March 11th marks the first reported death of a person in the Republic with Covid-19. We’re all feeling the grind of being a year into an extraordinary crisis. But no one can be feeling this more than the Covid-bereaved, who every day are experiencing a grief born from the ultimate loss.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I haven’t heard anything about a national memorial event. I haven’t seen any plans for an all-Ireland day of remembrance. I haven’t read about what’s going to happen in Croke Park, or the Garden of Remembrance, or at Dublin Castle. Speaking to friends in the live events sector or those who produce large-scale events for broadcast, I am not aware such a production is happening. Perhaps one will materialise. Maybe a large occasion of commemoration is in the final planning stages and being kept under wraps. Maybe it will bring us all together again in a moment of reflection, and offer a pause in the present maelstrom of frustration and anxiety.
I hope so. We need an occasion for reflection. One that offers a catharsis for the pent-up stress, grief, and trauma that we have all experienced – some more than others.
Hospital Report
Many people are now approaching the one-year anniversaries of the death of their loved one and we are once again in lockdown. The cycle is demoralising and claustrophobic. But the public also understands. Hence 67 per cent of people polled for The Irish Times last week either agree with the current restrictions or want them to be made stronger. It is a phenomenally high figure. If it was a referendum vote it would be framed as a “landslide”.
I cannot imagine the pain and sadness that casts its shroud over the Covid-bereaved at this time. Particularly in the context of the vaccine rollout and the arguments surrounding its speed and efficiency.
What if
They must wonder, “what if?” What if the person they lost had got sick this March and not last March? What if they hadn’t been in a nursing home? What if they weren’t in a hospital? What if they were physically stronger? What if they had taken more vitamin D? What if their healthcare workers had sufficient PPE?
In Codogno in northern Italy, Lombardy’s governor recently unveiled a memorial to Covid-19 victims. The memorial consists of three steel pillars, which represent resilience, community and beginning again. It’s a very immediate, static kind of thing, something that could only and perhaps can only emerge in the moment. In the Veneto region, a plaque was unveiled in Vo with a line from the poet Ugo Foscolo: “A man never dies if there is someone who remembers him.”
I wondered whether the cherry blossom would take on a new meaning throughout this global catastrophe. I clearly wasn't the only person thinking about that
The US city of Detroit dedicated a day to remembering victims of Covid-19 at the end of August. Belle Isle Park was transformed into a memorial site, with hundreds of billboards of victims placed across the park. In Washington DC in January, a beautiful, sombre, and minimalist display of lights was erected surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. At the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, a memorial of a river of roses was installed, created by the artist Marcos Lutyens. In Kansas City, Missouri, 1,665 white flags were placed in the ground at the National World War I Museum and Memorial to remember victims of the virus. In Pennsylvania, hundreds of candles illuminated a pathway towards Stone Bridge in Johnstown.
Air-raid sirens
In China last April, a moment of silence was cut with air-raid sirens blaring, with the very dramatic name of Countrywide Wail of Grief. In the UK, circles of blossom trees will be planted across the country. I wondered whether the cherry blossom would take on a new meaning throughout this global catastrophe, and I wrote back in March about hanami, and the poetry of transience the meditative power of cherry blossoms provokes. I clearly wasn’t the only person thinking about that. The architecture firm Gómez Platero has designed a memorial to be sited in Uruguay, a circular structure on the edge of a waterfront that encourages both reflection and introspection, and a literal connection to nature.
In Ireland, artists were leaned on to develop “responses” to the pandemic. It is a difficult thing when you’re in the middle of it. Responses can quickly become homogenous and artificially earnest. Art and artists have been cast as therapeutic supports, which is a huge burden to carry.
On March 11th, we should all remember. Once again, the bulk of the emotional labour will be done by those who have shown the “resilience” and “community” repeated in pat speeches, which have utterly lost their potency through repetition and the Government’s 20th-century mode of communicating.
One of the (many) key components missing from our political leadership is an emotional intelligence. One that treats people with maturity, and that doesn’t panic about public mood, but understands it and empathises with it instead. The Government is trying its best, and if it could do better it would, but there are too many fundamental failures of competence, calibre and communications.
Memorials and commemoration are important for processing trauma, and such a release, however difficult, is needed now.