Another farewell

Saying goodbye

Her head peeping out from under the bedcovers is like a bird’s, narrow and thin. The huge, dark rimmed glasses wider than her skull, a pair of giant eyes. She looks healthy, her skin the orange of a cheap fake tan. Hepatitis does that. It is shocking to see her so vulnerable, emaciated, she who once was so sturdy and strong. But she hasn’t lost her sense of humour.

I had not expected her to be completely bedridden yet. The hospital bed seems too big for her now small frame. She is happy to see me, and so are her husband and daughter, who look after her. Her daughters take shifts helping their father caring for her during the night. Even an emaciated body is a dead weight when helpless.

It was a long drive, and I am still very tired after long flights from another continent. But I am glad I came. We talk about former times, all the things she has always done for others, her years as a home help, a social worker, a surrogate mother replacing the sick and being in charge of strange and large families. About how I came into her family and how she accepted me without asking questions. About the time before I got to know her, when she offered a home to nieces and nephews in times of need, never complaining but enjoying the vast brood under her roof. How she taught my stepdaughter to knit, an art foreign to her own mother.

She is content, tells me that people have asked her if she is afraid of dying. She isn’t, she says. She has tried to live a useful life, and she doesn’t know what is awaiting her. A still practising catholic, she just doesn’t know, whatever the priest might tell her. ‘Nobody has ever come back, so how can anyone know for sure’, she repeats many times. I do not have any answers. Yes, she has always been helpful, caring, dominant but fair, and altruistic. Even now that she is dying, she is phoning family and friends that her time is up, so that they will be prepared and not be too shocked when they hear about her death. She tells me again and again that she is not afraid. I haven’t asked her that question. Should I have? Does it help? Would it ease her passage from this world into another? I just thank her for accepting me, for giving us her house when my husband, very sick, was in a wheelchair and we needed a break. Her bungalow was the perfect place. She and her husband took off in their caravan so that we could enjoy their home.

I feed her little pieces of a warm croissant, with a spoon, her always busy hands useless now on the bed sheets. In between bites she sips water from a straw. It is like feeding the tiny birds in my garden. Her daughter is very caring. ‘I changed her diapers, now she changes mine,’ my sister-in-law says with a wry smile. ‘It can’t be helped.’  I see my late husband, his hospital bed in our living room, his body, just skin and bones. They seem to merge into one another, the brother and the sister, a deathbed revisited.

Before the three of us sit down for supper, the daughter takes off her mother’s glasses and she closes her eyes, tired now after all the talking.

After supper I have to leave, for I have a two hour drive at best ahead of me on a dark, and wet night. I am glad I came and that we could talk. I kiss her goodbye. Will I see her again, except in another world, the New Jerusalem? I don’t know, and for her sake and her family’s sake I hope I won’t.

Two days later I get a phone call to tell me that the morning after my visit my sister-in-law has passed away very peacefully. I am sad for lives that end, friends and family leaving this world, but glad she is now released from a body which no longer served her.

In Paradisum deducant te Angeli.

The Gregorian chant

From Faure’s Requiem Mass

Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Cold

It is cold, really cold. What can one do when it is too cold to go for a walk, when it is a major expedition to venture outside? Fortunately, apart from the Nutcracker at Boxing Day, there is this pile of unread and very interesting books, and there are museums.

One of the latter, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, is brand new. Even if there were no exhibits, the building itself is spectacular. From the outside it looks like a turtle or a turban. Inside there is glass and steel and there are lots of walkways crisscrossing the building, gradually leading to the different floors and the very top of the museum. It seemed we walked for miles and it was enough exercise for one day. 

In fact for me the architecture, so the building, was far more interesting than the exhibits, although any available new technique was used. The views of the city, the frozen Red River and the interesting construction of the footbridge, alluring in summer, are quite spectacular from behind glass. The exhibits may be more interesting for a younger generation and for Canadians and Americans. For me, a European citizen, not much was new.

As can be expected we were not the only visitors that day. Given it is holiday time and very cold, and this museum has been given a lot of attention in the media, you can imagine the long lines for the ticket office and the coat check.

 Looking through glass, on which the construction of the museum is reflected. 

 A train crossing the bridge across the Red River

 Looking down the steel and glass stairs

Footbridge with restaurant across the Red River leading from the British to the French part of the city

It was too cold by far to take any pictures outside, as my fingers were starting to hurt and stiffen the moment  I took off my gloves. Nevertheless I took a few, especially at sunset when the top of the footbridge tower and the top of the roof of the museum as well as its tower were coloured a deep red, a magic moment.

 Sunset