A Lucan-born initiative is brightening the days of local seniors who have been isolated at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Upwards of 85 “love letters” written by children from the village are being distributed to seniors in the London-area as part of ‘Lucan Letters of Love,’ a project spearheaded by Lucan resident Katie Howard that ran from March 30 until April 3.
The letters come as social distancing guidelines have seen older Canadians refrain from going out or seeing their loved ones due to fears of potentially contracting the novel coronavirus. While isolation protects vulnerable seniors from getting sick, it’s having a debilitating effect on their mental wellbeing.
Anxiety and depression are up since lockdown measures came into effect across the country in March, according to a survey of 1,803 Canadians by the national charity the Mental Health Research Council.
Howard says she was aware of similar projects elsewhere, but notes the idea to organize a local letter drive came only after a frank conversation with her own mother.
“My mother lives alone, and one day I came home from work and I was complaining a little bit about the stress that we’re all under, and the homeschooling … and her response to me was, ‘well, at least you have someone to talk to,'” Howard told 980 CFPL’s Jess Brady Wednesday.
“So a kind of light bulb went off, and I connected it to all of the things I had been seeing in other countries with seniors and long-term care homes, and I thought, ‘you know, this has Lucan written all over it.'”
To get the idea off the ground, Howard says she reached out to friend Victoria Chalmers who, along with her husband James, owns the London offices of Home Instead Senior Care, an in-home senior care business.
The plan would see Howard get the word out locally through Facebook, collect the letters in a box outside of her house, and have Home Instead distribute the cards to clients through their invoices.
Chalmers, Howard says, was immediately on board with the idea.
“It was so fun to be a part of,” Chalmers said. “This has impacted everybody differently. And in particular, for our line of work, there’s just been a lot of added stressors.”
“I told her… ‘I really appreciate you thinking of this and thinking of partnering with us,’ because sometimes we are just so caught up in getting PPE, and just new things that we needed to start thinking about, that you forget about those little touches of love sometimes.”
Home Instead held on to the letters for a couple weeks “just to be extra safe,” Chalmers says. Half of the letters have already been sent out, with the remainder to be distributed this week.
The reaction from those receiving them so far has been nothing but positive, she added.
“One client called and said… it brought back so many memories for her of when her kids were small and they used to do drawings like that, because a lot of the kids drew pictures and there was glitter all over some of them,” she said.
“We got phone calls just about how they’re really touched, and they were really surprised when they opened it up. I think just that little thoughtful letter put in there was really neat.”
Home Instead staff read the cards to each other through video calls before they were sent out.
Some children wrote jokes, while others wrote about their day, commented on their favourite foods, or noted that the community cares.
Many letters read, “I hope you’re happy,” Chalmers says.
“One of them that stuck out said, ‘I hope you have a stuffy,’ which I thought was so sweet,” she said, understanding that for many children, having a stuffed animal to cuddle is key to being happy.
Howard says it was her 4-year-old son Oliver who wrote the letter.
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“I had to prompt him a little bit in his letter writing and try to get him to think of some things. I said… ‘what do you have here at home that really helps you be happy? And what do you hope that person has?'”
He replied, “Well, I hope they have a stuffy like mine,” Howard says.
The letter initiative grew well beyond what Howard had expected. Initially, she says she believed it would just be a small mom-to-mom project among those in the community and in the subdivisions.
“I had people dropping off letters that I’ve never even seen before. And this is a small town,” she said.
Emerging studies and surveys are already showing COVID-19’s impact on mental health around the world.
A report by the World Health Organization said many people are distressed by the immediate health impacts and the consequences of physical isolation, while many others are afraid of infection, dying, and losing family members.
Millions of people are facing economic turmoil, having lost or being at risk of losing their income and livelihoods, the report added. And frequent misinformation and rumors about the pandemic and deep uncertainty about how long it will last are making people feel anxious and hopeless about the future.
Psychologists worry about the “echo pandemic” — the mental health crisis that will remain in the wake of COVID-19. Isolation is a major contributing factor to that looming crisis, experts say.
With those concerns in mind, and with Lucan’s involvement last year in mental health awareness campaigns, Howard says the letter project illustrates that while there are many moving parts to the pandemic, mental health is something people will need to pay attention to.
“If a little letter with some glitter on it changes someone’s day, then it doesn’t take much time.”
— With files from Liam Casey of The Canadian Press and Kate Welland, William Maclean of Reuters
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