‘Love you, then, well’: London’s National COVID Memorial Wall pays tribute to the country’s 240K lives lost to COVID-19

Every week, Lorelei King’s fingers are stained red after painting small hearts on a gray, stone wall near the River Thames in London. 

“You can’t really call yourself a volunteer at the Memorial Wall unless every item of clothing you own has a dab of red paint on it somewhere,” King said. 

She and other volunteers come on Fridays to this riverbank opposite Britain’s Houses of Parliament, in all weather conditions, armed with brushes and pots of cherry-red paint and ready to tackle their own sections of the wall.  

In 2021, volunteers and activists set out to paint a heart on the wall for each person in the UK who died from COVID-19. Today, the heart-filled, National COVID Memorial Wall, which now stretches for more than one-third of a mile, represents the nearly quarter of a million COVID-19 deaths recorded in the UK.  

Although the statistics are hard to comprehend, King said, the visual statement is a powerful one: “People get very emotional when they see it for the first time, whether or not they’ve lost someone to COVID[-19].”

Originally, each heart was intended to represent a number — with no name or person attached. But then, people began contacting the volunteers with requests for personal messages to be written on individual hearts. Especially those with loved ones who don’t have a gravestone, King said. 

Now, people can ask volunteers to paint personal messages on their hearts.

“And that just gives incredible meaning to my life. I feel like I have purpose. Vince used to be my purpose.” 

King lost her husband, Vince Marzello, early in the pandemic, on March 31, 2020. He had early onset Alzheimer’s and was in a care facility. During lockdown, access for relatives was almost impossible. She wasn’t able to be with him when he died, something she is still grieving.

“I cannot get that moment back. I wish to God I could, and that will never go away — that regret and that loss. It was a particularly horrible time.”

And painting hearts on the wall, she said, “I just feel it’s a way of connecting with Vince.” 

Each of the volunteers have suffered losses to COVID-19 — the only requirement to join the team. 

And, they picked this wall, which faces Parliament, to convey to politicians the immensity of theirs — and the country’s — losses. 

“It was important to us that [the politicians] see this wall, that they get this message,” King said, adding, “That’s why the hearts are red; red reads [from] across the river.” 

As new hearts are added, old ones tend to fade and need renewing. 

“It was never intended to be permanent,” King said. “In fact, it is technically criminal damage to put the hearts on the wall.”

But now, no one would dare scrub the wall clear. It has been well-received by the public, and even though the wall didn’t initially get government approval, the volunteers hope it’ll be allowed to stay intact. 

Hilary Lynas from Glasgow, Scotland, and Olwen Fisher, from Nottingham in the Midlands of England, met through an online group for family members of COVID-19 victims. They’ve since become close friends and visit the wall every year together to see the handwritten dedications to each of their parents. 

Fisher’s heart, for her dad, Charles Fisher, reads: “Love you lots, Dad.” 

“Because I always used to say that to him,” Fisher said. 

Lynas’ heart for her mum, Margaret Glen Lynas, from herself and her dad, Hugh Lynas, says, “Love you, then, well,” a special phrase that they used to end every phone call. 

“Every name represents a family and people behind them that have been lost in the most terrible way. And that’s what you need to remember — that every name here is a person that somebody loved,” Lynas said. 

A campaign to make the National COVID Memorial Wall permanent is still ongoing.