Art Therapy: How UK's COVID memorial wall brought comfort

LONDON (AP) — It can take between five and ten minutes to walk the heart-festooned memorial wall in London commemorating those who died from COVID-19 in the U.K — far longer if you pause every few steps to read the heartfelt messages of love that bereaved families and friends have overlaid the pink and red hearts with.

Walking along the 8-foot-high Portland stone wall on the south side of the River Thames, directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, is a somber experience, especially for those who lost someone and who think the British government could have done a lot more to prevent the U.K.'s enormous death toll during the pandemic.

As the global death toll nears the threshold of 5 million dead, Britain officially has recorded around 140,000 coronavirus-related deaths, Europe's second highest toll after Russia. The actual number is believed to be higher — around 160,000 — as there was very little testing done in the early days of the pandemic in the U.K. in the spring of 2020.

The National COVID Memorial Wall on a half-kilometer stretch of the Albert Embankment is dedicated to those who died, with each life lost represented by a carefully painted heart that volunteers freshen up on a weekly basis with long-lasting masonry paints.

There's also the odd cake and a cup of coffee.

For the volunteers, it's a bit like art therapy — meditative.

“For me I think it has absolutely fulfilled the original intention which was to remind people of the scale of our loss,” said Fran Hall, a spokesperson for the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who lost her husband of three weeks, Steve Mead, in September 2020, a day before his 66th birthday.

Hall makes the weekly trek along with several others to ensure the hearts don't fade to pink from luscious red and add inscriptions from...