Good Grief

I am not an expert. Instead I learn on the job.

Grief has many angles. Grieving takes place in different directions even in bipolar situations where a husband loses a wife. Remember that people don't only grieve for themselves; they also grieve in lieu of the departed. Substitute grief. I do, too. Especially when I look at photos of Lara in bad times (the Intensive Care Unit, her last weeks here at home, the days around her death) I feel this huge surge of pity and compassion. She didn't deserve to suffer like this (does anyone?); she was a good kid. I weep for her pain, discomfort and stress over so many months. Besides, she had her future stolen from her. She could have lived another twenty years (her mother died at 89) and planned to, in fact. She had projects and ambitions, travel plans, books to read, poetry to write. Having fun, enjoy, make love. Now all of them are snuffed out, along with her potential and her beauty. I weep for the amputated part of her being.

There is no monopoly on grief. It is not only about surviving partners and their loss. Even where one partner loses another, the grieving is not bipolar. Many people grieve over the same demise. Siblings, other family members, friends, anyone else dear. A bond between two friends of long standing can be every bit as strong as that of a marriage partner. The ensuing sense of loss will be commensurate. I learn that I shouldn't just wait to receive their sympathy for my loss, but that I should also reach out and commiserate with them for theirs. Both are real, both are authentic. There is benefit to both sides; for a burden shared is a burden lightened.

Your own grief is closest. You need to metabolize it, says Janis. You need to chew it up, says my mother, still remembering the death of my dad, twelve years ago. You need to eat the mask, says Lara in her last poem. That is ultimately a very personal endeavor. Nobody can do it for you. I understand many people never manage to, and agony is preserved for life's remainder. But it takes a long time in any event, even if it wears off.

Here, too, you grieve for different things in parallell. You grieve for the memories that have no sequel but should have. Yes, reminiscing has benefits, as you rejoice in reliving the good times. But the reckoning is in the realisation that the good times won't return. You remember her idiosyncracies with a smile on your face, even the quirks that used to irritate you perhaps. They are followed by a deep sense of emptiness, once you tell yourself she will never show them again. You engage in substitution here, too. (Lara used to spray a whiff of Chanel on her inner left wrist, then rub her wrists together. Her bottle is in the living room and sometimes, intensely, I find myself repeating the ritual.)

Retracing common footsteps, especially where happy times were poignant. Foreign travels. You retrace because you want to remember. You go there, even if you don't want to be reminded there will be no reprise. Still, you do want to go to those places, instead of shunning all of them at your own loss, adding injury to injury. (I will take my summer holiday in Vieste, Italy, where Lara and I have spent two vacations. I will even stay in the same hotel. It will be a mixture.)

Companionship. You may take it for granted, like I used to. You go through life together as if it will never end. You accept the other's presence as a matter of course. You do things the two of you (is there any other way?). You don't stop to think how precious it is. Togetherness falls away sharply. There is nobody at your side, or across from you. Here, again you may substitute some of the time, by seeking the company of others. It isn't the same, it isn't continuous and it certainly can't be permanent. You have become, in my case, a widower. You live by yourself. A void opens up as soon as a period of time has passed that is longer than any spell of separation you would normally accept.

No intimacy. We have had plenty. It is the ultimate form of self-affirmation through somebody else. It is mutual and habitual - and it can be wonderful. Regrets may surface once the other person vanishes. They did in my case. Why didn't we stay in each others' arms all of the time, instead of only some of the time? Here, enhanced by regrets, the sense of loss is most intense. And it won't go away until you've learned to love again.

Grief is self-pity. Or should I say self-compassion? At least in part. You grieve about yourself, too. You feel sorry for yourself. You are by far the most conflicted person, or so you would like to think. Poor me, a fresh widower with fresh grief. One partner from a strong couple, now left to his own devices. What am I to do?

The above description of my own experience is probably not complete. I am no expert. Experts have invented 'the wheel of grief' and other approaches to encompass all of grief's many facets. You can check them out. There are phases in grief, differently defined. I have no idea what phase I am in, or whether the progression is steady and irreversible. (Three steps forward, two steps back?) And I don't aspire to do it by the book. The only desire I have is that it be circumscribed, and finite. I will take it one day at a time, one bout of sobbing at a time, one lit candle at a time. 

Grief is inevitable. Grief is hard work. It is also the only way of getting on with your life. Lara may have been robbed of twenty-odd years of her life, yet I may well have twenty ahead of me. Who's to say? Grief can get me to make something out of them - just as Lara would have wanted. Grief is good.

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All the readers of this blog, whatever the level of your sorrow, I thank you for your empathy, your loyalty and your support for Lara. Please stay in touch with me. I will try and return the pleasure.

Blossom

Excruciating not to receive answers to questions I am posing to Lara. Or spontaneous comments from her side. I hate the silence, and miss the quick repartee.

What one needs to remember is that over a period of almost nine months, Lara and I lived together without interruption. Before she turned into the hospital anew, at the end of March 2012, we would talk to each other the whole day. Every thought or impression worth vocalizing was communicated back and forth. We would do things together all the time - shopping, the movies, the gym, family visits, friendly dinners and what not else. At least a hundred times a day we would check and verify something between the two of us. She was always there, available to engage.

I miss the immediacy of her presence. Although: this past weekend, when in Germany, I had a conversation with her. As it happened, I had walked out of a dinner onto a public square, because inside, unpredictably as always, emotions were getting the better of me all of a sudden. I didn't want to embarrass myself, or the company at the table, most of them unaware of my recent loss (barely two weeks).

Of course, I have to be careful. Anybody can conjure up an imaginary conversation with somebody else in his own mind, even with an imaginary person. If you do that on the spot, the speed of the conversation may not to be as high as in real life. It is like playing a game of chess against yourself. You have to constantly twist and turn; it slows you down. And that was precisely the difference. There was a voice in my head, Lara's voice, from before she became sick, and I was silently talking to her, or maybe muttering to myself. Remarkably, the answers from her side came much more quickly than I could think them up. I didn't have time to imagine them. We even interrupted each other as we normally would have in a real-time exchange.

The conversation was strikingly banale, due to the hapless way I approached the opportunity. I was unprepared, caught off-guard, but even so. "How are you?", I asked. "I am fine, don't worry about me", she said. And so it continued for several minutes. But the point was more in the contact than the content. The very fact that we were even talking like this, that was the rich part! It was totally unscary. No goose pimples as people easily get when in a spiritual encounter. The experience was reassuring and satisfying in a wonderful way.

That was once. Silence reigns again.

And with silence, doubts crop up.

Why is she not talking to me? You read of dead people appearing to their loved ones. I haven't received a visit! Why not? She's been dead for over three weeks! Isn't there some sort of deadline, I chuckle? Did I do something wrong perhaps? Is she angered or displeased? In her enlightened state, has she gained insights that make her less loving towards me? Has she turned away from me perhaps? Could I still face her?

These doubts are part of grieving, as I know from helpful counselors. But knowing that they are is not enough. They still eat away at you. I dismiss the thoughts rationally, but in my heart I stay worried. I call up friends of ours, dear to Lara in particular, people she has confided in, who have known her for much longer than I have. I ask them to reassure me. Did she truly love me all those years? Did she trust me? Was I measuring up to her? Did I make her happy?

Deep down I believe I know the answers, but I need to hear them with unimpeachable conviction. Friends do reassure me. Lara's love for me, they say, was deep and unwavering. Even when she was mad at you, she once said, she still loved you. Her love for you, they say, was unconditional. One said, that the only aspect of reincarnation that interested her was whether you and she would be together again. She was just happy she would not lose  you. Lara told Yasmin: "I want to be with Opa." (see "More Signs") Proof positive.

