"Lives Reflected"

Over the past year our lives have been put on hold and  we have had restrictions on our lives in order to make sure of our future. 23/3/21 12 noon we stopped to remember those who lost their lives. Rainbows, daffodils, Spring time , vaccinations All giving us Hope for a Better Future.

Joanne Ferguson Bridal established in 1985 for the first time ever had to find a way to help her brides with new means of technology and new ways of communicating so virtual appointments became a new thing in order to reassure and alleviate the stress.

 Covid-19 restrictions as good as stopped all weddings and brides had issues to cope with that seemed so unfair.

The NHS fought the battle of a century as Covid-19 took loved ones and prevented others from the treatment and care that was considered "normal"

People were dying and loved ones denied their final dignified good byes.

21/3/21 a year to the day that I last saw my Dad who was in the Ulster Hospital after a fall and dyed some weeks later probably without understanding why we weren't allowed to visit him.

The strangest of times, cruel, desperate times which have effected us All.

The Covid 19 pandemic has impacted lives and livelihoods across our land and across the world. But one of the most painful aspects has been upon our grief and grieving. In hospital wards, Intensive Care Units, in Nursing Homes and in family homes lives have been lost directly to Covid 19, and many more lives have been lost within the necessary restrictions that our communities have followed to restrict the spread of the disease.

So much which helps us in the final days of the life of someone we love, know or care about has been denied to us: a hand held close, a whispered final farewell, a prayer breathed. We have not been able to gather together to share memories and tears. We have even been restricted in how we can gather for funerals. Each of these denials has added to our grief and made healing more difficult.

For others, lives have been impacted in very different ways. Those who have worked in hospitals and care homes have faced immense pressures. And from teachers and to shop workers, ambulance crews to delivery drivers, everyone’s working lives have been turned upside down. While for others home working and home schooling, short term working or the reality of redundancy has radically changed personal lives and circumstances.

It is into these very personal places that we offer “Lives Reflected”. With this Website, we invite you to make a personal tribute, in word and picture, to someone you have known or loved who has died, whether directly from Covid 19, or for any other cause since the start of Lockdown in our country. Your tribute placed within our on-line Book of Remembrance will allow you to share your memory of someone special in a precious and respectful place. Alternatively you may wish to share a longer personal story of the impact of the pandemic upon your life, or the life of someone special to you.

“Lives Reflected”, an initiative in these times of Covid 19 by those at the Belfast Cathedral, to remember and to reflect on the lives of people we have known and loved.

Thanks to one of my former brides Gillian Collins, for sharing this.