Yesterday morning Elisabeth and I met for a coffee at ‘The Waves’ after a cold walk for the both of us, because of the wind. Late afternoon the handy man Richard came to start on the ceiling hole, with more work to be done today. I also got my new trip dates in process, but that change will cost me an extra four hundred (400) dollars, since I now go in the high season.
Be that as it may, it still feels like the right decision the more I think about it. Particularly now with Sharen’s passing last Wednesday and the up coming memorial service for her later this month, moreover from my sister Els I understand that the move for Tieneke and Jan is still not scheduled and could be as late as May.
In the mean time, I managed to get the Sharen Memorial Album started and its beginning posted on my website. I decided to use my standard Gallery method not involving Ajax, which would have been more complicated and slower to assemble. I selected sixty eight (68) photos from the summer of 2008 until my most recent ‘November’ (2013) shot of Sharen in the library of the Cedars Villa Home.
Today I intend to send my Sharen email with this mentioned shot file attached and the link to starting album on my site. I will probably supplement the pictures with a narrative about our mutual friendship, as that formed over the years.
As the days pass since Sharen’s death of the body, the significant of our friendship is becoming clear to me, as I try to give that form and substance. This process of realisation finds expression in the composition of the mentioned album and ‘a narrative of friendship’ that is slowly gathering its words as I go over my recollections, while collecting the images for the album.
It is a saying good bye to a relationship that has come to an end, a letting go and a collecting of valued moments, memories and feelings shared over the years, that are now mine to remember, but to which neither of us can add any longer. That is the letting go and moving on, painful, sad and necessary.
Letting go is about celebrating the gift and grieving the loss of that shared experience.
This does not prevent me from valuing all the memories and treasuring them. The process of letting go and moving on is dual in its nature, celebrating the gift and grieving the loss of that shared experience. We need to make space for and give time to both aspects, lest we displace one with the other, living passed the tensions and feelings that help us become more aware of our own nature.
<9:22am~