Covid wall of agony and loss that puts Johnson to shame
ONE year ago, Becky Kummer’s 77-year-old father Peter was fighting for his life behind closed hospital doors.
“Mum was completely alone in her house, knowing her husband was dying in a hospital within walking distance, but not allowed to visit him,” says Becky. “Can you imagine that? I can hardly bear to think of it.”
At the time, Covid was claiming 1,000 lives a day. Not since the Second World War had we faced such staggering death tolls. Becky and her mum were locked down inside separate homes in London, united in grief yet unable to comfort each other in person.
Worse still, they were forbidden from visiting Peter even as his life hung in the balance. “A nurse let him borrow her mobile to make two goodbye phone calls. And that was it. No more contact,” says Becky.
As her father deteriorated, a kind junior doctor called Cathy promised she would hold his hand as he died.
She offered to pass on a final message from his wife – and would whisper those precious words as Peter took his final breaths.
Yet Becky remains haunted: “We should have been there, making sure he knew how much we loved him.”
Last week, I met Becky, and many other bereaved relatives like her, at the National Covid Memorial Wall on London’s South Bank.
This extraordinary mural, created in less than a fortnight by more than 1,000 volunteers and grieving families, features in excess of 150,000 handpainted hearts – one for every person in Britain with Covid-19 listed on their death certificate since the pandemic began.
Each heart represents loved person whose beating heart was stopped before its time.
It took me 10 minutes to walk the length of the wall, which stretches half a kilometre along the Thames
Embankment and confronts the Houses of Parliament.
As an NHS palliative care doctor who has seen enough death and dying this year to last a lifetime, I found myself reduced to tears by its terrible beauty. From Westminster Bridge, the hearts seem to merge into one red stain. This memorial is awash with blood, loss, grief and pain. Close up, it’s the details that floor you. “You will be loved and missed always – so much,” says the writing on one heart. Another reads: “You are the best dad and we will never, ever forget you.” “Mum,” reads a third, “Dad misses you every single day.”
This wall is laden with love and memories. Perhaps, though, the most powerful aspect of the memorial is its origin. No one from on high gave permission for its creation. Instead, a grassroots collective of 3,000 grieving families – the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice – asked themselves, how can we honour our dead? How can we capture the immensity of our collective loss?
The answer is a tidal wave of handdrawn hearts
that has given a shape to a nation’s grief. This is a living, people’s memorial. It demands our respect. Yet incredibly, the memorial’s organisers believe not one Government member – let alone the Prime Minister – has shown the courtesy of visiting it. Nor of confirming that the mural can stay permanently. Anyone would think they are trying to hide.
For Boris Johnson, of course, those 150,000 lost lives are an indictment of his handling of the crisis. No wonder he seems intent on deferring the idea of an official memorial.
He recently claimed that “at the right moment, we will come together as a country to build a fitting and a permanent memorial to the loved ones we have lost”.
Perhaps he hopes if he procrastinates long enough, the grief and mourning may conveniently vanish. To these families, that’s not good enough. They need their loved ones to be seen and honoured. And they seek answers to uncomfortable questions now. Why did so many of their loved ones die?
I urge Boris Johnson to pay a visit to the wall. To talk to these families, to respect their expression of their loss. Above all, to guarantee he will never attempt to tear the mural down.
This haunting, harrowing, exquisite wall should be a permanent memorial to our nation’s loss.
This tidal wave of hand drawn hearts gives shape to nation’s grief