Chronicles of COVID-19

Title

Mary, Cork City

Contributor

Mary

Subject

COVID-19 (Disease)

Coverage

Ireland; Cork; 2020s:

Date

17 April 2020

Language

English

Creator

Cork Folklore Project

Rights

Cork Folklore Project

Description

GENERAL PHYSICAL LOCATION RIGHT NOW

Cork City, environs of The Lough

USUAL LOCATION

Same

Q. 1 STAGES

No Response.

Q. 2 EVERYDAY ROUTINE

As I am over 70 years old and have health issues, I have been in voluntary isolation since March 14th. I live alone. I am part of a group of people who have pulmonary issues, and we meet twice a week, on Thursdays for Yoga and Aerobic Exercises, and on Monday for an hour-long specialised Gym Session. We have adapted to the new situation by doing our Yoga Exercises on YouTube. We hope to have an on-line platform organised for our Gym Sessions next week. This has been quite a learning curve for both our instructors and for our group, who are mostly over 70 and would not all be used to technology. However, with the help of the younger generations, who in several cases are home from educational institutions for the duration of the lock-down, people have embraced WhatsApp, YouTube and Zoom. I have an app group for my siblings and another for my children, so communication is easy.

DAILY ACTIVITIES Start with Tubridy on RTE Radio 1in bed and contemplate getting up. Enjoy the fact that there is absolutely no pressure to move quickly. One of the drawbacks of pulmonary disease is that one gets breathless easily, so this ease in the mornings is one of the advantages of the new reality. After breakfast, check latest news on Today with Sean O'Rourke. I find the Irish News feeds and the updates from the HSE informative and reassuring. Sometimes, when saturated with the whole Covid situation, I listen to music as I do the usual household chores. The garden is quite a challenge, as I am usually so busy with activities outside the house and have neglected it. So I am slowly getting to grips with that, doing a bit of transplanting and repotting. I have noticed with gratitude that nature is very forgiving.
I have baked two large Dundee cakes each month of the lock-in, cut them into eight quarters and had them here for collection by members of the family who can call and distribute to others. I consider it my contribution to the war effort. There is plenty to do, so boredom is not an issue. I have not been able to start my 1000-piece jig-saw yet. Some days I get a longing to hug my grandchildren, to feel their little hands or kiss them. Today is my brother's birthday and we had to make do with virtual hugs and promises of pints and more cake when it is all over. On Mother's Day, my daughter, husband and three children came to my window with flowers and chocolates, cards and blown kisses. We took photos of each other through the glass. On Easter Sunday, I printed photos of them and my 6-month old grandson who is in England, along with my niece who is on the front line in HSE Dublin and my son who is on the front line in Yorkshire NHS. I stuck these photos to the window, and placed the Easter Eggs and some Easter decorations on the window sill and it was quite a display for them when they came to see me. A surprise was a knock at the front door, and there was the local community Garda with an Easter Egg! The neighbours must have wondered what I had done...... My first cousin had to cancel her Diamond Wedding Celebration on 28th April because of the present situation.
front line in a hospital in Hull. He can only see his little boy through the window and the little fellow must be wondering why his very tactile Daddy isn't blowing on his tummy anymore. My sister was very concerned when her daughter was tested for Covid. Luckily she was negative and will be facing back to the hospital in another few days. I know of somebody who does not have a very easy relationship with her partner, and there isn't the opportunity to take time out and do different things, as she usually did before cocooning.

HOMELESS. DIRECT PROVISION. ASYLUM SEEKERS, WAR-TORN COUNTRIES. What must it be like? We really have a lot to be grateful for.

COMMUNITY GROUPS Local Garda Community Development Projects Local Volunteer Groups These people have been inspirational, and have used this opportunity to support people to a superb degree. There is nothing that I could need that I can't ask them to do. When I do not contact them, they contact me to make sure that I am ok and that I don't know of anyone who could do with a friendly phone call. The local Garda organised a personal alarm for someone within a week and visited another person within 3 hours of my saying they could do with a call.

Q. 3 GROUPS

AGE Ironically, I feel that, though my age-group is considered the most fragile and at risk, to a large degree we have it the easiest now. In the main, we are retired and do not have the same financial pressure or employment worries as the younger generation, nor the educational pressures of our grandchildren. In conversation with my peers, I find that we are all agreed on this. All we have to do is stay in and be minded. And be grateful.

OCCUPATION Front line workers. What a pressurised life they are leading now. How worried they must be for their families and their families for them. They go into the fray daily and they must be exhausted from overwork and stress.

HOUSEHOLD MAKE-UP It is easier to be living alone now, because there is not the fear of contamination. I feel quite safe in my environment, as I can control what I do with anything coming in to the house and I do not have to worry about hygiene as much as if there were several people coming and going. My son's wife has had to move back to her Mum's house with their baby as he is working.

Q. 4 WAYS WE TALK

No matter who I talk to, nearly everyone is of the view that they are a lot better off than a lot of others. Maybe I only know positive people! It is very hard not to be able to have close contact with those we are used to spending time with. It is clear that the chief thing that is really missed is the company of people. I am sure that people in the workforce miss their colleagues; we all miss our friends and especially our families. Oh to hug someone, anyone! But especially the babies and children. The freedom which we have always had to move freely is a big loss too. Just a trip to Crosshaven or Bunnyconnellan, a walk around the Lough, friends to lunch, a cuppa and a chat, not being afraid to feel someone's breath on your face. People have spoken about this being the Third World War, and indeed it seems like it. My generation had it good. Born after the war, in the bad times in the seventies our parents were largely still coping with the fall out. We had the good times, raised our families into the prosperous Ireland. The total lack of control over this contagion has made me stop and think about all the natural disasters which we have witnessed from afar over the last few years, tsunami, typhoon, drought, flood. Now this unstoppable wave of disease comes to our door. We are confronted by a huge challenge of changing our lifestyle, but in the scheme of things, it is doable, surely?

