'I said a goodbye in my head, but I don’t remember what it was.' Letters from lockdown to Radio 4

In the weeks and months that followed the UK going into lockdown in March, and as the daily headlines became bleaker and bleaker, Radio 4’s PM programme decided that alongside the relentless bad news, real human voices needed to be heard. They invited their listeners to write in and describe their experiences to air on the show, and the result was ‘The Covid Chronicles’. Ranging from the everyday to the momentous, they described birth and death, loneliness and loss, community and kindness - as well as remarkable stories from those working on the NHS frontline.Some of those stories have been collected in a book, Letters from Lockdown, from which the following selection is taken.

‘My phone has helped patients hear their final words of love’ Lisa, nurse

My unlikely but constant companion through this Covid-19 experience has been my phone. By my side, wrapped and sealed in the cellophane bag usually used to put little vials of blood on their way from the ward to the lab for testing. It’s been my companion throughout, not offering any advice or comfort to me, just witnessing. My phone has seen and heard things it never has before, and is unlikely ever to see again, certainly not with the relentless frequency that it has done in recent weeks. In the absence of an NHS mobile or tablet on the ward, my phone has been placed next to an old lady’s ear, on her pillow as she drifts into unconsciousness, breathing with shallow, irregular gasps, with hopes and promises from her daughter, hoping that her mum will be able to hear her final words of love, even though she can’t be there to say them. Its speakerphone plays the voice of her 10-year-old granddaughter tearfully telling her that she wants her to come home to read to her again one day soon.

Its camera has FaceTimed the lovely man in Room 10 with his elderly wife and grown-up children, gathered in their living room, faces filling the small pocket-sized screen, grandchildren on more screens within screens who cannot be there with their parents because of the lockdown. Thanking him for being such a wonderful dad and granddad, telling him that they love him, and to sleep, now.

Its speakers have played favourite songs; Elvis albums and jazz compilations, songs that families have suggested will provide comfort in those last hours of life. It has been there with me and my patients, who have never seen my face, to alleviate our shared distress and distract from the sound of laboured breaths. Often abandoned without me, remaining in patients’ rooms, an offering of humanity as I am called to assess a new or deteriorating patient. My phone has been my portal to my colleagues throughout these days. Many of whom I do not know because I am new to this hospital and just a number on the rota, and whose full faces I rarely see. The hospital now on its emergency Covid-19 rota has been run by WhatsApp groups, with the old bleep system, inadequate at the best of times, now almost obsolete. Doctors communicate between teams, shifts and zones; for endocrinology advice from a senior or specialist when sodiums are low, or when delirium management needs expert advice and when food, kindly cooked by volunteers and community groups, has arrived in the doctors’ mess.

On my phone are weekly pictures of property bags of the dead, piled up in the store room waiting for collection by the porters, my own death figures captured weekly in a macabre picture. Each bag represents a person I cared for, my handwriting in their notes documenting my attempts to save them, and eventually, to keep them comfortable when alive, to be followed by my handwriting on certificates after their death. My phone’s home screen that once proudly championed the beaming smiles and silliness of my young sons’ faces is now a generic photograph, previously stored in its factory settings. The phone’s torch has proved useful for confirming deaths in the absence of pen torches on the ward. Pupils fixed and dilated. The faces of my beautiful smiling children in the forefront of my view on the phone screen, merged with the torchlight reflected in the dead man’s eyes before me in real life – pupils fixed and dilated – a visceral reminder of a separate world that I have inhabited over these weeks, associated with an intense pang of guilt that I had in that moment somehow exposed my babies to this world that I should be protecting them from.

The final role my phone has played during the coronavirus pandemic has been when I am lying in bed at night, unable to sleep or waking from vivid dreams. My phone distracts me, although as I trail mindlessly through social media, I try my best to avoid any news – I don’t want to be consumed by any bigger picture, for fear of being overwhelmed. Content and able to cope with my micro-level involvement with this pandemic, with my phone beside me that has allowed me both to stay connected and to disconnect. It’s been my lifeline and without it, I think we would have all been lost.

