Helvi from Finland has passed away.

It’s with a heavy heart that am now telling you that my dearest Helvi has passed away on the 29th of October at 6pm. The next day was going to be our wedding anniversary! We married in 1965.

She blew her last breaths on our bed and at home. A few day before she was begging me to get her out of the hospital. We shared our most loving moments declaring our undying love for each other.

Those last few days will for sure sustain me for the rest of my life.  They are now a a beautiful garden of memories. Helvi was always good at gardening.

.

 

Gerard

Don’t lose your relationship and your socks.

My parents in Holland, earlier times.

According to Alain de Botton, your smelly socks play a larger role in the permanency of your relationship than romantically floating on the Danube while immersed in a bath filled with rose petals. He confronts the hugely popular romantic notion of ‘falling’ in love and living happily ever after. I must say, it intrigues me no end how people can stay in a mono-relationship all their lives.

There are a few that we know but they are mainly in our direct family backgrounds of numerous brothers and sisters from both of us. Outside our own direct background the wedding gondola is listing dangerously and littered with corpses of failed relationships. Mind you, there is a new theory out that a relationship hasn’t necessarily failed just because one or both wanted out. Even so, when a relationship is at the start and still blindingly starry-eyed and way over the top, that most proclaim eternal love and devotion to each other. Psychopaths are seen as Saints. To fall in love is a most dangerous situation. Get out of it. Get real.

According to Alain de Botton; the banana skin on the doorstep of declared love is that we see in each other things that are just not there. We want to see them. Alas, it is all a fata morgana. The things that are there and real are not seen. We think the other is perfect and so does the opponent. The man forgives the woman who lingers longingly in front of the High Fashion shop and he feels it rather cute. The woman likewise, when he seems to swear at other drivers or watches football all the time. She thinks ‘boys are boys.’ We only see perfection and can’t understand nor are willing to see, how this notion of love is blind and certainly foolish.

Of course, blind love is fed by cinema and books. With us, even right from the beginning, any sign of romantic love and H and I bolt out. The first whiff of a lingering look of real love or a wafting of underarm brutish man, and we are out, running along Bong Bong Road to Woollies car-park, glad to have made it in one piece. By mistake we switched on the ABC News too early last night only to be confronted with the Nigella Lawson now famous sideway glance while cooking a sponge cake. No better example of false charm and allure.

The thing that Alain de Botton points out is that we are all imperfect. In fact, we are broken. We are the result of genes and our own imperfect parental upbringing, totally hopeless when confronted with relationship and marriage. Instead of seeking love we should really get an understanding of own faults first. Try and be the normal obnoxious self when finally confronting a suitable partner. Show her/him your true self. Be honest and don’t move your jaw or flex your pectoral. Hard as it is, don’t believe your partner is all that lovely either. Both are broken. Work on being happy and try and enjoy grey. Do things together and expect fights and making good. It is not for everyone. A good relationship is one that goes on regardless of itself. It is surprising how the years go by. You fight and love, and fight and love.
That’s the secret.

Here a few things from Alain de Botton on love.

“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

Doctor will see you now.

Table setting. Hand coloured etching.

It used to be simple matter to see the doctor. As a child you stuck your tongue out, said aahh, and that was it. All doctors looked senile and had a foul breath. Now it has become far more complex and doctors look like teenagers. You more likely to have your bum looked and poked at than your tongue.

I received a serious letter, that, since I had turned seventy-five the Government would like to make sure I would still have some years left without needing to be looked after. Could I make an appointment for a thorough investigation of my levels of health. It would take about one- and- a- half hour. I like their optimism and clear despair of having to look after another grand-pa. It hints at a chair in ‘blue Haven retirement village’ with a bus trip to the Tulip Festival, nurse wiping my chin if not something else as well.

The letter gave details of what the health assessment would comprise off;

. Measurement of Blood pressure, pulse rate and rhythm.

( I do have good rhythm and keep it up till the end with happy ending.)

. assessment of medication, continence, immunisation status, physical function, activities of daily living, fall status.

Oh no, not continence again? Not another nervously strained stool sample with gloves, wooden stick and screw-top container? Look doc, I hover between deep seated constipation and voluminous bouts of diarrhoea, give me a break. I’ll invite you for a prawn barbeque, mow your lawn, but no more stool samples. Concentrate on my tinnitus and my wobbly feet. I do still remember the good times when I slept all night without leeks and straining the potatoes three times a night. My physical functions do include being able to still take  two steps on the stairs at the time and to run to Aldi’s when the Shiraz is on special. My fall rate is perfect and I generally put my hands out to brake the fall. I remember my pin numbers and have a fairly good idea of passwords and know how to put photos on the internet.

. assessment of mood and memory.

Milo

It’s been no picnic. I do enjoy the good times and relish the friends I still have. I do get down but know that it passes almost unnoticed.  I know you mean well, doc, but no anti-depressants. I love my depression. Look where it go me? I am on my 757th article of folly and nonsense and still able to put down words in certain order with the help of a keen despair, but also with some sun and hope for a still liveable world for all Grand-kids.

. social setting and whether you are caring for another person.

I care for my partner of many years and she does for me. We still do a little dance.   I don’t have many ailments or suffer from gout, insomnia, or nervous ticks, nor sit in the park forgotten how to get home. Sure, moments of finding the impetus to keep going are joined with acute feelings of having done it already. Putting socks on is a drag on the day, but relish the first coffee. At times I feel even food resisting and I have to fight the urge to a regurgitation in having tasted it all too often before. But, what can one do?  A fresh herring or smoked eel is still the answer.

A walk along the creek helps.

Blue Illusion and Love

Blue Illusion and LovePosted on November 18, 2010 by gerard oosterman

 

We had just settled to our first Zeffirellis coffee and a shared Danish, when we noticed a somewhat stroppy couple arguing about something or other. You know those couples that have had decades of ‘quality time’ time together and gone through thick and thin, hell for leather and with far too  few infidelities to reminisce and look back  on. In short, the sort of couple that was somewhat ragged for wear but still on a reasonable footing and with some good years ahead still.

“You would be so stingy”, I haven’t got a stitch to wear, just rags  around my clapped out bones,” she stated with some vehemence and loud enough for others to hear. Was he being shamed into something, we wondered? He was old enough to have learnt that ” I haven’t got a stitch to wear” really translates and certainly  heralds very clearly, “I am going shopping” and “no one can stop me.”  No man worth his salt would suggest going to Bunning’s to buy chip board or more brackets for some shelving. There is a lot in ‘I haven’t got a stitch to wear,’ far more that Bunnings could ever possibly offer.

We finished our coffee and went around town for a stroll and who would we come across but the quarrelling couple in front of a shop called ‘Blue Illusions.’ Her chin was firmly set, jutting forward, and he had a look of total compliance. (Not unlike a recent photo I had just seen of that much younger Royal couple that are planning getting conjugalized in the UK.) The scene was one of those moments of couples facing the situation of give and take. He gave up on the quarrel and smiled as she took steps inside this Blue Illusion.