On this day three years ago, all our worlds turned upside down. All of those things that we were told were previously impossible suddenly became possible and we were thrown headfirst into a sort of life for the guts of the next two years. In that time, we gave up everything we held sacred. Freedoms were curtailed, lifestyles were changed; the way we viewed each other was altered; the suspicions grew.
And for a while it was a novelty, this new way of being restricted. The idea that we were being conscripted into a way of living was new to us all. The 5km walks, the €9 meals, the safe distance at which to converse, the new decorum when walking on the footpaths.
For the guts of eight months or more, the closed school windows carried the shamrock shapes and greenery of decorations never used, a daily reminder of how suddenly we all stopped in our tracks that March.
It was a frightening time, and it was this fear and a sense of the need to be socially responsible that made us conform. I recall the Rye Aker poem There’s A Lad Who Sneezed In Gort as an example of the paranoia that spread and the disdain in which we held people who were going around sneezing and shaking hands and going to race meetings.
And then there was the horrific toll from the nursing homes where residents were deprived of the visits that sustain them; of the interaction that nurtures them when unwell.
In hindsight, it was a truly horrible time. Those empty aisles in the supermarkets full of middle aged solitary shoppers, joylessly getting what we needed. The empty sports fields where the grass grew long and the locks on the gates grew rusty. The silence and darkness of stages and performance venues, abandoned by necessity, suddenly throwing into doubt the viability of the art of performance.
Our towns and villages were thrown back into the solitude and isolation of Sundays in the olden days, when nothing opened and people just sat around combatting the boredom and wondering when this nothingness would end.
We came through it all, but at what cost. There is no joy in the halfday off school for pupils anymore, especially not those who had to endure week after week after week of homeschooling.
We have all been left with a sort of post traumatic shock at what happened. Do we appreciate some things more. Our natural surroundings, our relationships with communities, or did we just realise that there is so much we can do without, good and bad.
Tomorrow is the first really free St Patrick’s Day that we have had for some years. Last year, there was still considerable emotional and medical residue from what had gone on.
Enjoy the national holiday with a sense of what you sacrificed for what you believed to be the common good. Get out and send best wishes to your neighbours. In all of the drama, we have perhaps left behind to lockdown, a lot of what we used to do naturally before.
Interaction and camaraderie and that sense of belonging is what makes life worthwhile. Make sure that you renew your sense of yourself in your community. Shout on your parade, and cheer those who deserve our applause
Happy St Patrick’s Day, folks.
