which in a way is so heart-breaking," she added.ĬOVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, which has around 4,000 members, has been calling for a public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic so lessons can be learned to limit future virus-related deaths. "It just needs to be a permanent memorial for our loved ones and it does mean so much to me, and this is why I come down to help with the fellow bereaved, who are now my friends, to help re-freshen the hearts and add new inscriptions. was first put into lockdown in March 2020.
“This memorial means so much to the bereaved as a lot of us could not have our last goodbyes," said Amanda Herring who lost her 54-year old brother Mark Herring just before the U.K.
The government has yet to give the wall official status, though Prime Minister Boris Johnson told bereaved families, including Hall herself, recently that it is a “good candidate” to be a permanent memorial. Incredibly it took less than two weeks for the army of volunteers to paint the 150,000 or so hearts. The memorial was established in March by the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and campaign group Led by Donkeys as a visual representation of the scale of loss in the U.K. “As you walk along you'll see thousands and thousands of names, so the hearts have been personalized. “We're getting red back onto the wall, to keep it vibrant,” said Hall. Hall makes the weekly trek along with several others to ensure the hearts don't fade to pink from luscious red and add inscriptions from those bereaved who can't make the journey to the wall. “For me I think it has absolutely fulfilled the original intention which was to remind people of the scale of our loss,” said Fran Hall, a spokesperson for the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who lost her husband of three weeks, Steve Mead, in September 2020, a day before his 66th birthday. There's also the odd cake and a cup of coffee.įor the volunteers, it's a bit like art therapy - meditative. The National COVID Memorial Wall on a half-kilometer stretch of the Albert Embankment is dedicated to those who died, with each life lost represented by a carefully painted heart that volunteers freshen up on a weekly basis with long-lasting masonry paints.
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