It's Friday morning, 6 o'clock, the foghorn clings, I hear some birds in the distance.
I'm in bed, in my parental house.
The world is covered in a thick fog, just like our world has been in the past two weeks.
That Friday we found out that you had metastases in your abdomen and today, in 8 hours, you'll be dead
An unreal short amount of time with the surreal thought it'll be over in a few hours
I'm in bed, in my parental house.
The world is covered in a thick fog, just like our world has been in the past two weeks.
That Friday we found out that you had metastases in your abdomen and today, in 8 hours, you'll be dead
An unreal short amount of time with the surreal thought it'll be over in a few hours
29th of March '19
I wrote the paragraph above almost two months ago, on the day you died. The two weeks prior to that were covered in a thick fog and it would stay that way for another week.
Survival mode on. Taking care, planning, arranging. After all, he funeral had to be arranged.
No room, no time, no space, for realizing, a sense of what had happened, or grief. That would occur later on.
At first I felt okay. The day after the beautiful farewell service where your favorite music was played live, gypsy music.
Two days before you left one of your favorite gypsy guitarist came to play some songs for you at the end of your bed. What an incredible day that was.
3rd of April, the final day
Together with you buddies, my brother and mom we guided you to the center of a room. Which was weird. Because you were never the one to be the center of attention. But you just didn't have a choice now.
The hardest part for me was the final goodbye at the crematorium. The very last step in the proces of saying goodbye to your body. Your soul, your personality, your life, however you want to call it, had taken off a week earlier. Your physique was the last piece we could cling on to.
A tidal wave of sadness came from my toes and found it's way through my body to come out as tears, streaming down my cheeks. Just like it did that morning, when I saw you laying in the coffin. An image, just like several other moments in the past few heavy weeks, which can't be unseen. It was that moment that felt very real. There was nu escaping.
The closing of the coffin, before I physically did it, felt like locking you in. But now, now the moment was here, it felt like one of the last moments I was able to guide you. A moment in the process of farewell.
Survival mode on. Taking care, planning, arranging. After all, he funeral had to be arranged.
No room, no time, no space, for realizing, a sense of what had happened, or grief. That would occur later on.
At first I felt okay. The day after the beautiful farewell service where your favorite music was played live, gypsy music.
Two days before you left one of your favorite gypsy guitarist came to play some songs for you at the end of your bed. What an incredible day that was.
3rd of April, the final day
Together with you buddies, my brother and mom we guided you to the center of a room. Which was weird. Because you were never the one to be the center of attention. But you just didn't have a choice now.
The hardest part for me was the final goodbye at the crematorium. The very last step in the proces of saying goodbye to your body. Your soul, your personality, your life, however you want to call it, had taken off a week earlier. Your physique was the last piece we could cling on to.
A tidal wave of sadness came from my toes and found it's way through my body to come out as tears, streaming down my cheeks. Just like it did that morning, when I saw you laying in the coffin. An image, just like several other moments in the past few heavy weeks, which can't be unseen. It was that moment that felt very real. There was nu escaping.
The closing of the coffin, before I physically did it, felt like locking you in. But now, now the moment was here, it felt like one of the last moments I was able to guide you. A moment in the process of farewell.
The rainbow that appeared on the day of the farewell service; 3rd of April '19
Never had I experienced the loss of a loved one so closely. The entire process. From the very first message someone is sick, the extreme short period of being sick, the taking care of someone, to planning a funeral.
If you told me months, weeks or even days before that message, this would happen, I would have told you that I wouldn't be able to cope with such a thing. I would hide for something like this. I would fall to the ground, crying, not wanting to get up. Numbed and paralyzed. But the cliché is true. A person is always stronger than they anticipated.
I know exactly when the change was made.
Two days after the initial message about metastases I was at a friends house. That night I came home and there was a doctor with Loe. He was doing bad. Real bad. So badly he had to be hospitalized. Per ambulance he was brought to the hospital. Me and my mom drove there ourselves. I felt the emotions rising to the surface, but they didn't break my armor. I felt survival mode kick in, in that moment. There was no room for my sadness. Things had to be arranged.
Mom and I both hadn't eaten yet, it was almost ten o'clock. The most important thing was making sure that we had the things packed for Loe and that we made ourselves something to eat.
From that moment on, I have been in survival mode.
If you told me months, weeks or even days before that message, this would happen, I would have told you that I wouldn't be able to cope with such a thing. I would hide for something like this. I would fall to the ground, crying, not wanting to get up. Numbed and paralyzed. But the cliché is true. A person is always stronger than they anticipated.
I know exactly when the change was made.
Two days after the initial message about metastases I was at a friends house. That night I came home and there was a doctor with Loe. He was doing bad. Real bad. So badly he had to be hospitalized. Per ambulance he was brought to the hospital. Me and my mom drove there ourselves. I felt the emotions rising to the surface, but they didn't break my armor. I felt survival mode kick in, in that moment. There was no room for my sadness. Things had to be arranged.
Mom and I both hadn't eaten yet, it was almost ten o'clock. The most important thing was making sure that we had the things packed for Loe and that we made ourselves something to eat.
From that moment on, I have been in survival mode.
 | An awful lot has happened in those three weeks. It's incredibly surreal and hard to share how much. I've written a lot. About the events, my feelings, the love, the sorrow, the courage and the powerlessness. And I knew this would be inspiration to create new work. The flower piece you see here on the left, is the piece that laid on the coffin of Loe. The day after the service me, my mom and my brother picked out flowers and twigs to dry. As a memory. Two weeks after I had put the flowers in the biggest book I could find in Loe's room I got inspired and felt the urge to create. Creating helpt me to process. Creating helps me put things in perspective. By creating something constructive from something that makes you feel so powerless. In this case, grief. But the series I created is not about the sorrow. It is about the bravery and the courage I saw in Loe, but also in my mom, my brother and myself. About Loe's realism and courage in handling the situation. Which in return, strengthened us as well. |
His strength I could feel growing inside me
Like I had taken over
It rubbed off
His braveness, his realism, his courage
Out of fear of it evaporating, I clung on to all I had left
To find out
That it is inside of me
RSS Feed