Thread by @StefSimanowitz

1/. One year ago, the BBC reported that a 70 year-old woman in Reading had became the first Briton to die of #COVID19

A year on, it is time for the UK to take a moment to grieve

Today we mark #CovidMemorialDay

Join our 7pm candle-lit minute's silence.
covidmemorialday.org.uk

2/. Shakespeare warns that if we fail to "give sorrow words the grief will o-er wrought heart and bid it break".

#CovidMemorialDay is a day to give our sorrow words

Take a moment to reflect on those lost, individually or collectively, over the last year covidmemorialday.org.uk/2021/03/04/pre…

3/. The importance of grieving & the power of collective grief shouldn’t be underestimated

Unless we process our grief, it can easily turn into anger or depression - & there is a great deal of that swilling about

Grief is healthy. Necessary

It is the collateral damage of love

4/. In the UK, COVID deaths are so entwined with politics that the simple act of grieving has become almost a political act

But grief doesn’t care about politics

You could be left or right - @piersmorgan or @Piers_Corbyn - & feel the same need to grieve.

5/. Britain remains one of the only countries to have had large numbers of COVID-19 deaths, not held a national memorial

Spain had a 10-day period of remembrance period & the first thing that @JoeBiden as President was to hold a #CovidMemorialDay. See👇
amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

6/. On Monday, the US marked the anniversary of the first #COVID19 death with 100+ cities proclaiming the first Monday in March #CovidMemorialDay

@nytimes the named dead on its front page

In UK, there’s been no national moment for grieving

This isn’t a “stiff upper lip” thing.

7/. On #CovidMemorialDay

🕯Take a moment to reflect: to grieve

🕯Put a candle in your window

🕯Observe a minutes silence at 7pm
(you could stand on your doorstep)

🕯Share a photo, memory, poem, song, drawing etc. using the hashtag or send to @CovidMemoryDay (like Sue did👇)

https://twitter.com/CovidMemoryDay/status/1367843827222994947

8/. "Whilst a single day of mourning will not set everything right, it is remarkable what grieving, & in particular collective grief, can achieve. On #CovidMemorialDay light a candle, take a pebble to a hilltop or simply sit & reflect," @TVpsychologist.
thesun.co.uk/news/14241492/…

9/. One doesn’t recover from grief. If you are lucky, you heal from grief. But never completely

Sharing one's sorrow is part of the grieving process

“If you see me shivering & dumbed with loss, stand by me because grief needs a witness” #CovidMemorialDay

https://twitter.com/Dr_PhilippaW/status/1367807353454788609

10/. It is important to remember that grief isn’t all about sorrow

You can only experience grief if you have experienced love

Indeed, grief is the collateral damage of love

And the more deeply you have loved, the more painfully felt the grief. #CovidMemorialDay #COVID19 #COVID

11/. “Everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this

The fires & the black river of loss

Whose other side is salvation

Whose meaning none of us will ever know.”

Sue McAlpine reads ‘In Blackwater Woods’ by Mary Oliver for #CovidMemorialDay via @CovidMemoryDay

12/. “Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand

For the world's more full of weeping

Than you can understand.” (Yeats)

Simona Hughes (@about500theatre) at a pre-lockdown service for #CovidMemorialDay

Watch at CovidMemorialDay.org.uk

13/. Grief knows nothing of politics

It has no party colours

#CovidMemorialDay has been designated a ‘politics-free zone’

Like a saloon in a Wild West film where everybody has to deposit their guns at the door if they want to enter

We are glad so many MPs are lighting candles

14/. To heal, we must remember. It’s hard sometimes. But that’s how we heal. It’s important to do it as a nation” @JoeBiden who plays the role of Mourner-in-Chief

After the US #CovidMemorialDay one man tweeted: “I hadn’t realised how much I needed that”.

15/. “What separates us from animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met” (David Levithan)

JOURNALIST: It's hard not to be moved when you're a witness to the sheer amount of pain & loss.
#CovidMemorialDay

16/. “One can resist tears & ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices a flower that was in bud only ystdy has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer...& everything collapses (Colette)

17/. “It snowed and snowed , the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.” (Pasternak)

Six months ago & six months after the first Briton died of #COVID19, we held #CovidMemorialDay service.

18/. In Britain, many traditions & rituals of grieving have been lost. Our culture has no common language of loss

This clip shows @bruceparry leaving an island where he’d lived for months

The entire village comes to say goodbye

They start to cry
Then Bruce cries
Then you cry.

19/. “What truly aches is having so much inside & not the slightest clue of how to pour it out”

The rituals of grief may be gone but the grief remains

People struggle with their own grief & that of others

They may cry at a TV documentary whilst their own grief goes unprocessed

20. #CovidMemorialDay is over, but the grief is still there

We still need an ‘official’ govt-backed Remembrance Day

We need the media to report & explore grief properly

Some say we should “wait until COVID is over”, but the grief is being felt right now
bylinetimes.com/2021/03/05/let…