Thread by @StefSimanowitz

1/. On 5 March 2020, the BBC reported that a 70 year-old woman in Reading had became the first Briton to die of COVID19

Three years on - this Sunday - we mark #CovidMemorialDay by lighting a candle at 7pm & observing a minute's silence to honour the dead
covidmemorialday.org.uk

2/. One doesn’t truly recover from loss. If you are lucky, you will heal from loss. But never completely

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

#CovidMemorialDay we give our sorrow words
amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

3/. In the UK, #COVID deaths became so entwined with politics that the simple act of grieving became 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.

4/. Ironically, the 5/3/20 - the day of the first British COVID death - was ALSO the day @BorisJohnson told the nation: “One of the theories is that we could take it on the chin”

#TakeInOnTheChin was the starting point of an extraordinary investigation 👇

https://twitter.com/stefsimanowitz/status/1252354324136521736

5/. “To live in this world you must be able to do three things:

To love what is mortal

To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it

And, when the time comes, to let it go. To let it go”

Poetry by Marie Oliver for #COVIDMemorialDay