‘I think of the day when I shall take the key and unlock the doors, and the people will come in again’ Stephen, vicar

When I closed and locked the doors of the church I knelt down in a pew and cried. People come here to pray, to give thanks, to share their fears and their joys. But now the House of God is locked up and there are to be no services there, and I wonder if God’s mercy has also been closed to us. As the priest of this parish I feel as though I have abandoned my people in their time of need.

So I have taken lots of things down from church to the vicarage; vestments and a chalice, books and bread and wine, and my dining room has become the parish church for the time being. From here I broadcast Morning Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist all by myself, uploading it online. I wonder if anyone is watching, and if any of it matters.

And then my parishioners send me photos of themselves standing and kneeling in front of laptops and smartphones. They write to me words of encouragement saying, ‘I have just watched the Mass online… I really felt that I was almost there in church with you,’ and another, ‘It means a great deal to us to share in the services online. God bless everyone.’

A priest is many things. Sometimes we are social workers or event organisers, administrators and publicists, but the one completely unique thing we do is pray on behalf of the people, the parish and the world. Perhaps these lonely services will renew the sense that prayer is at the heart of who I am and what I do – and that when any of us prays, we are never alone because we are always invisibly joined to everyone else who is also praying, on earth and in heaven.

Holy Week and Easter is my favourite time of the year. Just when the beauty of spring is bursting forth, there are all the dramatic and beautiful liturgies, with stripping of altars and kissing of crosses, and lighting of fires at dawn, and then on Easter Day the church is filled with the intoxicating scent of lilies and daffodils. I can hardly bear the thought that we won’t share in these things this year.

I often go into the church when I pass by on my daily exercise or on the way to the shops. I check that where we keep the Sacrament the candle is lit, bless the bread at the Eucharist and replace the candle when it runs low. I think of the day when I shall take the key and unlock the doors, and the people will come in again – and they will see that all along, the light was burning in the darkness. That God was there with us all the time. Then I know that although Easter will be later this year, it will come.

'Let us be glad that for this short time the planet can breathe, rest, rejuvenate and excel at all it does best' Alison

It started with a slow-worm party. (More of that later.) While we have been so busy in lockdown, trying to sort out new ways of living, organising new priorities, trying to understand how to help our families, nature has been freed from her usual state of perpetual lockdown.

Wildlife normally lives alongside us, fitting in where we allow, trying to avoid our interruptions and insensitive intrusions. In ordinary times, creatures have to lock down to survive our disturbance without us even realising.

But this is a changed world, if only for a short time. No longer is wildlife feeling the constraint of living alongside humans. No longer are species competing with us for a quiet, undisturbed space to go about their daily business of finding food, friends and shelter. No longer are plants striving to grow under the pressure of erosion from footfall on their particular little spot of soil. No longer are birds flying into the depths of the woods to sing their unbridled dawn chorus and evening lullabies in peace. No longer are their songs competing with the hum of urban traffic and the roar of aeroplanes. No longer are the insects of the air unknowingly breathing in particles of pollution.

No longer. The planet is resting. The planet is flourishing. Wildlife is not in lockdown.

I have seen unusual things even in my small urban Southampton environment. A woodpecker in a front garden by a normally busy main road. The clear sound of a blackbird serenading with no traffic noise to disturb. The flowers in the gardens seem more vibrant and prolific this year.

The New Forest is closed – my husband works beside the Forest and is able to venture into the woods in his lunch break. It is deserted but very alive, he tells me, and that it is like some ethereal other kingdom of green, peace and lush growth, with no human competition.

Wildlife is making its own news in normally busy spots – mice dancing on a London Underground platform, a goose nesting in York station, deer grazing in a London housing estate, goats wandering down a Welsh street.

Although we are locked down and constrained, let’s be glad that nature is free. It is thriving. It doesn’t need us to help it thrive. It knows what to do itself. It is busy and buzzing and happy. Let us be glad, very glad, that for this short time the planet can breathe, rest, rejuvenate and excel at all it does best.

