars are obvious; job losses, financial struggles, relationships that didn’t survive the strain of close quarters confinement. Other scars run deeper, quieter; anxiety that never quite went away, a newfound fear of uncertainty, a desperate need for routine and stability, and just the memory of living through something so profoundly disruptive. We lived through human history. It was a true once-in-a-lifetime event.

But there is resilience too. We live! We pick ourselves up and carry on. The virus took thousands of us away, but you and I, the writer and the reader, sit here today. We remain thankful to all the doctors and nurses, all those who followed the rules and “did their bit,” and to the scientists who worked day and night to create a vaccine. Had we been born in another era, a mere few decades ago, the outcome is devastatingly best left to the imagination. Maybe, in time, we’ll stop measuring our lives as a nation in “before” and “after” and just focus on what comes next.

What’s your lockdown story? What memories remain strong with you from the pandemic? Everyone’s experience is unique and equally valid, and we would really like to hear about them.

Thanks for reading. Maybe we’ll tell more stories, or maybe we’ll save that for the book that I’m still definitely going to get round to writing one day. Until next time, stay safe and be excellent to one another.