What about trust, I ask? Lara, by her own account, I knew, had trust issues since a very young age. Friends are unanimous: her trust in you was unshakable. She knew you would always be there for her, stand up for her, find her wherever she would end up, and come and get her. She believed you were both faithful and loyal. And yes, you were a la hauteur, no doubt. Lara, a woman with a sharp mind, would never have married anybody with a peanut for a brain.

And, yes, you made her a happier person. She was not before you two met. In fact, she was deeply unhappy. But we saw her getting more and more complete and balanced as a person as she grew into the marriage. And on the rebound, you became happier, too. We saw it. You had a wonderful relationshp, they claim. Most of all, says her oldest friend, you gave Lara the freedom to blossom. And she did.

I smile through my tears. What more assurance do I need?

Regression

How to be a widower? How to grieve?

People are not prepared for it, at least not the first time around. I still have to roam the Internet to see if there are any 'how to' books about it. There must be. Given the market, it is hard to imagine that, by now, someone has not made an attempt to make money over one. Instead, starting the day of Lara's cremation, I referred to trusted people who had all lost a wife to cancer, as recently as last summer. (Lara and I went to her funeral.) I tried to learn from their experience, and I probably did, if only because they were able to empathize with natural ease. The atmosphere was thick in all three encounters, but gratifying.

One of them, a former colleague from the Foreign Service, had a remarkable comment. He had followed my blog daily, and more recently viewed Lara's photo album. I told him she and I had been true soul mates. He nodded in recognition, and then went on to say that we "probably already met in previous lives". The statement, slightly startling as it was, was offered not as a speculative one, but as one of fact. Impressed by his self-assured poise, I asked him if that is really what he meant, and he said: "That is what I believe, yes."

Then he started telling me about the writings of Dr Brian L. Weiss, a Florida psychiatrist, who published his first book some twenty five years ago. I had never heard of the man. My friend gave me one of his books to read, his third actually, entitled "Only Love Is Real'. I took it gratefully home, started reading at 6:00PM and finished it at 3:00 in the morning. The next day I read it again. Then I quickly ordered three more books through Amazon, by express mail, and read those as well, including Weiss' first book, titled "Many Lives, Many Masters".

Why were they so fascinating?

Weiss is a Colombia and Yale trained physician. His medical education had followed orthodox lines and his psychiatric training had been by-the-book traditional. He practiced, taught and published widely, building up a solid career as a therapist and a nationwide name among his fellows as a scientist.

Then, one day, a patient walks into his office, a young woman by the name of Catherine. She has all kinds of problems and describes herself as a 'mess'. None of Weiss' standard methods work over many months; her symptoms persist unabated. Frustrated, he then tries hypnosis in order to look for traumas earlier in her life that might explain her present condition. Still standard practice. Nothing truly dramatic turns up even as early as her third birthday.

But at the next session, seeking to explore what lay in the period around her birth, he gives her an open-ended instruction: "Go to when your problems began!". Catherine in a way overshoots the runway, and starts describing herself as a woman in Egypt, four thousand years ago! Many accounts follow from different lives, some fifteen or twenty, out of 86 she has lived so far according to what Catherine says in trance. Her present condition improves and all of her complaints eventually disappear.

Weiss tells he didn't want to believe what he saw happening in front of him. He calls himself a sceptic and at that point he certainly didn't accept reincarnation. But he saw no alternative way to interpret the facts he was witnessing in his very own office. He tapes her statements, has the tapes transcribed, adds his comments. But he waits four years before publishing, for fear of being ridiculed by his peers, and afraid to lose his position and financial security in the process. Then he publishes his first book and it sells two million copies over the next 25 years. Since Catherine, Weiss has treated thousands of patients with this so-called regression therapy, going back to their earlier lives. Many other psychiatrists and therapists now do, too.

The books evoke a coherent view about the relationship between, soul, body, life, death and the hereafter, in which serial reincarnation figures prominently. The overall view takes in free will and destiny, immortality and transitoriness as well. The books elaborate on empathy and compassion, but above all, love. (Why did it remind me of 1 Corinthians 13?). They tell about how people experience death and rejoin the origin of their souls, before being born again into a next life. 

Patients recount their stories under deep hypnosis with great lucidity and a sharp eye for detail. Some patients acquire documentary proof that their stories check out. Some even stand at the grave of a person they once were. Most benefit from the therapy, in that their contemporary problems disappear.

They also tell of soul mates, but not in the colloquial sense of the term (and in the way Lara and I liked to hear ourselves described). Soul mates, in the Weiss' overall view, are two souls who keep running into each other in different incarnations but in different relationships over time, even different genders: not only husband and wife, but also sister and sister, mother and daughter etc.

I find reading those books exceptionally uplifting, for they offer a construct that is much more plausible (strange as it may sound) than the one emerging from the catechism by which I grew up. (In fact, early christianity accepted reincarnation, until all references to it were deleted from the New Testament within the first three hundred years.) Had I read Weiss' works before Lara went to her death, my tranquility of spirit would have been greatly enhanced compared to where I found myself now. I am also sure that if Lara had read these books, she would have derived greater peace of mind from them. Instead, she relied - a little half-heartedly perhaps - on the mere strength of her own conviction that life ends at death. 

Having read these books, I now find it easier to be at peace with Lara's death. One, because I feel she is living on in another dimension until she is ready to assume a next life. She is not really dead, in other words. And two, because I am certain that the two of us will meet again in a future incarnation, just a breath away.

Saying this, I run the risk of being seen as soft in the head. "Poor man, fresh widower, his emotions frazzled, groping for any form of solace; no wonder his mind is rambling." True, I would be prone to connecting the dots without looking at the numbers.

And still, and still and still.

Missed Chances

Between Lara and myself, we have both lived longer without each other than together. Lara was 38 years old when we first met, I was 45. Since then, we were a couple for some twenty years. We both had lives behind us. I still have one in front of me; she no longer does. I am 66 now; she was 59. I have only known her for about one third of her life.

Although that encapsulates our situation mathematically, it doesn't reflect the preponderance of our years together. The twenty years we were granted on earth as a couple, for both of us, were the richest by far.

As probably most couples do who are united later in life, we lived in the present with an eye on the future. Information on what came before, was never exchanged systematically, and awareness back and forth remained episodical. Stories were exchanged which allowed to gain an impression of the 'grandes lignes' of the two lives before our life together, but knowledge was never complete; nor did it need to be. We fell in love the way we found each other in 1991, and how we each got to that point was of lesser import. There was too much else going on in our lives. Good things.

Photographic material was scarce either way. Lara didn't have many pictures as testimony of her first 38 years; what she did have, she showed to me. I had a lot of material but to this day have failed to reclaim it with my ex-wife; so Lara never saw it.

Lara was a poet, and educated as such (see "Luggage" in the previous blog). I know precious little of her exploits in that regard, as she was always brief in talking about it. In a leather binder which I found the other day, I came across poems dedicated to people who must have meant something to her: a Pam, a Lisel, a Joan. I have no idea who these people are and what indeed they meant to her at the time. I could ask friends of Lara's who are still around, but the point is: I cannot ask her. 

Several times a day, I follow the same reflex when stuck for an answer about something, but she is no longer around to give me one. From here onwards, whenever I still want to find something that belongs to her, or find out about her, will inevitably be a matter of reconstruction, and second-guessing. Some things will never be known. So many things occur to me now which I should have asked her when she was still with us, but which I failed to put to her over her final weeks at home. I realize now that for all of the time since doomsday (17 April), the day she received the devastating verdict of her impending death, I have lived in a continual state of constricted consciousness. I guess it is a form of denial which shrouded me as a survival mechanism. I wasn't prepared to absorb the enormity of what was about to happen: losing my soul mate. Siblings and kids saw I was 'out of it'. Of course I should have told her things or asked her things that now I no longer can. I missed my chance while it was in front of me, overwhelmed as I was. There I have regrets. They only occurred to me a few days ago, after I had regained some of my usual self again.

