Yes, I am back. And no, I cannot pretend that nothing happened. What has happened has blown my whole life apart, so this post is going to get pretty personal. If this annoys you, please hold on for a few more days, as I will definitely be going to talk about art again soon.
Being still here comes as a surprise to me. Fairytales end with “and they were happy ever after”. I was not prepared for the “ever after happy”…
Thus it seemed logical to me that if ever anything fatal should happen to my husband, I would die, too. As a consequence, I thoroughly avoided thinking about this eventuality most of the time, but when I did, I envisioned it as a brief moment of getting smashed, before dropping dead – not unlike an insect after hitting the front windshield of a car.
Since I am here writing to you, this is obviously not what happened.
The minute I rose from the hospital bed in which my husband and love of nineteen years had just died in my arms, I went right into “survival mode”. Yes, smashed I was, and smashed, I still am, but somehow alive. At first, it felt, quite literally, like I was freezing from within, shivering for days to come. And for weeks on end, it felt like falling in a dark night sky, but without ever touching the ground.
Still, whatever and however you feel, “the show must go on”. There is a son to be taken care of, there are family and friends to be called, obituary notices to be written, a funeral to be planned. (There were actually two in our case, since I took my husband’s ashes back to his home in France). Even if desperate, pretty soon you even start to get hungry again, so you have to overcome your despair and get that fridge filled anew.
Within a very short while, you are also expected to be working again, since our society holds so little place for grieving.
So you do all these things, you fill in the papers, you buy the coffin, choose the flowers, you try your best to work through it all… but in the gaps between all these activities, you cry. A lot. God, I know we are mostly composed of water, but nevertheless I wonder where I still take all those tears from after all these months.
However, I am alive. Still here. And for all the sadness there is, there have also been many signs and small miracles, beautiful experiences, much love and support, a wonderful family and great friends. For all of this, I am tremendously grateful.
If today I feel like blogging again, it is first and foremost for Michel, because I know how excited he was about this common project of ours. He was unbelievably supportive and upbeat about this blog, so in a way I feel like I owe it to him to carry on.
I was also lucky enough to travel quite a bit in the past year; with Michel before his illness proved final and with my son and my sister after his parting, and I would really like to share a few of our many impressions from these journeys.
I know that several of these experiences might only be of limited practical use to you, since the exhibitions I have seen while travelling may no longer be running. Please forgive me the belated posts, but I need to conclude this chapter before going on with the rest of my journey.
Still, I hope you might enjoy some of the images to come soon. If you have read that far, I also hope you do not leave this blog depressed, because this was not my intent at all. So, yes “carpe diem” (“seize the day”). Do the things you want to do as soon as possible. If there is someone you love, tell her or him today.
But do not worry.
“Omnia vincit amor”*
* (“love conquers all”).