Italian Lockdown: A Rainy Day in Sardinia

It’s a dull, dark, dreary, and wet day in Sardinia today. A rainy day, not unlike the days I thought I had left behind in Ireland.

Looking out the rain-soaked window, with a cup of tea in hand, I’ve thought about the days before all of this lockdown madness. It’s only really been 18 days since the country went on lockdown, but it strangely feels like months ago. I wonder now if it makes more sense to think of time as ‘before lockdown’, and ‘after lockdown’.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, especially if you’ve managed to read any of my previous posts, I’ve had quite a lot of time to contemplate things lately – and today, I allowed myself to become nostalgic.

Thinking of the times ‘before lockdown’ – back to the end of March 2019, exactly a year ago – my wife Claudia and I were in the process of organising our wedding. At the time, the thought of a global pandemic was the farthest thing from our minds.

We were occupied day and night, researching caterers, cake makers and everything else needed to ensure that our day would go smoothly.  At times we were stressed, overwhelmed, and we wondered how we would manage.

The nostalgia that I felt today though wasn’t the stress of organising a wedding – everything worked out perfectly, and we’ve been very happily married since last September – no, what I remember most about March last year, were the times we took a break from organising things. The good times amongst the relative madness.

I remember going for long walks with Claudia in the countryside one Sunday, looking for wild asparagus, and the mythical Sardinian Domus De Janas or ‘House of the Witches’. I remember the Saturday night we stayed in and watched a film together with a good bottle of Cannonau red wine. Most of all, I remember the times when we still managed to laugh and be silly together, even when faced with the seemingly mammoth task of putting together our own wedding day.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by what is happening in the world right now – wherever you are, it’s likely that your life has been changed in some way or another by the COVID-19 Coronavirus.

A year from now though, ‘after lockdown’, when the pandemic will have already passed, and the world will have returned to some sort of normality, I’d like to think that instead of thinking about lockdowns, self-isolation, and social distancing, we’ll all be able to focus on the good things.

I hope that we’ll remember the doctors and nurses who put their lives on the line, the essential people who continued to show up for work day after day at possible risk to their own health, and the people helping in our own communities – everyone who did their best to make a bad situation that little bit easier.

Things may look dark and dreary right now, but rainy days never last, the sun always comes out to shine eventually.