Or perhaps I should be satisfied that, just before she went under, two days before she died, I asked her the habitual question - one I must have asked her hundreds of times, about validating her feelings for me. I posed it as I was stretched out beside her on what had become her death bed, our heads joined together, holding hands. "Do you still love me?", I asked. And she gave me the habitual answer, unwavering, with resonating profundity as usual, completing an exchange immensely reassuring in all its brevity. What more is there to say or to ask that matters, really?

"Oh yeah!", she said.

I Know A Lovely Rose

Tuesday 26 June

Since a few years, I own a Bechstein. This is largely due to Lara's insistence.

We were visiting Stockholm from Vienna; I think it was in November 2008. About a year or so before that, while still Ambassador to Sweden, I had bought a restored grand piano, Bechstein too, for the residence ball room. It came from a piano store on the borough of Sodermalm, about a 15 minute walk away. This time around, since we were staying in the residence as guests, I of course tried out the piano. Vis-a-vis Lara I lamented the fact - for the so maniest time - that I had made the bargain deal on behalf of the Embassy, instead of purchasing the instrument for myself, a long held wish.

So why don't you give the store a call, Lara suggested. I doubted the chance that at that precise moment they would have a second-hand Bechstein on offer, and told her so. What were the odds? But she kept insisting. (It later turned out she'd already called the store and knew for a fact that the odds were actually looking a lot brighter than I thought.)

So finally I phoned the store. They had not one but two in their shop!

Lara and I speed-walked over there rightaway, around five o'clock, dark already since hours, trying to beat any competitor who might steal my piano before I ever got to it. I bought the larger one (a 'B' of 211 cm in length), dating from 1941, in fine shape. After refurbishing, it was home-delivered in Vienna, a few months later.

I would doubt the odds a second time.

A day or so before Lara would come home from the hospital this last time, I made arrangements for the piano to be tuned. The date was set for 7 June. At the time, I was resigned to the fact that, following all predictions, Lara would have passed away by then. After all, she was sent home on 24 April with only two or three days to live.

Suddenly the day of 7 June had arrived, and the tuner presented himself at the appointed hour. I'd forgotten all about him. Lara objected to having the piano tuned in her presence, and rightly so. So I sent the tuner away; shocked, he more than understood. I didn't dare make a new appointment until after she had actually passed away, since she had continually beaten the odds, ever since 17 April. Lara lived an amazing 57 days after having been given up by her doctors!

I played the piano for her from time to time during her final weeks at home, including some of her favorite pieces. Particularly soothing among them was a traditional Swedish hymn, which we both cherish as one of the finest melodies ever composed, imbued with sweet melancholy. Jag vet en dejlig rosa. I know a lovely rose. Listen to it using the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPnN_zDwKng

The tuner came this morning.

More Signs

Saturday 23 June morning

Yesterday afternoon I needed a dictionary from Lara's office book case. As I took it out, I noticed a motley leather binder behind it, holding a stack of white pages (at least 75) covered with machine script (manual type writer) and edited in pencil in Lara's handwriting. Upon inspection it turned out to be poetry written by Lara ten years before we first met. Lara had always been reticent to show me her own poetry - why, I do not know. It was a side of hers that during our twenty years together remained woefully underexposed, at least to me. It felt as though, now, she wanted to divulge this aspect of her being to me, without having to account for it.

Our granddaughter Yasmin (going on 5) came to the breakfast table this morning with a story to tell, a triumphant glint in her eyes. Oma Lara had paid her a visit during the night! Oma sat down on the bed, she told her parents, and her hair was long. They were speaking Dutch together. Lara had something to tell her, and I recognized her syntax in expressing them at the level of a five-year old. As it turned out, there were four messages. "I want to live." (Ik wil leven.) "I want to be with Opa." (Ik wil bij Opa zijn.) "I miss you very much." (Ik mis je erg.) And: "I will see your mam as well." (Ik zal je moeder ook zien.)

My daughter made her repeat the story two more times, and Yasmin held the line. Then asked her if she had been afraid. No, was the answer. Lot asked if it had been a dream ("images in her head"). No, Oma was there.

Still making the family rounds. Lot seems to have a visit coming.

Signs

Staunch as she was a disbeliever of God and a life hereafter, astute so she was a lawyer hedging her bets. There was enough awe in her - or should I say apprehension - of what lay beyond demise, for her to engage in speculation, keeping her options open enough to allow  the unexpected to happen. She was not afraid of death so much, knowing in her mind that 'passing on' would amount to the be all and end all. It was more the process of dying and how scary it would be. In her heart she cherished the idea of - beyond the chasm - seeing her dad again, and mine, too. She agreed to giving off a sign to us mortals who stayed behind, to tell us that she had safely arrived on yonder side. A lawyer myself, I made her promise she would not scare the wits out of me; a clap of thunder would be a tad over the top, I intimated as a point of reference. She got it.

Lara went about it in a sophisticated manner, multiple in form and diverse in location. "Doing the rounds", as my family in California phrased it. Had we expected anything less of her? Of course, to a cynic, all manifestations of the so called transcendental, would need to be submitted to Occam's razor, a law of logic which holds that the simpler explanation of any phenomenon is likely to be the true one. Being the romantic that I am - and still wildly in love with my wife, or "SWILWY" - takes me, I grant you, to the opposite end of the scale. Certainly in my present state of frayed emotions, I would be inclined to engage in connecting the dots without looking at the numbers. Anything that could possibly be interpreted as a manufactured sign from beyond the chasm, would be recorded and acknowledged as such a sign, even welcomed.

With those caveats, what have we got? (And I am talking about a family who collectively believe that when their father died - Howard - he caused a double rainbow to appear in locations as far apart as San Francisco and Hawaii.)

As for my personal experience, I think of the teardrop that appeared in Lara's eye after she had passed. Popular belief has it that the dead don't cry. Yet she did. That one little droplet is of deep consolation to me, whatever the medical odds would be in manifesting itself. I will keep it hors de competition.

The winner sofar is an incident that is incontournable, as the French say, or something that no one could possibly ignore or deny. It concerns a 14-months old baby, my granddaughter Madelief, who in the middle of having her diaper changed, focussed on something or someone behind her mother off to her right. Asked what she was looking at, the baby said "Lara" - the first time she had ever said that word. Both the baby's father and mother got the goose pimples when they realized what had just happened; and so did I being told about it over the phone.

In second place, is Leslie's beehive. I will quote her own rendition of the event:

Some strange events occurred during Lara’s passing. We have a bee hive in our roof, and have had for around 5 years. The day Lara came home from the hospital, the hive split, and the small hive left behind appeared to fail over the next couple weeks, falling silent and declared ‘fin’ on the day before Lara passed. I climbed up on the roof to check it out (see if there was honey for me to harvest) but as a dedicated chicken, I ‘forgot’ to do it. On the day Lara passed, millions of bees emitted from the hive in the roof, MILLIONS. It was like watching that stuff come out of the Dude’s mouth in that Tom Hanks movie: The Green Mile.

In third place would be Christine's turkey. Again I will let Chris tell the story herself:

David and I have a 'game' of sorts that is like "Where's Waldo?" We came  across a peacock in the middle of no where just in the road as pleased as can be with itself. Very strange and we decided, though the showy peacock is male, that it was indeed Lara in all her finery. Charlie called 3 days ago and said that a peacock landed in the back yard of his father's, strutted around and then after a bit just took off. Knowing where they live, it would be just as unusual to see one at Ed and Connie's house. We again, said "ah, there's Lara making the family rounds", wondering where she will turn up next.

