My parents, Jaime, and I have been taking shifts looking after Annette. At the night as well. In case she wakes up from nightmares. During one of my first shifts, I spent many hours untangling and washing Annette’s hair, using the brush Jaime had brought. Her hair was a bird’s nest, still harboring twigs from the Vietnamese jungle. I had to be very careful, as every movement hurt her. I always resist understanding medical details, but the number and seriousness of Annette’s injuries is overwhelming, and visible. And she is thin—so thin, thinner than ever—and she keeps losing weight. I used to tease her when she was little that she was just a bag of bones covered with thin slices of smoked ham. Now she is a bag of broken bones. When she is asleep with all those humming machines connected to her, Annette’s face looks strikingly like my father’s mother on her deathbed. My father and I both have noticed.
Annette’s courage and psychological strength are amazing. She has escaped amputation of her gangrene-infected hands and feet. She has the maggots to thank for that. Those ghastly worms gobbled up the dead flesh and kept the gangrene from spreading. The downside is that the numerous deep wounds have to be meticulously scraped clean several times a day, a painful and time-consuming ordeal. At Jaime’s suggestion, I have bought her a Game Boy with a game called Tetris. It seems to help in making the treatment more bearable. She plays it every time they torture her. With complete focus, totally oblivious to her surroundings.
The other thing that seems to comfort her greatly is having a bottle of water in her hand. Whenever things get too much for her, she takes a sip. It works like a pacifier.
Tonight we will have a little celebration. Annette will be moved from intensive care, and even more festive, we will finally be allowed to bring her the only food she has been craving this week: sushi. Jaime and I have been happy to sample the various options to make sure she gets the very best.
LONG FLIGHT BACK
After a fortnight in Singapore, I am finally allowed to be transported to a hospital in Holland. Jaime has negotiated with KLM a prime location on the plane, taking up twelve seats. Behind a curtain, so that I cannot be approached by curious passengers and reporters traveling with us. He protects me like a bodyguard.
It is time to go “home.” My parents, brother, sister, and Jaime are all getting on each other’s nerves. I don’t mind. Nothing matters. And everything matters.
This flight is claustrophobia three, four times over. I can’t move my legs. I am strapped on a narrow bed with big belts around these heavy blankets. Behind a curtain, on an airplane, for twelve hours! What is this? An endurance test? When are these ordeals ever going to end? How much more do I have to take? I feel around to make sure the little water bottle is within reach. It is, but it doesn’t help. I want to get out. I need to get out! It is so warm! I start pulling at the blankets from under the straps, but I don’t have the strength.
There is Jaime. He undoes the belts. Then he opens the water bottle and gives me a sip. Tenderly, as if I am a baby. I collect myself, if only for him. And to keep up appearances for the kind stewardess, the purser, the pilot, all those people coming to say hello and congratulate me. Inside I am screaming.
Oh my God, the flight is getting bumpy. Really bumpy! Bumpier than I have experienced in a long time. Except for my last flight with Pasje.
Pasje. I cry.
There is Jaime again. He puts the Game Boy in my hand to distract me, but it is too hard to keep it still. We keep hitting air pockets. They feel like they are supposed to feel on a big plane. The exact opposite of what I told Willem the last time, when we crashed. Don’t think of the crash. Feel the rhythm of the bumps. It is like floating in a boat. The sky is like the ocean. Just listen to the rhythm.
• • •
In Holland my youngest brother, Bernard, meets us at the airport. I burst into tears when I see him. Of my siblings, he is the closest to me. And to Pasje. Pasje already asked him to be his best man. Bernard knows me better than anyone.
I realize how much I have missed him in the family dynamic in Singapore. With one wink he would have put it all in perspective. Like Pasje. He would have made it all right. Thank God I still have him!
I am very pleased when he gets into the ambulance to accompany me to the university hospital in Leiden. Just happy to be near him. But he is so emotional. He seems not to be able to control himself. He just keeps looking at me with tears rolling down his cheeks. And telling me that he loves me! This is my brother! My macho brother, my buddy in mischief! I pat his arm in an effort to comfort him. I want to make him laugh. “Bernie don’t worry, the jungle was not bad at all. It was actually beautiful.” He stops crying. “Evil weeds don’t wither,” I add, “Certainly not in the jungle; they flourish there.” He laughs.
When I arrive at the hospital, everyone treats me with awe—and gloves, caps, and masks. I get a double room all to myself, to seal me off from the other patients and for my privacy. Everyone keeps talking about avoiding the press.
The next day I am cleared for tropical diseases. The visits begin. Family member after family member, friend after friend. They are very nervous when they come into my room the first time. They obviously have no idea what to expect. It is weird. I feel the same as always, yet they treat me as if I have come from another planet. Hellooo! It’s me you are talking to! Be normal! I am OK! Well, perhaps I did visit another planet, but that was the good part. Now I am just back to being me. With this big load on my heart. Pasje is dead. That is all that counts.
I do what I always do: focus on who and what is in front of me. Some people cling to me, some are too nervous to talk, others cry. I try to make them feel at ease. By making a joke, a gentle one. Not the cynical ones I make in my head: pretending to have no arm or having some fake convulsions.
