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07-13-2015, 08:44 PM
On 17 July it will have been a year since my brother-in-law called me from the US to tell me that an airplane from Malaysia Airlines flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur had been shot out of the sky. Did I know anyone on board? Right away I knew that I would never see Joep Lange and Jacqueline van Tongeren again; Jacqueline had texted me a couple of hours before, just before the plane took off.
It's hard for me to tell how I processed this loss, or whether I processed it at all. Life goes on, and there are so many enjoyable moments that can give me so much pleasure. The grief isn't as overwhelming as it was during the first months, and it isn't so unreal either. It's as if my brains have become more accustomed to the emptiness they left behind.
But is that true? I've erased the photos of Joep and Jacqueline from my computer screen; I get a stabbing pain in my stomach whenever I look at them. The books Joep gave me as gifts over the past twenty-five years are at eye-level on my book shelf, but I never touch them. When I accidentally grab one of the tea towels with the cow motif that Jacqueline gave us I quickly put it back. Recently I bought a video of an African artist because I knew Jacqueline would really enjoy it, as if I could still share the experience with her.
A couple of months ago I was invited to the Amsterdam dinner at which Joep and Jacqueline were going to be commemorated, but I didn't go. There's got to be an end to all these commemorations. Life goes on, I kept telling myself. But when a friend sent me a WhatsApp just as an enormous photo of Jacqueline was being shown in the Heineken Hall, I stood in my home in Barcelona and broke down in sobs.
It's a constant fight between feeling and trying to rationalize that feeling. Joep's books, the cow tea towels, and even the video that Jacqueline will never see - it brings the grief back to the surface, so it's all very close.
I don't know whether I've managed to find a place for the loss over the past year or whether I've just pushed it aside. I also don't know whether constantly pushing it aside - let's just call it taking it in doses - isn't a form of find a place for the grief. What doesn't help, of course, is that because of the peculiar character of "the accident," MH17 has not been absent from the world news for a single day since last year.
On July 17 I won't read the newspaper, I won't turn on the TV, I'll turn off my phone and I won't read my mail. I'll go walking with Sarita, our dog, and feed her biscuits from the bag with the red ribbon that Joep and Jacqueline bought for her and that's been sitting in a corner of the cabinet for over a year now. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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It's hard for me to tell how I processed this loss, or whether I processed it at all. Life goes on, and there are so many enjoyable moments that can give me so much pleasure. The grief isn't as overwhelming as it was during the first months, and it isn't so unreal either. It's as if my brains have become more accustomed to the emptiness they left behind.
But is that true? I've erased the photos of Joep and Jacqueline from my computer screen; I get a stabbing pain in my stomach whenever I look at them. The books Joep gave me as gifts over the past twenty-five years are at eye-level on my book shelf, but I never touch them. When I accidentally grab one of the tea towels with the cow motif that Jacqueline gave us I quickly put it back. Recently I bought a video of an African artist because I knew Jacqueline would really enjoy it, as if I could still share the experience with her.
A couple of months ago I was invited to the Amsterdam dinner at which Joep and Jacqueline were going to be commemorated, but I didn't go. There's got to be an end to all these commemorations. Life goes on, I kept telling myself. But when a friend sent me a WhatsApp just as an enormous photo of Jacqueline was being shown in the Heineken Hall, I stood in my home in Barcelona and broke down in sobs.
It's a constant fight between feeling and trying to rationalize that feeling. Joep's books, the cow tea towels, and even the video that Jacqueline will never see - it brings the grief back to the surface, so it's all very close.
I don't know whether I've managed to find a place for the loss over the past year or whether I've just pushed it aside. I also don't know whether constantly pushing it aside - let's just call it taking it in doses - isn't a form of find a place for the grief. What doesn't help, of course, is that because of the peculiar character of "the accident," MH17 has not been absent from the world news for a single day since last year.
On July 17 I won't read the newspaper, I won't turn on the TV, I'll turn off my phone and I won't read my mail. I'll go walking with Sarita, our dog, and feed her biscuits from the bag with the red ribbon that Joep and Jacqueline bought for her and that's been sitting in a corner of the cabinet for over a year now. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/233194688266/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/48164516/sc/14/rc/1/rc.img (http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/233194688266/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/48164516/sc/14/rc/1/rc.htm)
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