Or does it always do that every year? Maybe we have just found more time to notice? More time to see, really see; and look, really look at just how gloriously it unfolds each year?

So back to the slow-worm party. One morning I found eight under some black plastic on my allotment – I’ve never seen so many together. It seemed ironic that in our own isolation and lockdown, the creatures can party together more than ever before.

When lockdown ends, let’s move back to our outdoor places of beauty, very gently, lest we disturb the creatures that think we have gone for good.

‘I felt I should be crying, like I’d cried three weeks ago, but I couldn’t’ Emma

As we drove up to the gates, we could see they were locked. Pinned to the bars were several notices, giving instructions to visitors. At the top of one notice, in large red letters, was the word ‘CORONAVIRUS’.

We waited a few moments, unsure what to do. A man appeared. He was wearing blue surgical gloves. I told him our appointment time, and who we were there for, and he opened the gates. As we drove slowly through, he explained that we couldn’t enter the building yet, but we could wait outside. Following his gestured directions, we made our way up the long driveway, to the top of the hill.

We parked. Only two or three other cars were there. As I got out, I saw a robed figure in the main doorway, under the portico, waiting to greet us. He smiled gently, and we approached him, stopping at a safe distance away. We made small talk: what a chilly day it was; that he loved Aker Bilk’s Stranger on the Shore and had it ready to play. The wind circled and I started to shiver.

‘They’ll be here any minute,’ he said.

And they were. I turned around and saw that she’d arrived in the polished limousine. ‘She’s here,’ I said, pointlessly. A man in a black hat and frockcoat got out of the car and smiled palely at me. Four more frockcoats slid her out of the vehicle. With smooth precision, they lifted her on to their shoulders. ‘Follow behind,’ said the black hat man.

As I turned to follow, through the heavy wooden doors and down the aisle, I looked behind at my three companions. Everyone looked sad, lost – well, this is what their eyes expressed. I couldn’t see their mouths: like me, they were wearing face masks.

The four of us took our places – spaced apart – on a wooden bench at the front of the room. All the other seats were empty. No one else was permitted to attend.

We listened. Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Prayers. Some readings from the King James Bible. The eulogy.

I felt I should be crying, like I’d cried three weeks ago, but I couldn’t. It was all so… odd. The rich, soft melody of Stranger on the Shore drifted across the almost empty pews. Inside my mask I smiled at the vicar’s kind words and final blessing.

‘I really wanna see you, Lord, but it takes so long, my Lord.’ As the final song played, we were ushered to the exit. I looked back at the coffin, the seats, the emptiness. I said a goodbye in my head, but I don’t remember what it was.

Bewildered, I stepped outside into the cold. The vicar pumped hand sanitiser on to his palms. ‘It’s the best we could do, in the circumstances,’ he said. ‘Thank you,’ I repeated. There was nothing else to say.

As my eyes finally began to blur with tears, we left, driving back down the hill, out of the gates and home.

I’m sorry. It’s not my fault, but I’m sorry anyway. There should have been more people there, but they were not allowed to come because they’re old and vulnerable and they could catch this virus that’s closed the world down. You missed it. You’re safe from it now. Perhaps that’s a blessing. If you had caught it, you would have suffered even more. I wanted it to feel like a funeral, to celebrate your life properly, but it didn’t, and I couldn’t, and I can’t change anything. But even though there was almost no one there, the vicar read out my words about you, and I chose your favourite songs, and before you died, at least I got to talk to you and tell you that I love you. I got to stroke your head, and kiss your frail skin, and thank you for everything you did for me.

Now, more than ever, that feels very, very precious.

Now, more than ever, I love you, Mum. X

Letters From Lockdown: A Selection of  Covid Chronicles from BBC Radio 4’s PM Programme, is published by Chatto & Windus at £9.99. £1 from every sale goes to  BBC Children in Need