Dear Diary - Mother's Day - 2020

I knew weeks ago that I ought to be keeping a daily diary on here or elsewhere of events, appointments, thoughts, feelings and opinions.  I knew way back in August when I purposely declined to buy a 2020 diary even as my daughter was purchasing a selection of these items in a range of sizes and styles.

I merely flicked through the pages and returned the books to their display shelf, muttering "I'll not write in it". I realise this is a shocking thing to say by someone who purports to "write" and my only excuse is that ... oh wait, I don't actually have an excuse.

Needing to write things down has become imperative due to my increasingly decreasing ability to remember anything at all for longer than a few hours, let alone days and although this is not a recently acquired inability (see numerous posts on this blog on this theme over the past 12 years or so) it seems a lot more important in this unprecedented  situation, namely the Corona Virus (Covid19) outbreak.


Within a matter of days, it seems, our whole lifestyle as we knew it has drastically and necessarily changed beyond anything we imagined, despite our following the virus' progression across the world since November/December 2019.
My emotions - and I am sure many others - have alternated between worry, anxiety and paranoia to disbelief and being almost convinced of conspiracies, and back again over the last 3 months. I have studied data and statistics which I barely knew existed and read scientific and medical research that could not have been deemed relevant to me and my family, until now. Information and advice from any and every possible source has been listened to, digested and put into practice. 
All of this tells me that, though there are millions of journalists, authors and media people recording every detail of daily events, I need to document my own account. Whether anyone reads it or not is irrelevant, though the word "posterity" is lodged firmly in my mind.

And so, on this Mother's Day, the first ever known where we are advised not to visit our mothers, for very good reasons,  I am recording my mental ramblings here. 

Thank you to my children and grandchildren for their love and good wishes which I am fortunate to have every day, not only on Mother's Day. 

Here's hoping that tomorrow brings some positive news for everyone and that we all appreciate the importance of all the people in our lives.