In the bleak midwinter

 In the bleak midwinter

First snowfall of this winter, night time temperatures down to minus 5 degrees, mark the first weekend of December.

Paul and I head to the frozen North to meet up with our Norfolk based son and his family. Outside. Tier 2 rules. We meet on a bleak beach counting our blessings it is dry. 

As instructed by my son, I resist all my natural instincts to touch my granddaughters. Not hugging is hard enough, not to touch is almost unbearable. My youngest granddaughter was one in March, she barely knows me.  

It is six weeks since I last saw her and during those barren November lockdown weeks she began talking. Her parents barely notice now , yet for me hearing her first words barely distinguishable over the wind was heartbreaking. 

This time last year I believed I was close to my granddaughters. Covid has broken that bond. There is a disconnect now. A gap in time.  The longer we are disconnected, the greater the gap, the more it feels we will never reconnect. 

In the spring I clung to virtual media as a lifeline to keep that bond strong,  but all too soon young children grow bored. Chatting to grandma on a phone screen hardly merits a glance now. I hold their attention by using special effects but calls are a rarity nowadays. 

I tried, so hard, with social distance playing. Yet without touch it is distance in more ways than physical. Telling stories when banned from going to a child's level makes it impossible to achieve the intimacy of connection. It is hopeless, heartbreaking..and yet it is all we have and so better, much better, than nothing.

I long to break the rules. Many of my friends do because they and their families have agreed that their emotional health outweighs the risk of Covid. I agree but my family do not. I understand it is because they care for me. What they do not understand, as their lives are full , is that mine is empty without touch. I simply cannot bear it.

The love a grandparent feels for their grandchildren is as strong, as primeval, as the love for their children. I know my children , now parents themselves, will not understand this until their turn comes. 

Last weekend I ran along that sandy but oh so cold beach playing hide and seek , laughing and joking with a toddler and a 3 year old , longing to hold them in my arms, hiding the sharp raw pain of loss under the joy of seeing their faces.

2020 has broken me.  There seems little point in planning ahead. I no longer see a future if truth be told. The life I had before has gone, lost in the mists of Covid.  

Yes. despite my cynicism ,  small doses of the pfizer vaccine have arrived in the UK , heralding a fanfare of celebrations for those elderly and infirm who have been jabbed. 

81 year old William Shakespeare,  hospital in patient receiving treatment for bone cancer, having his first dose of the vaccine. 

Me, I find it hard to celebrate anything. No other country has yet authorised this for use. Two days in and cases of anaphylactic shock have been reported, denting  public confidence still further. 

Hard to resist seeing these triumphant patriotic optics as a smokescreen to distract from the looming nightmare of a no deal Brexit on Jan 1st. Yet again this incompetent Gov is managing to steal defeat from the jaws of victory.  

With less than 2 weeks to go before the end of our years transition period we still have no trade deal. Bojo's promised 'oven ready' deal has gone the way of many turkeys, culled thanks to an outbreak of bird flu across the country. Seriously. You couldn't make it up. 

Covid cases continue to rise nation wide. London is threatened with imminent tier 3 restrictions, closing hospitality in the most profitable weeks of the year, as the virus rages through the city. 

Deaths rise sharply too. Here in rural Lewes our case load remains low, among the lowest in the country as 40 per 100,000. Probably because there is sod all to do. 

I walk. Endlessly. In the bleak midwinter.  Fighting the deep unremitting sense of nothingness which threatens to overwhelm me. This year is not a journey. There may have been a beginning. The rest is a mess. Now it is simply  a matter of survival.