In fourth place I would put my own experience during the send-off in the crematorium, where through coincidence or otherwsie, a tear drop and a drop of blood (produced by a thorn on the rose of love) landed on Lara's coffin and rode with her into eternity. It didn't occur to me in the moment (slow as I am), but only later as I rehearsed the whole episode in my mind.

In fifth place is Leslie's story about the bird. Here's what she wrote about it:

Before Lara started the chemo, a bald-headed stellar blue jay started coming by every morning.  Bald, but otherwise large and adorned is a beautiful coat of various blue feathers.  When Lara passed it stopped coming.  I have never seen it since.

And she adds:

Then, of course, there was Lara’s voice in my ear saying “ We’ll always have Paris”...which is a really sort of a funny, amusing, expression for Americans in a certain cultural vernacular, which we share. But we actually did have Paris, and you were there too.  These things. (I remember it well, for it included a dinner at Fouquet's on the corner of Champs Elysees and Georges V.) I don't know how long deceased people stay connected, but we should be prepared to receive more signs as we go along.

Album now 117 photos

Lara's Photo Album

Over the past week, with inputs from various sides, I have put a photo album together with pictures of or about Lara. It is disseminated over the Internet. You can open the album to look at only if I invite you to do so by email. I have sent out a fair amount of such invites already. In fact, if you haven't received one when you read this posting, you may have to ask for one by sending me an email.

The album now has 117 photos.

For easy viewing use the slide show. It will take you under 10 minutes.

For language switch click on little Dutch flag at the top (red white bleu) and then click on any language you prefer.

I invite everybody to look through the picture files in their computers and send me appropriate photos for inclusion, by email.

Die Cancer Die

Wednesday 20 June

A collection and a delivery.

At around 9:00AM a courier came to collect Lara's oxygen machine, which had lived in our house since 11 June 2011, the time she returned from Saint Luc on home-leave after her second chemotherapy. It literally kept her alive at times, especially when her lungs were still in bad shape. The suit-case shaped machine had been mostly on standby since late summer last year as Lara's capacity to breathe indpendently improved. It did travel with us to Honfleur, though, in September. And even since 24 April last, when Lara came home from Saint Luc once again, she used to rely on it when watching movies together on TV or even when sitting outside on the veranda on a sunny afternoon with her friend Liliana. We uncoupled her from the larger machine in the living room, made her walk to the back of the house with her Baxter, and hooked her up to the smaller machine.

The contraption was the single largest piece of medical equipment that had remained in the house since Lara left. Seeing it go felt like yet another step in her deconstruction.

Apart from the collection, this morning's delivery was much more anticipated.

Clad in cut-aways, the parlor attendant presented himself at our apartment at 9:45AM, having announced himself by phone, a half hour before. In his hands was a cylinder-shaped metal cannister measuring 22.5 centimeters in height and 15 in diameter (8.8" and 5.9" respectively). It doesn't really look like an urn to me, which I always associate with a ceramic vase. Appropriately, it is spray-painted ash-color. On the lid of it is a little white sticker with the words 'GABRIEL Lara' and a registration number.

This was she allright. I took the cannister from his hands and he gave me also an official document, i.e. "Permis de transport du corps et des cendres". I would later post the document next to our front door to reassure unsuspecting visitors: Lara's presence in the house was legal.

After the man left, I carried Lara's ashes into the living room, where I had prepared the (non-working) fireplace with a tile (for more stability) and a modest candle arrangement. Standing in front of the fireplace and raising the cannister up high, I caught my own image in the mirror hanging over it, and the floodgates opened once again. Through my tears I placed the ashes on the tile and stepped back and saluted her. Welcome home again, Pluisje, it's been too long.

The scene brought back memories of Sri Lanka. Lara and I had stood twice at the grave of my name-sake, my father's older brother. He died of 'typhoid fever' in Colombo, on the trip home from the East-Indies, in 1939. The two of us had located uncle Toine's grave at Colombo's General Cemetary, in 1991, I being the first family member to have reclaimed it. We came back to it a year later to inspect a small stone I had ordered for it. We stood in front of it then, too, and observed a few moments of silent musing. (See "Tombs" and "Toine" in the previous blog)

It occurred to me how little is left of despouilles once they have been incinerated. In Lara's case, two kilos and 800 grams, a little over six pounds - and that includes the incinerated coffin, lining, shroud, clothes and shoes. You lose, of course, the happy parts of the frame Lara once inhabited. But she'd abandoned it already when she died. Just a body is all that's left. What you burn also, though, is all the unhappy parts of her body, notably the cancer cells, her devastated lungs, her unusable stomach. Igor will never come to visit again. I felt full of revenge and rage all of a sudden towards those parts of Lara which had made her life uncomfortable, miserable, and ultimately unsustainable.

Die cancer die!

Fin

Tuesday 19 June morning

Lara's calvary is finally over.

This morning was a bright and sunny one in Brussels. I welcomed it, for I would have detested driving through a down pour to a funeral; it is not only cliche, it is also depressing.

Three beautiful longstemmed roses were lying on the back seat, ready for deployment. Of course, I left much too early, showed up at the cemetary at 9:15AM, and parked leisurely. The young attendant who had done Lara's maquillage on 13 June, appeared and offered his condolances in just the right tone. He walked me over to the crematorium and a waiting room large enough for sixty people. I signed a power of attorney for the undertaker to take possession of Lara's ashes. Also I discussed what music I would like to have played. Haydn, I said, a symphony, any symphony, but very softly for I want to make a speech, too. I patiently spelled the name of the composer. First name Joseph.

Once left alone, I felt tears pressing behind my eyes, deep ones. I drew a few quick short breaths to regain my composure. I told Lara that if I lost it already in the waiting room, I would not be able to vouch for myself inside the parlor.

Close to 9:30, the attendant came up to me and said they were set to go if I was. Give me two minutes, I said flustered. Thirty seconds was actually enough. Strange: if the hour of ten o'clock has been a marker for such a ponderous moment in your life, how unsettling it is if they up the ante all of a sudden.

The parlor was ideal. The attendant quickly left me alone in a room that was designed to hold some forty people. Lara's coffin was standing at one end of it, on an elevated platform in front of two little doors. It received daylight from a window in the ceiling above it. Flowers from Helene and Jacqueline, and a red rose from Andreina were lying on top.

I lost it right then and there, while I kept telling myself I was going to do this no matter what. A big fat tear drop fell down from my cheek on the front of the coffin and ran down, off the incline of the lid.

I told Lara I was aware she was in the room with me at that very moment, probably standing off to the right of her own coffin, where the floor was less cluttered than on the left of it. I imagined her, I said, in something green, making her eyes light up in just the right shade, but lamenting the fact that I could not see her. It didn't seem fair to me somehow. Still I could see her smile like she would only smile at me, slightly demure and with true love in her face, as when saying "I could eat you up!" Despite her presence, I said, I was going to go through wih the little ceremony I had rehearsed. I added that she wanted a funeral as sober as possible, and with the cheapest coffin and a one-person attendance at her exit, I felt I had faithfully executed her wishes.

Regaining my balance, I read 1 Corinthians 13, the story about faith, hope and love. "But the greatest of these is love." The irony was rather thick that I should choose to read a passage from the New Testament to a devout atheist. As a precaution I didn't mention its source, while chuckling at the thought that I was not going to fool anybody at this point, certainly not Lara watching me do this from beyond the chasm. I took my time reading it slowly, noticing how the cadence of the text made me sound like Churchill in a radio address.

