Sarah Holland-Batt

So that's the first thing to say.

It was dad's time.

He passed away at the beginning of March this year.

I think in retrospect, I'm just very grateful for the timing of that because obviously I know a lot of people have had really horrific experiences where they've not been able to go and sit with their loved ones.

You know, dad was lucky in retrospect to pass away in hospital and we had to, you know, all of that really incredibly valuable time with him.

So I'm grateful for the way he passed away and I think I will always be grateful for.

But yet it has been the coinciding of that with the pandemic, with the panic buying, with the sort of empty shelves, it ended up feeling quite apocalyptic and it was a very surreal kind of moment to emerge back into the world because this is what happens when someone dies.

You know, you have a period where you're completely...

wrapped up in that experience of it and nothing else exists.

And then you enter the world and the world feels, you know, uber bright and busy and sort of banal in its normality.

But in fact, this was the opposite experience where the world felt completely unfamiliar, utterly kind of changed and quite alarming.

So it has been a very odd time.

And I know I'm not alone in this.

Lots of people have, you know, are losing...

family, either through coronavirus or just other causes, it has been a really surreal time to be grieving and lonely over normal, of course, because when someone dies, usually you'd be seeing your friends a lot, you'd be having lots of visitors and so forth.

And of course, the current circumstances have precluded that.

So it has been a very surreal, is probably the word for it, an extremely surreal kind of experience.

I found myself turning to poetry.

Unsurprising for a poet, perhaps, but it's been about all that I've been able to focus on.

And I know that lots of people have commented on how the coronavirus has kind of just shot their attention span, just sort of blasted it to smithereens.