Today’s National Day of Reflection marks a year to the day that we sat nervously in front of our television screens to be confronted by the directive that would change our lives quite dramatically. An issue which had been bubbling away on the side for weeks was becoming increasingly vociferous, and with that evening’s press conference in March 2020, the switch was finally firmly pressed, and the lights went out in an instant.

The resounding message absorbed within the deafening silence which followed?

You can’t see your family or your friends until further notice, and no, there’s no time to just go back and fetch your jacket. Settle down and get comfy; you’ll be here a while.

I umm and ahh about how much I want to include in this post. I documented most of my thoughts here at the time, in order to refrain from turning totally insane during the period when the only people I spoke to face to face were dog-walkers or shop assistants. I think we’re all suffering from pandemic lethargy too much at the moment to really go over those things again; but one day, when we’re much less muddy and feeling more confidently in the clear, it’ll certainly be an interesting few months to reflect on.

However I think it’s important today to differentiate between the lockdown and the pandemic – hand in hand though they may be. A lot of us will think of this past year in terms of the myriad of effects on our day to day lives. We have missed out on so much, and it has been utterly heartbreaking at times, but I don’t actually think all of the effects of lockdown have been negative, and I will write about why another day.

For now though, for today, it’s about reflecting on and respecting the worst affected victims of this pandemic. The ones who don’t get to reflect back over the past year at all. The ones who were unable to live as fully as people should be able to, before they had to leave. The hundreds of thousands (or millions worldwide) of their relatives who lost somebody special this past year in the cruelest of ways, who couldn’t grieve in the way people need to, who couldn’t say goodbye or hold hands a final time, and who couldn’t feel the comforting hugs of friends and relatives as they mourned alone.

The other effects of this pandemic, heavy though they may have often felt, somehow also feel so light against this.

Thinking of everybody who has been affected in such a cruel way today, and wishing that each individual within the startling figure we have seen rapidly rise over the last twelve months, will be remembered as exactly that, an individual.