Tine (1978-2009)
My brain feels like it has moved out and is just replaced by emptiness and emotions. There is no limit to the amount of tears i have to shed; no limit to my feeling of grievance and loss. I feel un-earthed, un-rooted and completely lost in myself, not knowing what to feel, what to say, what to do. The past few days we’ve been very busy preparing for the funeral, choosing music, texts, making the booklet to go with it, the letter, the card; now that everything is ready we have nothing left to go on for and are suddenly struck by the emptiness that remains in our lives.
It has been a weird week; being together with my brother and my parents; no wives, just our “core family”. On Wednesday we drove to the funeral home to see her for a last time and we were all sitting in the car, me and my brother with a picture in between us from my sister; it was the last trip “with the five of us”; Tine sitting in between Pieter and me. Yesterday (thursday) tess came with Thyl, which gives a bit of distraction, him running around here; it gives one something else to do; something “happy”. He does not quite understand what is going on; he does not understand our pain, our loss. And it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t. I don’t know how we’d all deal with it if Thyl was grieving and crying as well. He gives hugs and brings comfort without really realizing what or why.
Tomorrow is the funeral; then it will all be over and emptiness will set in some more as from then on we don’t have any step in our grieving process left; after that we’ll have to retake our roles and lives and try and carry on. Tine will remain with us, as someone wrote “with a transcendental link of which you know it can’t exist but that is there as an illusion that you cherish”. Hooray for life’s illusions.
