This article is written by Brian Day, attendance and wellbeing champion at HMRC.

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There is no doubt that life in lockdown has been a frightening, bewildering and scary time for most people.

Everything we have known as “normal” has been called into question. The way we work has changed beyond recognition, maybe for the better and maybe forever. We have had to face isolation, estrangement from family and friends and have learnt to maintain social distancing.

For people like me, it has been even harder. I care for my wife who is deaf-blind and this situation has put an even bigger burden on myself. I have had to face the reality that I could not isolate as much as I should (I am asthmatic) because the needs of my wife have to come first. I have had to watch the distressing news of deaths and keep up with the distressing figures simply so that my wife could keep informed of what is going on. I have had to allay her fears of me continuing my daily three-hour commute from Milton Keynes to Coventry and back.

I have to say my department has been exceptional. They have allowed me to work from home and the support I have received from my line manager has been second to none. She has been there whenever my mind was troubled and has taken time to reassure and support me. She has been there when I needed a word of in these troubled times.

However, it is someone many miles from home who showed me that kindness is not just a concept but a reality.

Kindness still exists

After a particularly difficult weekend in which a friend was told that her father had Covid-19, my wife had had a bit of a meltdown due to fears for her own elderly father and my mental health issues, which have been with me for most of my life, re-emerged. I took to social media to seek some comfort. Lots of my friends and family posted comments supporting me but one, in particular, went that little bit further.

A few days after my post we got a knock on the front door of our home. On the doorstep was a white box which looked like it could be from a pizza company. There was no name or address on the box so we thought maybe it had been delivered by mistake and held onto it in case someone claimed it. After two days no-one had come forward so I decided to open the box and dispose of the “pizza”. Imagine my surprise when I found it full of cakes. I was dumbfounded by who could have sent it and still thought someone would claim them.

That night I got a message from an old friend who had moved to Norfolk. We had known her for many years and had attended her wedding two years ago. The message simply said.

“I hope you enjoyed your cakes. We may be miles apart and only contact each other rarely but I saw your message on Facebook and I thought I would do something to help. I can’t be there physically but I wanted to show my friendship”. I was totally overwhelmed and cried tears of joy at this random act of kindness.

Throughout this whole virus pandemic, we have had kindness shown to us from our next-door neighbour offering to get our shopping, to friends scouring shops to get us some food items we couldn’t source, to organisations just phoning to check my wife and I were coping.

In this day and age of acts of needless violence and death, bigotry, self-centred behaviours and callousness, it is reassuring that kindness still exists.

In the words of author Amy Leigh Mecree:

“Kindness can transform someone’s dark moment with a blaze of light. You’ll never know how much your caring matters. Make a difference another today. ⁠— Brian Day

(Picture credit: Unsplash)