“Hello my darling,” he says. “Do you know who I am? I’m David.”
Before even putting down his bags, David sits on Sheila’s bed, next to her armchair, and holds her hand — for only the second time since the pandemic came to Britain.
The response from Sheila, his wife of 55 years, is impossible to read. She has advanced dementia and she rarely speaks.
“It’s a long time since I’ve seen you,” he tells her. “That’s because of this Covid thing.”
Throughout the pandemic, Sheila was cut off from everyone who loved her because Britain’s nursing and care homes have largely remained closed to visitors. Now the UK’s vaccine rollout has made an incremental but significant change possible. Each resident in England is allowed one designated, indoor visitor.
CNN received permission to observe some of the first moments where people in care were reunited with loved ones.
David gives Sheila daffodils from their garden. He inspects her fingernails to see if they need to be trimmed. He tells her that their three sons love and miss her. Often, he just looks at her silently while stroking her forearm with a gloved hand.
They met when they were both teachers at neighboring schools. Sheila is now 81.
“She was always very sociable,” David recalls. “Outgoing and happy and fulfilled with home and her family.”
David is satisfied there is no obvious decline in her condition but says he cannot know what she was thinking and feeling during their long time apart.
Visitors must record a negative Covid-19 test result immediately before entering the home and wear personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the visit. Hugging and kissing are forbidden.
David says just being able to hold hands is a huge improvement for Sheila’s quality of life.
“One of the few ways that she can show her feelings, really,” he says. “I think you’ve got to be grateful for what you’ve got.”
One town over in Bexhill, in one of the many care homes along this stretch of England’s southern coast, Renee Dolan, 86, waits anxiously for her granddaughter.
Suddenly Sara Agliata rounds the corner and two big smiles light up the room.
“Nan! Ahhh!” cries Sara.
“Oh, thank you darling,” Renee says, receiving a bouquet of flowers. “You’ve had to come in all this plastic.”
“I know, I know,” Sara laughs. “You can hear me coming.”
Her grandmother grips her hand tightly. With the other, she places a kiss on her cheek.
“Oh, you’re not allowed to kiss me,” Sara says gently.
For the next half hour their hands stay locked together, and a lively conversation flows from great grandkids to Harry and Meghan’s recent interview.
At times, Renee is overwhelmed with emotion and struggles to explain how important this moment is. “It’s so nice seeing you. It’s [been] a long time,” she says, sobbing.
Her granddaughter assures her: “I’m going to come back next week as well.”
Renee’s husband died at 47. She spent decades living alone in central London and is now experiencing early dementia.
“She’s an extremely independent person that does love her family, and likes to be around them,” Sara says. “She likes to be around people.”
Renee is grateful for the comfort of holding hands — “it means everything to me, everything” — but she hopes for more.
“It’s just a shame we can’t hug yet,” she says. “But it won’t be long, will it?”
Outside Eastbourne’s Manor Hall Nursing Home, a group of residents is slowly but excitedly boarding a mini bus. This is the first time they are allowed to leave the building and its small courtyard since last summer.
The excursion opens with a drive through the rolling, green hills of the South Downs National Park.
“We’ve waited a long time for this, haven’t we? Beautiful,” says George Baulch, 87, smiling out of the window.
The bus soon stops at a public garden by the seaside. The residents decamp to benches. Their carers hand out blankets, cups of tea and snacks.
There are smiles and laughter and much grousing about the early spring chill. Someone makes a saucy joke about the size of a banana. This is the most freedom they’ve experienced in a long time.
“You come here and you realize how big England is,” George says with a laugh.
The elderly have sacrificed more freedoms than most during the pandemic, and more than half of Covid-19 deaths in England and Wales last year were from those over 80. They were prioritized in the UK’s vaccine rollout from December and first doses have now been delivered to 99.9% of England’s nursing and care homes, according to the country’s National Health Service.
Around 23 million people in total across the UK have now received a first vaccine shot. That protection is allowing modest changes, the possibility of hope and glimpses of a post-Covid future.
“We’ve been locked up for weeks and weeks and weeks,” George says. “[I] never thought it was going to happen again for us. And now we’re here.”
CNN’s Darren Bull and Matt Brealey contributed to this report.