Joyce Fegan: Barra hit hard, but it was also a pause for thought

We were all operating, more or less, in unison once again — as if the nation had a collective date in the diary.

Friends in the east were contacting friends in the west, checking in to see how conditions were in their homestead. This conscious, overt, and explicit checking-in, a thing of the past, welcomed with open arms. The honest “how are you” that the pandemic elicited from us was one of the learnings we had said we’d take with us.

With roads quiet and footpaths short of footfall, the external quietness was a reminder of pandemic year one, when everyone felt in less of a rush, when life didn’t feel like it had to be lived in sixth gear, should your engine even go above fifth. The slower pace wasn’t so bad after all, having time to chat to your neighbour was another bonus we said we’d take with us.

Then, with State-mandated closures of schools, there was that return of certainty, all the ambiguity of 2021 disappeared. For all the fallout of lockdowns and heavy restrictions, there is always some peace to be found in certainty.

Owners of some small businesses — who have felt like puppets on a string, increasing capacity, decreasing capacity, and informing their customers accordingly — confessed to enjoying the reprieve from the ever-changing in exchange for the temporary certainty that Storm Barra gave them.

Parents of young children who’ve been navigating nasal passages with much resistance and monitoring temperatures in a state of hypervigilance for months on end undoubtedly did not feel reprieve this week as schools closed. The school and creche closures were more likely a reminder of endless homeschooling and home-working juggle struggle. 

“How did we ever get through that?” and “What’s worse — navigating this new normal of ours with antigen tests or being housebound full stop?”

But that’s the question right there, isn’t it? What’s worse — full closure and a sense of certainty, or full opening and an ambiguous life with ever-changing rules?

It’s like the children’s song ‘Open Shut Them’. If 2020 was a case of “shut them”, then 2021, has been a rollercoaster of “open  shut them, open shut them”, minus the considerate “give a little clap” for our ever-enduring healthcare workers.

It’s unlikely that our citizens who were forced to cocoon for months were in any way nostalgic for 2020. As one 74-year-old woman told me this week: 

When you don’t see your son for two and a half years at my age, it feels like a lifetime.

I assume many would choose ambiguity over certainty, parents of all ages alike. But then you have the owners of small businesses on their perpetual puppet string, with tickets to events and gigs and concerts sold, finding out that they’ve to cancel customers’ nights out and refund their already-banked cash. In one restaurant in the sunny South East last weekend, there were 40 cancellations for Saturday night’s sittings.

Do restaurants crave the certainty of a business model built on takeout meals and home dining? Do artists, musicians, and venues despise the certainty of lockdowns?

Renewed focus on homelessness

But there was one good thing about Storm Barra: It brought us back to our senses. In a pre-pandemic Ireland, we were a nation that almost collectively banged the drum that homelessness was unacceptable. Not a day would go by without a family’s story of eviction or the homeless figures receiving the full media spotlight, and righteous rage response from the public.

And now, every other story — climate, housing, or abortion review laws — have fallen off our radar, eclipsed by a virus that now goes by many different Greek letters. But not this week.

As well as texting your friend in Clare or Cork or Wicklow this week to check in on their shed or roof tiles, did you find your mind wandering to those who might not have even had a roof over their head?

When the wind howls through the vents and cracks of your home and the rain splatters across your windowpane, it’s pretty difficult not to think of those stuck outdoors at worst, or in temporary accommodation at best.

The latest homeless figures show that almost 9,000 of our citizens are without homes, 2,513 of them children. 

In one heading in the Government PDF document that contains these figures, it reads: “Details of adults accessing local authority-managed emergency accommodation during the week”. That’s a mouthful of a euphemism to describe a human sleeping rough under a shopfront in a storm.

Storm Barra reminded us, through an appreciation of our own comfort, that there are still thousands of us out there stuck in State-managed homelessness. 

And then that stuck-ness reminds you of other stuck-ness.

There are still more than 7,000 people, who came here for a better and safer life, languishing in our direct provision centres — disused hotels and former holiday camps, in off-the-beaten-track places in the recesses of Ireland. This week, a report emerged of incidences of domestic abuse increasing in these centres, including reports of sexual violence. Imagine being stuck in a country you came to for safe harbour, only to be living under the threat of violence and not able to get out from under it?

Storm Barra not only reminded us of a life when there was certainty, but also that life has been going on for people regardless of the pandemic.

Has the “open shut them, open shut them” nature of our fluctuating lives caused us all to become empathy fatigued?

To once again be nostalgic for 2020, I remember public campaigns reaching out to those caught in abusive situations, fundraisers fuelled by songs, care packs and free postage to nursing homes, and voices on the radio ensuring that no one got evicted. I don’t remember much of that in 2021. And I doubt that is because homelessness, domestic abuse, and loneliness were solved in 2021.

Storm Barra took lives, caused damage, and cost money. But it also provided a pause, a pause for thought, and triggered us to think of others once again. Storm Barra reminded us that empathy isn’t a finite thing and, even in our own struggles, we have the capacity to consider and care for others.