Sandra – Page 7 – Wis[s]e Words

Sandra’s going home

Published on April 18, 20124 Comments

Tomorrow I will spent the whole day travelling to Plymouth together with my parents, to bring Sandra to her final resting place. She wanted her ashes to be scattered at one of her favourite places in the city, which her sons and me will do sometimes this weekend. It’s a strange feeling to be this close to letting her go, but it is the last thing I can do for her. Hopefully this will be a bit of (ugh) closure as well.

Practically speaking, because going by plane was not an option (expensive, much too much of a hassle, fscking airlines nickling and diming you to death), we’re going by train. First leg is from Amsterdam to Brussel, then onto London, mad dash on the Underground and then the train to Plymouth, which takes about as long as getting from Amsterdam to London.

The Dutch trains will be alright, unless the railways find yet another way to derail (pun not intended) traffic around Schiphol, the international train a doddle, but I’m dreading the souped up metro style cattle cars the British call trains. Most of my experiences with them have been dreadful: overcrowded, slow, far too many far too loud completely irrelevant tannoy messages, prone to endless delays, claustrophobic. Oh well, when in doubt, crank up the volume on the mp3 player and try to sleep.

Five months

Published on April 8, 20121 Comment

At Easter last year Sandra was home, things were looking up, the weather was nice and we had my parents over, having lunch in the garden. This year not so much. Yesterday was exactly five months since Sandra died: in one way it feels much longer, in another only yesterday that she died. I’ve only begun to miss her more as the months go by, dream of her a lot too. That’s the worst, because even in a dream I know she’s dead, but within the dream she’s still there.

It’s not all doom and gloom of course, but Sandra is always in the back of my mind and doesn’t show any signs of moving out…

Sandra’s home

Published on March 29, 20122 Comments

This afternoon I brought Sandra home:

Sandra back home

So yeah.

Spring has sprung

Published on March 26, 2012Leave a comment

Lady Plymouth Eucalyptus

It looks like spring has officially started here in the Netherlands; the last week or so has seen temperatures reaching twenty degrees Celsius, everything in the garden starts to look green and sprouty, our resident family of finches is back and I’ve even seen some bumblebees flying around. Also a lot of mosquitoes when it gets dark unfortunately. Finally, there is the undeniable sign of spring, crows who deliberately take a bath in the guttering just as I come sit outside; no shit, three days in a row five minutes after I’ve installed myself with a book and a drink and there come the first splashes of water. Naughty, naughty corvoids.

Unfortunately the garden has suffered a bit of damage thanks to the false spring and suddenly nasty week of winter we had in late January and early February, which has made quite a few plants that thought they could start doing their spring cleaning suffer for their impudence. Sadly, the plant above was one of them, the Lady Plymouth Eucalyptus we’ve gotten from the botanical garden at the VU hospital during an open day there last April. It wasn’t really for sale, but the kind lady who had grown it gave it to Sandra as a gift; Plymouth being her home town. I had hoped it could’ve survived the winter; it was supposed to be winter hard, but the combo of soft weather followed by a harsh frost seems to have done it in.

I’m not really a gardener myself, but Sandra was and put her heart and soul in our little garden and even after two years of neglect it still looks good, if a bit wilder than it was. In hospital, that botanical garden was her lifeline, a place to espace too when being in hospital got too much, as was the bit of “wild” parkland between the garden and the hospital itself. We actually saw a red squirrel there, as well as a woodpecker and a fair number of other birds and small animals.

All of which leaves me seeing spring approach with mixed feelings; it’s in my top four of favourite seasons, but I can’t get rid of that knot of anxiety and grief in my stomach either, as everything green does remind me of Sandra.

So I end up staying in with the blinds down playing games on my pc.

Not quite a happy birthday

Published on March 7, 2012Leave a comment

So this time last year I realised that in 2012, this blog would turn ten years old and today is the big day, as my first post was published on 7 March 2002. Of course, that was two blog versions ago, both of which are still running though not being updated and links to which still work. In fact, I still need to upgrade quite a few entries on those to the “new” Wis[s]e Words, even three years after switching…

Today would be a happy occasion, if not for the depressing fact that today is also exactly four months since Sandra died and of course my thoughs are more with her than with the blog, as they always are. I can sometimes stop thinking about her, especially at work when I keep myself busy, but barely an hour can go by without me being reminded of her. Sometimes this is more difficult than at other times. For example, last Sunday I was listening to the Archers omnibus on Radio 4, a fixed part of my Sunday morning routine: get up during the morning service, get showered and dressed, then make coffee and breakfast while listening to broadcasting house, finally read the newspapers and blogs and all about how Aston Villa once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory while listening with half an ear to The Archers. I can’t help it, you’re obliged to as a Radio 4 listener and besides Sandra got my addicted to it.

But this week’s omnibus hit me hard, because it included Tony Archer’s heart attack, which made me think of Sandra immediately. Not the heart attack itself, which fortunately she never had, but the circumstances surrounding it. His son Tom had had a bit of a row with him and went back to talk it out again, finding him on the floor and confused and not knowing what was happening, just that he was in pain, breathing rapidly. There have been a number of times that I had to find Sandra like that, having to wait for the ambulance, having to ride with the ambulance to the hospital, knowing that things had gotten bad again.

Which isn’t meant as a plea for sympathy, it’s just one of those things I have to deal with, “flashbacks” like that. At the time when you had to deal with a situation like that, you have no choice but to keep it together, not to think too much about it. And since most of the last two years have been either emergencies or attempts to recover from setbacks, I haven’t had much time to think it all over, which is now coming back to bite me. Now I’ve got too much time to think and wonder about what to do with the rest of my life, other than going to work, blog, read and watch tv…

On a lighter note, Sandra would’ve screamed and screamed reading this story, as she was not fond of spiders. I really shouldn’t have teased her with it as much as I did.