Last week, my sister Kathy Wootton left Life Kingsbury Hospital in Cape Town after a record-breaking 65 days in their Intensive Care Unit with Covid-19. She spent almost a month of that in a coma on a ventilator. A video taken by a staff member, showing her being wheeled out — pumping her arms Rocky Balboa-style and blowing kisses at the cheering staff — went viral, getting around 250 shares on Facebook alone (at the time of writing) and tens of thousands of views.
To me, it’s the most beautiful and moving clip I’ll ever see — I weep every time I watch it — but then I’m a little biased. What has been striking is the popularity of the video, and the intense emotions it inspires in strangers. Obviously, it’s the happy ending we all want to a Covid story, and it’s good news at a time when this is in very short supply. Almost everyone is depressed, broke, burnt out — many have lost loved ones, their health, their livelihoods. It’s a comfort to be reminded, in the words of the poet Sheenagh Pugh, that “sometimes, things don’t go from bad to worse”.