At the end of it, I placed the three red roses, one by one, on the coffin, repeating "faith, hope and love". As I was trying to disentangle the first rose from the bunch, the rose representing love drove a thorn in my left hand somewhere, and a drop of blood lodged itself onto the coffin, as I would notice later. "Nice going, van Dongen, I said, messing up her coffin as you did."

I waited out the rest of the allotted fifteen minutes, talking to Lara softly, my hand on her coffin, listening to the music from her favorite composer. Quietly the attendant came back in, as he'd said he would, and within a few moments, the two little doors behind Lara's head opened and the coffin slid up and away, stopping on the inside. I waved at her, uttering one last greeting, highly inappropriate in view of Lara's beliefs: "A dieu!"

The little doors closed on Lara. The attendant walked me back to my car. It was 9:45AM. Home was half an hour away.

As I washed my hands, I took off my wedding ring and put it in the same little jewellery box holding Lara's ring after she'd given it back to me, more than a week ago. Ironically, the same box contained the two wedding rings of my first marriage as well; they had been in there for close to twenty years. I pondered about the fact I had seen the end of two marriages at this point in my life, and repeated: "Nice going, van Dongen."

Janis Dolnick offered the following poem by Pablo Neruda, which gave me great release of sorrow:

Absence and Presence

If I should die, survive me with such sheer force

that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold,

from south to south lift your indelible eyes,

from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.

I don’t want your laughter or your steps to waver,

I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.

Don’t call up my person.  I am absent.

Live in my absence as if in a house.

Absence is a house so vast

that inside you will pass through the walls

and hang pictures on the air.

Absence is a house so transparent

that I, lifeless, will see you, living,

and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

Grammar

Monday 18 June later

My son, Bouke, wisely remarked the other day that he had known Lara longer than he had not known her in his lifetime. Now aged 33, and a father himself, Bouke must have been 14 when Lara came onto the scene. When we got married, he was 16. Lot was 20. They both were severely conflicted - not surprising when the nuclear family falls apart. For the longest time, relations stayed constricted, with Lara and also with me. They couldn't forget their father had walked away from a marriage; they saw Lara as the marriage breaker (which she was not, by the way); and they were staunchly loyal and protective vis-a-vis their mom (as I would expect them to be).

It took long years of perseverance and patience from the two of us to clear up the air. We were cold-shouldered many times. Lara never claimed (or aspired) to take the place of their mother or to play the role of a surrogate mom. She was 'Lara' to the children. Nor did she ever give cause for the kids to think she was keeping their father away from them. On the contrary: Lara was coaxing me in their direction as a matter of course. "Call your kids!"

As they grew into adults, however, my children began to realize that Lara was actually making their father a happier man, and a more balanced person. They began to understand that she therefore couldn't be all bad, despite the unsettling start of our marriage. Also, both of my children chose partners who themselves happened to come from broken up families, changing their perspectives of separation. I believe these two considerations together made room for acceptance (one step up from condoning), growing with time and leading to appreciation, and ultimately affection. On the rebound, Lara began to speak of 'our children' instead of  'Toine's children' or simply 'the children'. And certainly she called herself 'oma' (for grandmother) to 'our' two granddaughters, Yasmin and Madelief.

What clinched the paradigm shift was that Lara went through hell over the past year and a half, coupled with the prospect that their father some day might find himself left behind. It brought home to them that health is precious and that fortune is fickle. I couldn't have wished for warmer and more supportive kids. Nor could Lara have. 

I guess that losing a spouse of long standing (twenty years as a couple, 17 years of wedded life) comes with a range of paradigms that shift. One of them is grammar. It occurred to me over the weekend that I still tend to speak of Lara in the present tense. Clearly, when you talk about her mortal remains, that is a plausible thing to do. She still exists as such. But when you speak of her as about a living person, then that would be less plausible as from last Wednesday. I have decided to apply the past tense to Lara as from tomorrow Tuesday, the moment of her cremation.

Similarly, what do you do with possessive nouns? Does 'our car' suddenly become 'my car'? And 'our apartment' 'my apartment'? What about the 'bedroom', or more to the point: 'the bed'? In other words, does your grammar stay inclusive, without moving from the plural to the singular? Or does it become exclusive, where even the children and grandchildren become 'mine' again instead of 'ours'? This is not purely a grammatical matter, of course,  where only rational answers fit; it is also a matter of syntax and context. The choice of terms is intertwined with loyalty, respect and love for a dead spouse. And perhaps with insecurity over where all this has left you.

Enigma

Monday 18 June afternoon

Ilona, our domestic help, and I started to clean away some of Lara's bathroom items. Now, I thought this was going to be easy, and to a certain extent of course it is. After all, everything that is used or beyond the expiration date you just throw in a garbage bag. Other items which are sort of neutral, I keep or give away, for Ilona to take home.

But at another level, it feels like you're taking away a veil from over secrets that Lara has kept all this years as a woman. I come across items or beauty products I wasn't even aware she used, or even now have no idea why she used them, or how. It feels like prying, even to me or perhaps especially to me. If she wanted to look her best - as she did all the time - it was in part, perhaps principally, for me, I being the object of her desire - or so I would like to think. And I - especially as her husband - was not supposed to know how she managed to beguile me; the ultimate women's enigma. Perusing her bathroom - where I was not even allowed to tread unless invited - was like unravelling that enigma, retroactively. The feeling of upsetting the old order between us was very intense. "Stay out of my bathroom!"

Take her bathrobe, black and thick, a Xmas present once from Connie and Ed - what, twelve years ago? The image of her wearing it at weekend breakfasts is so etched in my mind that it almost hurts. It evokes memories like in a chain reaction. The robe, after long service, is now pretty motley but she refused to get rid of it as it was part of her comfort zone. Throw or keep?

But what do you do with small items such as hairpins, bands or clasps, which she used so often to keep her unwieldy mop of hair (her own words) in place? In and of themselves they are worthless items, and you cannot even give them to anyone else. But they were part of her whole Gestalt, and I recognize all of them, some from way back. I see them on photos as she wears them, part of an outfit where they have a place. Now you find them heaped together in a little grungy bag. They are so Lara, but somehow they appear out of sync as I find them. Throw them away? Never. It would feel like throwing part of Lara away. Keep them? Maybe for the moment.

And on it goes.

Presence

Monday 18 June morning

Lara has now spent three days in a cooling unit, which fortunately she had almost to herself - a comforting thought somehow. This morning she was transferred to a "collection point", where various Brussels undertakers take the mortal remains of those scheduled for cremation the next day, such as Lara's. 

I had to really try not to think too often of her circumstances over the past weekend. Strange how you don't want to forget about them altogether, for that would show lack of sympathy. Yet on the other hand I have thought about her so much, these past days, that I don't have to feel in the least bit guilty about not picturing my loved one in the confines of a shroud, inside a coffin, locked in a dark refrigeration room inside a deserted building without character.

I decided I needed to break out of the house, get away from too many memory triggers. Saturday, around noon, I set out for Rotterdam, where I plannend to stay overnight with my old friend Gert-Jan. The two hour drive made it easy to muse and ponder about my loss, and I would explode into sobs from time to time. My vision blurred by tears, I had to try and keep my place on the road, and that sort of thing quickly brings you back to the here and now.

Passing time with my old buddy and Ellen, his partner, was positively soothing, mostly because we stayed home all of the time, without constraints or protocol, listening to music, watching TV, ordering in a meal and lots of talking in between. We talked about Lara, too, and even that felt good.

