I realised a couple of days ago that I am grieving at the moment. At first I thought I was being silly, and tried to fight it, but gradually I have come to the conclusion that trying to “get over it” is a pointless exercise and I should just let myself go through it.
We heard the shocking news that M’s uncle Emmo and his partner Karmin were killed in a car accident in the Netherlands on 6 June. I should have seen that I was very affected by the news because I cried when I was told. And I feel these huge pangs of sadness at unexpected moments.
It’s funny, and silly, how the mind tries to categorise things. I certainly wasn’t close to these two uncles – we met for the first time in 2008 when we visited the Netherlands and Germany – and then again in 2009 when Emmo visited Perth to see M’s mum (Emmo’s sister) who was ill with cancer. We sent Christmas cards and the occasional email, but were very much separated by distance and our very different lives. So according to some standard set in my mind, Emmo and Karmin aren’t close and therefore I shouldn’t feel anything.
And yet, they made an impact on me, and I did think of them often. You know how you think of some people as a couple. They were Emmo-and-Karmin. They were gentle, warm and amazingly welcoming. Emmo was quite inspiring to me, because after a longish career (I think in a shipping company) he decided he would follow his passion and together with Karmin they opened an art gallery in Rotterdam. He obviously loved it, and talked about the shows he visited, and travelling around Europe and the US.
Emmo and the chihuahuas.
It’s been strange and a little tough, because we are all the way over here. It’s been hard to find out what happened, and we’ve been hearing news through M’s dad, and via email with M’s aunt. My dormant Dutch skills have been useful, even if I have to apologise for my slechte Nederlands (“bad Dutch”) with every email.
And hooray for technology – the crematorium where the funeral was held had the superb service of streaming the event! We got to “attend” the funeral. It was moving, even if my comprehension skills kept fading in and out, depending on how long I had been concentrating and how sad/tired I was.
I watched the funeral a second time today, with M’s dad and granddad, and I am sad all over again.
Rust zacht, lieve ooms.
6 Comments
I feel for you through this. I find it strange myself how sometimes I just burst into sadness for the passing of folk I didn’t think I was close to, or be affected by. Grief is a curious sort of bag on the shoulder, sometimes light or heavy, sometimes it sits still; and at others it leaks through and you lose yourself for a while.
There was a line in a recent movie (Norwegian Wood I suspect) that spoke of sorrow as something that needed to be lived through but it didn’t necessarily prepare you for the next time it visited.
*hugs*
take care.
I’m sorry to hear about it. Snail’s words are beautiful and true.
Grief and loss seem to be more and more a part of life as I get older.
I keep loosing family and I am never prepared for it 🙁
Thank you all. (Thanks for those words, especially, snail 🙂 )