Q. 5 COMMUNITY RESPONSE

I have already mentioned the Groups working away in the Community, doing everything to help in any way they can. I have personally been the beneficiary of their help, as have people I know. The members of my own group phone me and each other to check how things are going and we all look forward to meeting in person again. My local Supervalu has been very helpful with taking phone orders for my shopping. They are always pleasant and accommodating even though they are run off their feet. I think that the people of Ireland, as a community, have really rowed in behind the advice (with a few inevitable exceptions). Those members of my own family, who can leave the house to go shopping, do not do so without checking if I need anything. My neighbours also check. I greatly admire the efforts of the Chief Medical Officer and those he works with to keep us up to date with the latest figures and for being honest, no matter how unsavoury the facts. I do think that this honesty leads to a greater sense of security and trust. The media have been superb on all levels, I think. Factual reporting, asking questions on our behalf, being encouraging and positive, allowing people to express their opinions, fears and doubts and stories of their Covid experiences and losses on Live line,

Q. 6 THOUGHTS AND PREOCCUPATIONS

It is surreal, so grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented. A GUBU for the 21st century. It seems as if we are living in the imagination of Samuel Beckett. I thought it apt that I was booked to see Barry McGovern in "Watt" in the Everyman Theatre the week that the lock-down began and the performance was cancelled. I always refused in my youth to embrace the notion of an absurd existence. But I did take out Beckett's "How it Is" and give it another perusal. I look on my bookshelves for old copies of The Plague by Albert Camus, which deals with an epidemic in Algeria, and The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe, which deals with a plague in Naples in the 1930's but which is really about his love affair with the Isle of Capri. These books are dusty and worn, binding worse for use and the paper thin and flimsy, but they are little treasures now and seem to suit the new reality. And the wonderful thing to realise is that there was life after these events and will be after this one.
All shades of "I can't go on. I'll go on". I think, obviously, of my children, their partners and children and want them to be safe. It is so much more difficult for the grandchildren to see their worlds turned upside down, not to be able to see their friends, have sleepovers, and deal with a new way of doing school. And the junior cert student is none too pleased. But my daughter and son-in-law have a greater challenge, trying to work on-line from home (thankfully they can), do home-schooling and keep an eye on me. As already mentioned, I feel very fortunate; that I have the best of it. I miss my children, grandchildren, friends, my siblings, driving, being free to come and go. But I have lots to keep me going. 2019 was a wonderful year, my 70th birthday year, and I think it is great to be able to look back at so many fantastic times: Friend's 60th Birthday in the Lake District, March Nephew's wedding in May My own birthday in July Trip to the Dordogne with my four siblings in September Visiting my new-born grandson in Hull in October My other son home from Sweden for three weeks in December February 2020 (just before the time of Covid) return visit to Hull to see the baby. These are rather delightful preoccupations and I still have to compile the photo diaries.

Q. 7 SIMILARITY TO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

No Response.

Q. 8 CHALLENGES AND COPING

No Response.

Q. 9 THE FUTURE

It has stopped our society in its tracks, quite literally. Cut us off from each other, changed the way we work, study, communicate, shop. One would like to think that people are getting a different view of what is important and what matters little. Will the sense of community remain and the appreciation of the efforts made by people continues? Will our Health Service retain some of the improvements in investment seen during this contagion? Will the banks put the squeeze on people after the temporary mortgage holidays are over?
The economic effect on a huge proportion of our population is undoubtedly going to be very severe. It cannot be otherwise. Are we going to face an era of global depression not seen since the aftermath of the Crash of 1929? I suppose I fear for younger generations in the future, not so much for mine. It seems so unfortunate that, having struggled through the downturn since 2008, and felt the gradual improvement, will all the effort and sacrifice be for nothing, and will a further generation of people struggle on with no let up. This is what is so strange to consider; we have always been so privileged, a first world country, while vast populations live in terrible poverty. We are getting a small taste of what it is like to be at the mercy of a natural disaster and yet we are still very fortunate. It certainly gets one thinking.

Q. 10 IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT SPRINGS TO MIND?

My father was born in 1911 in the South Parish, Cork. In 1918, he was in The South Infirmary Hospital with influenza. A little boy of seven years, he remembered how, one night, there was a lot of activity in the bed opposite. He fell back to sleep and, in the morning, he saw an empty bed. Even at that young age, he understood that someone had died. He lived until 2001 - 90 years. My grandfather remembered the first car to come into Whitegate in County Cork in the early part of the 20th century. He was born in 1889. His parents knew the Famine years. This makes me think of how quickly life becomes history. The importance being placed on local and social history now is really interesting. I was very honoured the day I became a primary source for my granddaughter when she asked me to help with a school project and the subject matter was my childhood! Thank you for letting me vent. It feels like a bit of self-indulgence but I do miss the chat and the discussions.

Q. 11 IN A NUTSHELL

A complete change in the way we live our daily lives. Priorities all rearranged. Adaptability of the human species is very impressive. We are inventive in finding ways to accommodate new circumstances. Thankfulness for the advances in Science and Technology which make it possible for us to communicate so easily with each other, for the ability for the students to continue to learn. For the possibility of working from home. For medical research which may get us out of this mess eventually. In the 1960's, I remember hearing the first satellite broadcast which was heard in the USA and Europe simultaneously. We were overawed by the wonder of this new technology. Tonight, April 2020, I saw the arrival back on Earth of a space crew who had been up in the Space Station for several months and who came back to a world which was so altered from the one they left. Food for thought. Future reader - what world do you inhabit now? I wish you the best.

age

70+

gender

Female