I was back in the early evening, Sunday. On the way back, sobbing spells were less than on the way over, but I was positively desolate at the prospect of not finding her at home, as I would arrive. Not temporarily absent (for that had been the case before, even over longer spells, such as when she was stationed in Bosnia or posted in New York). No, structurally absent, for ever and ever; not coming back, ever. It is more than saddening; it is inconceivable.

Right now being in the apartment is excruciating, for everything here serves as a memory aid, triggering countless recollections: from her bathroom to her wardrobe, from her office to the kitchen. This morning, for breakfast, I polished off some chopped apple the nurses had prepared for her last week. In the freezer I detected a small cannister of soup Lara had prepared for me before she turned into the hospital, in March. I look left and see her hospital bed still standing there waiting to be picked up later this morning. I look straight ahead as I write and I see candles she personally used to pick out with care, in time with the occasion and the season. Lara took great pride in a presentable home. The whole interior breathes her presence - without her being there. I walk from room to room and I see her everywhere - but I find her not.

I am not going to turn this house into a museum, much less a mausoleum, even though I feel honor-bound to maintain a style and taste she brought to our home twenty years ago. But I will take my time to weed out her stuff, no rush. It would be easy to summon twenty big garbage bags and put everything inside for further disposition. But what to do with her wardrobe? Not the kind of clothes suitable for doling out to Brussels' needy. Besides, many many pieces bring back memories of events or periods in our twenty years together, and I wish to relive them as part of grieving.

Countless messages (to which I still have to reply) have reached me in response to Lara's demise and the announcement that was sent around. They helped a great deal to alleviate the pain. They made clear that I was not the only one grieving, including people who had barely known Lara but had gotten to know her through this writing.

What really touched me deeply over the past days and weeks, however, were comments from close friends of Lara's, or siblings, saying how Lara had been a unhappy person before she got to know me and over the past fifteen years had grown into a happy one. I never saw it in her, for my own happiness kept apace with hers. And how Lara had been a person low on trust before we ever met; and how she'd had complete trust in her husband. Greater soulagement I could not ask for. Even as I write these words I cannot contain myself.

St. Gilles

Friday 15 June midday

This past night was the last one Lara spent at home, with me. I feel completely at peace with her being there. I kept on soft lighting and music for most of the evening before I went to sleep myself. I try and enjoy her presence because I know the next morning people will come and take her away.

At a quarter to nine, the funeral parlor calls to say their men are already in position and could they come in a little early? I am ready, I tell them.

I retreat into my office and a few minutes later they call me over, after they have placed Lara's body in her coffin. Lara's coffin, as per her instructions, is as simple as they come, a light wood construction, simple lining, no embellishments, a makeshift handwritten sticker on the foot-end, bearing her name: Lara Gabriel van Dongen. (She is still part of me even in death.) Flowers brought by friends the day before have been placed upon her body. Only her face and chest are visible, the rest of her body being covered by a shroud (gaine). I take a few pictures for relatives in California who are far away from all of this. Then I go out again while the two men close the shroud and put a lace cover over it all.

At their signal, I walk up to the coffin again. The men retreat discretely. This is really the hardest moment, since I can no longer see her, just the lace cover. I allow myself some sincere sobs, pacing around the coffin. Then I take a bottle of Chanel No. 19 standing at the ready; it is the perfume that really defines Lara, and people recognize her scent from opening her wardrobes. I spray a few whiffs onto the lace cover, realizing full well how futile the gesture and how irrational the motive. But Lara would appreciate it - and that is what matters ultimately.

Then I watch as the two undertakers place the wooden lid onto the coffin, and secure it with ten long Parker screws, turned in place by a power tool, and each capped with a little ornamental rosette. Still all very frugal. Then they cover the coffin with a protective quilt.

Lara had asked me to promise time and again I would make absolutely sure that she was positively dead before closing the coffin, for she didn't care having any adventures knocking on the inside of the lid - so great was her fear of suffocation. Moreover, for a claustrophobic like Lara, being in a coffin must be the ultimate nightmare. Houdini would have had trouble getting out of this one. I figured that with two doctors pronouncing her dead and giving her over 48 hours to resurrect herself, my promise to her had been duly honored.

I didn't want to look at how they put the coffin upright in the elevator - the only way to get her downstairs - but waited on the groundfloor. The coffin was slid into the waiting hearse (a Mercedes) and we proceeded to the cemetary of St. Gilles, with traffic and rain a little under half an hour away. I felt at peace being in the company of Lara on her last journey.

In the funerarium I requested to be shown where they would keep Lara for the next four days and nights, thus fulfilling yet another promise she had me make: make sure that I don't end up in one of these giant drawers you see on television. Normally, clients are not shown the technical rooms but I insisted. The room measures about 4x4 meters, is light and modern and I suppose sufficiently refrigerated. There was only one coffin in there at the time.

They explained to me that cremation (incineration) is scheduled for Tuesday morning 19 June at 10:00AM in the adjoining public crematorium. On that day, I will be ushered into a salle d'attente at 9:45AM and be left alone with Lara and her coffin, while at my request some Haydn symphonies will softly envelop the moment. I will place three red long-stemmed roses on the coffin and use up the alotted 15 minutes, until they will come and wheel her away to les installations.

Incineration takes two hours, and I have decided to not wait up for it. I would hate biding my time in the cafetaria while peering out the window at the crematorium's smoke stack and wonder what I am looking at. The undertaker will hand-deliver the ashes the next day at our apartment. I will place the metal cannister in the unused fireplace in our living room, until further disposition.

Transcendental

Thursday 14 June evening

I have been sitting in the living room all day, curtains closed, keeping Lara company, working on my laptop. I had to be home if I wanted to catch the city coroner (le medecin-legiste) who was scheduled to pass by at an unspecified hour to do a 15 second survey verifying that Lara was truly dead and that the funeral parlor had observed all the legal rules for the handling of corpses. The visit produces a document and without that document Lara cannot be transported to Uccle tomorrow morning. That in turn would mean two impossible options: either having her stay over the weekend in a non-A/C apartment; or moving her to the city morgue and make her share the company of traffic victims, drug addicts and sundry dead criminals. So it was crucial that I stayed put and waited.

Afterwards I really need a break and I go run a few errands. It turns out I was not the only one who needed a break. Lara was apparently fed up with lying on her catafalque all day as well and decided to do some out of bodywork. 

What happened?

My son and his wife (Bouke and Merel) live in my hometown, Breda, about 100 kilometers North of Brussels. They are parents to our granddaughter Madelief (Daisy), who, at fourteen months, happens to be an early speaker. At about 6:30 PM today, Merel is changing diapers on her daughter, and as babies do, madelief looks left right and center, lolling her head. Then all of a sudden, the baby stops and clearly focuses on something or someone behind Merel, to the side of her. The baby keeps her gaze fixed on it. So the mother, without turning her head asks what her daughter is looking at? To her astonishment, Madeliefje says: "Lara".

Maybe that was the sign Lara wanted to give after her safe arrival 'on the other side'?

Visitors

Wednesday 13 June afternoon and evening

The living room, over the past six weeks, has developed into a veritable eyesore. There is a hospitalbed in the midle of it, a Baxter with two pumps and bags of liquid, a chaise percee, a little table doubling as a hospital side car (Lara's cubby hole), and there are endless supplies of medical equipment and medication on the window sill, on the floor and on the dining room table. Three big bottles of oxygen (4200 liters each) stand in the corner, and on the other side a big noisy oxygenator a haute debit.

This morning, whoever was at hand was co-opted into a massive cleaning out job, removing from the living room all possible vestiges remaining of six weeks of medical activity. After a few hours, only the bed remained, put in the highest position, where Lara is resting in horizontal position.

At around 2:30PM the kids came with their spouses and their off-spring. Entering with reverence and nervousness, their voices at a discreet whisper, they created in no-time at all a level of alacrity that - had Lara still been alive - would have been snuffed out by her husband just as fast. Under the present circumstances, once the gawking at the deceased was over, there was hardly any need to keep a lid on it, so a great time was had by all for about two hours straight. Activities included digging into Lara's fair stock of women's accessories, such as bags, scarfs, belts and other apparel. The bodypickers in action, goaded by the quarter master.

Twenty minutes after they left again, my mother came with my older sister and her husband and the same pattern erupted, aided and abetted by sherry, port and scotch. I took them to dinner at a decent Italian restaurant, La Bufala, bien arrose with a bottle of primitivo. We finally had fits of laughter again. Very healthy.

Soins

Midday

Julie, the nurse, and Fatima, the garde-malade, are taking care of Lara, bathing and dressing her (les soins) with respect. Meanwhile I notify the pompes funebres of Funerailles Michel, across the street from here, so that they can initiate the required admin procedures. The latter are quite extensive, since we formally live in Brussels Capital, while cremation takes place in Uccle, one of the 19 peripheral communities of Brussels as a whole. One of the hurdles to take is to elicit from the burgomaster of Uccle a personal signature. Without one, the body cannot move into his community. The undertaker will try and get Lara out of the house by tomorrow, depending on how well he does on expediting formalities. 

At 1:00PM, as the girls are finishing up, a mortician passes by to enhance Lara's appearance and prepare her for cremation. He makes her look even more peaceful then she already did.

Tuesday morning I present myself, a single person, at the funeral center in Uccle. No pomp or circumstance. This is what I agreed with Lara. At some point in the future (maybe one year from today) I will gather a number of trusted friends and assorted relatives on a boat sailing Lake Geneva, and disperse her ashes over the water while a good time is being had by all. This is how she'd want it. The true measure of the occasion is the answer to the question if Lara would have enjoyed herself. Would she be having fun? Grieving time should then be at an end. A calvary that lasted a year and a half should then be declared officially closed.

Mirror

Wednesday 13 June morning

Ever since the garde-malades left at 8:00PM Tuesday night, I had either sat with Lara, checked on her from time to time, stretched out beside her, whispered sweet messages in her ear, stroked her face or held her hands, limp as they were. The lifelessness of her fingers didn't bode well for our earlier plan to use suqeezing as the way to communicate. She was thoroughly asleep.

At around midnight I took up my place on the couch beside her after yet another adieu, and promptly fell asleep, exhausted as I was. At a little after 5:00PM, I woke up spontaneously, and immediately I missed the sound of her breathing. I switched on the light and looked over at her, and she really looked deceased. Her head and face were cold, while the area around her heart was still sort of luke warm. There was no agony in her face, or even tension. "Oh, Pluis, did you have to die here all by yourself?", I asked her with a sob, kissing her little head.

I decided to verify. I applied the electric blood pressure gauge, but the machine couldn't find a heart-beat in her upper arm ('Error').

Then I took an antique silver handheld mirror (a wedding present from her sister-in-law Hanneke once) and held it up to her open lips. And there it was: an elongated streak of water vapor. I did it again. A small blotch of vapor appreared this time. The third time, hard as I tried, no marks stayed behind on the glass. She was truly gone, my sweet.

As if she'd saved her last breath for me.

I left on the oxygen nozzles just in case, and even replaced them with a mask for better supply. Knowing how she feels about asphyxiation, it seemed a simply precaution on my part.

Lara had promised me - at my request - that she would leave me a sign of some sort that she had safely arrived on 'the other side' as she called it. As I finally went to take off the oxygen supply, I discovered a tear drop in the inner corner of her right eye. It just sat there waiting for me. "Thanks, sweetie", I whispered. "That is all I needed to know. Miss you, too."

And with my handkerchief I scooped up the little droplet.

St. Anthony's

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Lara passed away quietly here at home at around 05:15AM CET, in the presence of her husband.Typically Lara, she chose to die on the feast of my patron saint.

A formal death announcement will soon be circulated by email.

Except immediate family, please no phone calls or visits.

Tenacity

Afternoon

At 4:45PM I find myself sitting at Lara's bedside, holding her cool fingers in my hand. There is no response in any way. She looks terminal - no two ways about it - and even more so then this morning. Her hands are slighly swollen (she took off her wedding ring in time) which indicates lower kidney activity. Her body feels cool and lifeless, the muscles in her face are fully relaxed, her head tilted to the left with her cheek buried in the large green pillow. She now carries quite an amount of sedatives in her body, while more is being pumped into her on a continual basis with hourly bonuses added for good measure.

How long is this going to go on for, I ask our doctor? My mind is on the evening hours when I will be pulling night duty again like yesterday. It is beginning to get to me, this whole process, I have to admit. "A matter of hours", is the answer, and I don't want to even think of being the lawyer asking how many hours we are actually looking at. I will have to take it as it comes. At a blood pressure of 6 over 3, it can not last much longer though.

I find myself telling her again and again that it is allright for her to go, that she is all set to depart, and that nobody here on earth is holding her back. True, I tell her, I will miss her terribly as a soul mate and husband, a friend and companion, a lover and a confidante - and nobody will be able to fill that void or take that place. Then there will be plenty of memories of so many things we did together: crazy and brilliant ones, transient and durable, wicked and benign, silly and serious. And so I whisper in her ear more and more.

Lacher prise. That is what the French call 'loosen your grip'. For Lara to let go, or to give up control, is almost anathema. And so she holds on to dear life, for as long as she can - until the odds become truly overpowering. Survival instinct is one of the most deeply rooted; and with instincts, as I keep repeating, you don't negotiate.

People and medics have asked me repeatedly if I was ready to stay with a deceased Lara in the apartment by myself for the whole night, if it came to pass. Each tiime I gave the same answer: that I did not see the problem; that, to me, between the two of us, it was tantamount to the ultimate intimacy.

Our doctor passes by at 8:45PM and shakes her head. I have never ever seen such tenacity in the face of death, she says. She is supposed to be well on her way to a preplanned demise, deep deep under cover. But she is still with it, although soundly asleep, but hardly more than that.

Floating

Tuesday 12 June morning and afternoon

It is raining in Brussels and the clouds cut out most of the daylight. I am sitting across from Lara who is in a deep induced sleep. Every ten, fifteen minutes or so, I get up from my Sarajevo story and whisper soothing words into her ear, letting her know all sorts of things, but mainly that I am there, and looking after her.

It is 10:54AM. Light gurgles emanate from her throat. She no longer has the oomph to cough and clear her throat. Still she is hanging on, my girl. There is nobody else in the room but the two of us, and the atmosphere is tranquil, though mildly upset by occasional thunderclaps. The light is somber. A fitting context somehow to the prospect that, soon enough, of the two hearts now beating in the room, one will be utterly still. A vibrant, beautiful and promising life will have snuffed out like a candle, the flame getting smaller and smaller, until - poof - a whisp of smoke emanates from a glowing wick. I am no longer wishing that moment to move forward. I'll take it as it comes. Let her decide her own moment. She has my blessing, how ever long it will take - as long as serenity and peacefulness are reigning. You only die once, I tell her, so it's entirely your call.

Her blood pressure now stands at 7 over 4. Low, even for someone like Lara, who regularly, in full health, clocks in at 9 over 5,5. Pulse at 115 (normally 55 for Lara). At 12:30PM the little monitor doesn't pick up a pulse anymore from her fingertops (earlier that morning our doctor had trouble finding her pulse at the wrist). Her breathing is quiet, steady but very shallow. I check her pressure: 73 over 45, pulse 115. At that pressure kidney failing is a stark possibility, says our doctor, and other organs may follow.

There is hardly any point to measuring pressure anymore. Now I just have to let her be.

"You're going to lose me", she told me on 19 April. I couldn't wrap my mind around it then, but learned to do so over the ensuing six, seven weeks. Now the moment is near - I know it. But the waiting is long. It is 3:19PM and she is still breathing. Fighting to the last - what else did I expect?

Siege

Monday 11 June afternoon

I can't believe I am writing all this down as if I were a spectator looking down from behind a window into an operating theater, making notes for my next clinical report. This must be denial kicking in. Whenever my presence is not contributing or even redundant, I phanatically read a new book I received yesterday as a present from a friend: "The Cellist of Sarajevo", by Steven Galloway. I go through it like a person possessed. Anything to help put a distance between my soul and reality. Telling about the Bosnian capital under siege, the story is easy to relate to for both Lara and myself. Lara was stationed in Bosnia in 1996 and the two of us drove down from Banja Luka to the city several times as it lay partly in ruins -  she on business, I as 'Mr. Gabriel' (oh, she liked that).

Lara woke up again to discuss with her doctor (over the phone) and careproviders (at her bedside) the best way forward. As from 4:30PM the levels of morphine and Tranxene are set at triple the dosage: 30 mg of morphine/day and 37.5 mg of Tranxene/day, both with possibility of hourly so-called 'bonus' doses of the same quantity. (These are still modest levels.) The sequel will be discussed with our GP as she visits this evening. In case Lara will no longer be wakeable (as is likely at that dosage), Isabelle and I will determine the rest of it.

Lara washed her teeth one last time with her own toothbrush and real toothpaste, rather than staining them with iso-betadine as she has been required to do since her hospitalisation in March. Using a regular adult brush carries the risk of bleeding gums (remember, no platelets) and even more so of bacterial infection. What a delight, she said.

As soon as the intravenous morphine pump is set in motion again, Lara solemnly takes off her wedding ring and hands it to me. We both agreed that, by doing so, she wasn't releasing me of my wedding vows before their time.

It takes quite a while before the effect of the morphine and tranquilizer has played out, even with the bonuses given to Lara right from the start. A coughing fit is in the way. I measure her saturation and her pulse: both stand at 96, quite reasonable. Pressure 9 over 5. Temperature normal. I stretch out alongside her and she rests her head against my shoulder, our arms intertwined. We exchange our last carinos.

A little after 5:15PM, Lara increasingly has trouble focussing. I tell her to just doze off. One careprovider asks if she is afraid. She nods. Of course, you are. That is why she clings to her presence in the here and now. Security. She takes time to put Caroline's balm on her chapped lips. At around 5:45PM she says: "I am slowly going away. In a good way." Half an hour later, the sedatives become stronger. "I am wandering but I am still here", she says. Her face and hands are cool on the touch. "Are you boarding yet?", I ask. Not even close, is the answer. Not even cueing? She shakes her head. What then? "Shobbing", she says. Leave it to Lara to secure a last minute bargain.

Monday evening

At 6:30PM she seems to have finally boarded. "You're making the people on the plane laugh", she tells me. I seem to have slipped aboard with her to make sure she's comfortable.

At 7:30PM she is soundly asleep, but still wakeable it seems to me. And indeed, as our doctor enters the living room, Lara opens her eyes and smiles at her. "Flap your wings carefully", I whisper in Lara's ear. She nods. It has been her longstanding adieu to anyone on an airplane who is about to take off.

At 8:15PM her pulse measures 8 over 5, her pulse standing at 126 beats/minute. Her saturation is still at 96%. At 8:40PM we enter final approach. Just before she goes under she turns to me and asks: "Can you fluff up my pillow?" "It will be my pleasure", I tell her. Everything is in place and I am given instructions. Two glass vials of Dormicum 5 mg are emptied through the central line. The doctor and the nurse take their leave. I am staying behind with Lara in the apartment, just the two of us. Alone at last. She breathes quietly. Pale is her face. Hard to say if she will pass quickly, or if she will take her time. A matter of hours at most, I'm told. My head is full of cotton.

Back to Sarajevo, a city besieged.

Then, in a spectacular development at around 11:00PM, I find myself moping about in the living room (where Lara's bed sits), when suddenly I hear: "Hey, Dingdong". I look over: Lara is sitting up and her eyes follow me around the room. In a flash it occurs to me that - praise the Lord - there is reprieve from death after all! Apparently one can come back out of it as if waking up from a nightmare. In an impulse I tell her she's not supposed to be awake and to please go back to sleep - admittedly an inane reaction on my part. "What's happening?", she wants to know. "I don't think this is supposed to happen, I said, I will call the doctor." Meanwhile I give her the water bottle which she empties in no-time, for her mouth is parched.

So our GP hops over in under ten minutes and is a tad taken aback at the turn of events, not knowing the answer to Lara's obviously pertinent question. The two of them discuss in French about what went wrong and how it can be made right. Lara makes the point that now she is really getting scared, for she no longer trusts the protocol chosen. Meanwhile a nurse is summoned and a different way of administering drugs is chosen. Pretty soon her eyes are swimming again and she has to lie back in order to absorb the extra morphine.

That's when Lara and I exchange what would be our last words, where I tell her - a bit counterintuitively - to relax and go to sleep and everything will be allright. Lara is not at all sure that it actually will be allright, since the point is she doesn't really want to wake up anymore and how can she believe she won't? Fact is from here onward we managed to keep her sedated until the end came, even though it took far longer than the doctor loosely predicted as 'a matter of hours'. I give her one last kiss and she kisses me back. (Oh, I liked that.)

Doctor Schroyens, our homeopathist, later tells me that these sudden surges of consciousness in a terminal patient occur exceptionally in response to homeopathic treatment. Astonishing the hospital staff, such episodes can be spectacular, elaborate but circumscribed, finite and always returning the patient to sleep or coma, with death not far behind. That is what happened to Lara here. Of course.

Fantasie

Monday 11 June morning

Once her clothes for the day were in order, I made myself scarce. Lara's entourage was more than complete with four people: two nurses, a hospice and the domestic help. I would just be in the way.

Lara is asleep, her breathing shallow. Everybody has gone now, except Schubert's hauntingly beautiful Fantasie in F minor for piano duet. He wrote it while aware he didn't have long to live anymore and somehow it carries that sense, especially in the closing bars. Listen to it.

She's had a good night's sleep. We both have, in fact, although I need to tell you that after fifty-odd days, I am fed up with sleeping on the couch. I miss the bounce of our conjugal bed. (Sometimes I dive in for a quick snooze.)

This is the first morning where she tried to get out of bed and join me for breakfast, but then slumped back, shaking her head. She could't muster the strength. She had her cappuccino and her cereal in bed, spoon-fed; she looked over to me, a little helplessly, to check if we were eating at least at the same time. We were.

Our doctor, coming in at around noon, was amazed to see Lara awake the way she was. She was expecting to see her in a deep sleep. We talked the three of us and decided to give Lara a bonus dose of morphine and of Tranxene from the pumps. She felt the effect immediately. Knowing she might not regain consciousness enough at this stage of the process, she placed a few phone calls to say goodbye to her siblings, some of her dearest friends and called in Ilona, our domestic help, who was in tears.

I was wondering, she said, "Am I really saying goodbye to somebody else? Is this real?" It is, I assured her, holding her hand.

At around 1:00PM she started to slowly slide into sleepiness, and her movements became slow and deliberate, for example when taking a sip of water. It is as though she is still clinging to reality with her last bit of energy, resisting full surrender. "I have no idea what's happening in the world", she said. So I read her the headlines from this morning's Herald Trib.