I get loads of mail, very kind, some very awkward, even some artwork. I open the letters and read them out loud to the visitors, who come from morning till evening. My best friends return daily. Bernard serves them beer and tapas from the refrigerator he has brought. It is like a social club. Everyone’s presence is priceless.
If only Pasje could be here.
Perspectives
MY FRIEND DORINE: A month had passed since the accident. Annette had risen from the dead and was in a hospital in Leiden. It didn’t cross my mind to visit this mythical person; she had more intimate friends. But I thought of her a lot.
I tried to put myself in her shoes, but as usual I failed. Physically she would be able to recover, I had heard, but how was she going to cope mentally? Was it going to be a convent or a psychiatric ward? Those were the only options, surely.
A mutual friend called. She had visited Annette, who had asked if I would like to come and see her sometime. Me? Did she still know who I was? And what could I possibly do for her under circumstances?
I sat next to the telephone, holding a piece of paper with her telephone number. Come on! Four times I picked up the phone; four times I put it down again. How do you make a call like that? The fifth time I carried on, a funny feeling in my throat.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded surprisingly familiar.
“Hello, Herf,” I said, softly. The voice suddenly sounded very cheerful. “Hey, buddy! When am I going to see you?”
I went the next day. I lingered a bit outside her door. Then I went in, not knowing what to expect. Annette was lying in her hospital bed, looking pale and weak. Except for her eyes, that is. Like her voice, that look in them hadn’t changed. It was sharp, full of interest.
She wanted to know how I was doing. I thought that would be adding to her burdens, but the patient is always right, so I went along. Perhaps she wanted to repress what had happened. Wasn’t that what many trauma victims did? If that was the case, she certainly managed it very well. After I told her pretty much everything I had been up to in the past few years, I cautiously asked how she was. I hardly dared mention the word accident. But she told me about it without any restraint. Without any fuss, clearly and to the point. No drama. It w
as familiar and alien at the same time. As if we were just having a drink and a chat.
The next time I visited her she was at her parents’ house. They were delighted to see me and so pleased that I had come to visit Annette. That’s what they were like, always opening their home to everyone. By then Annette was able to sit up, and she was wheeled into the sitting room. A muscular, stocky man in a white T-shirt and jeans was pushing her wheelchair. He had very long hair, like a girl. Someone from home care, I gathered, a male nurse.
“Meet Jaime,” Mrs. Herfkens said. Jaime? Annette’s reputable colleague, the bank director? The man who had told Annette’s parents after the accident that he was certain their daughter was still alive? Who had gone to search for Annette in Vietnam? He didn’t look like a banker, or a smooth, macho Latino. He had long hair!
To hide my confusion, I asked Annette a question. I wanted to ask, “When is your operation?” Instead I asked, “When is your funeral?”
THE FUNERAL
The day of Pasje’s funeral I am taken by ambulance from the hospital to his hometown in the south. My sister travels with me. A two-hour ride. In her upbeat way, she keeps up my courage. Courage I have to summon up from every painful part of my body. My mother did not want to let me go; she thinks it is too soon, too risky, and too cold. She is still afraid of losing me.
I am to be carried in and out of the memorial service on a stretcher. I remember beforehand to put on some makeup. “There will be a lot of press,” my sister is saying while twisting my hair into the new hair clip I bought in Tokyo. That hair clip I was never going to wear. It is black. I have to wear black. I am a widow now.
My arrival could not be more dramatic. Flashing lights and a crowd of people greet me when the door of the ambulance opens. Two paramedics maneuver me swiftly into a little medieval church. They carry me through the hall on a stretcher, into a separate room, where I can catch my breath. Somebody explains what is going to happen next. Like a wedding planner. I don’t hear. I can’t. I have no idea what to expect, but I am too anxious to listen.
When they carry me in, it does feel like a wedding. Slowly, with a steady step. The bride of a corpse. People turn around to look at me. Row by row. I keep my eyes fixed on my groom at the altar. In a coffin.
My bearers continue their solemn step. Ten rows, five rows. One more. What now? I can almost touch the coffin. My bunch of white roses is lying on top of it. “Dag -bye- Pasje,” the silk ribbon reads. We turn to the left. They put my stretcher slowly on the floor. As if they are putting me in a grave.
They might as well.
The funeral is almost unbearable. The van der Pas family has taken control and reclaimed Willem. I have no say and have had to insist on every piece of music. Had we been married, they would have had to ask me about every single detail. Now I am treated like a guest. What a difference a little piece of paper can make. They tell my parents that they don’t want to bother me.
Oh, and after the ceremony, they hope I won’t mind not being in the line of family members accepting condolences. Mrs. van der Pas is anxious that otherwise all attention will go to me, with the survival story and all that. They hope I won’t mind being in the far corner, away from the crowd. I don’t mind. I don’t want any attention. I want Pasje to put his arm around me. He would have laughed his family away. Would have told me all was well.
I have chosen some of his favorite music for the ceremony: U2’s “With or Without You.” Gluck’s “What Is Life?” It cuts my heart. But “Gracias a la Vida,” written by the Chilean musician Violeta Parra and performed by Mercedes Sosa in the version I selected, gets to me most. The fragile sound of the guitar intro and the strong voice of Mercedes Sosa.
“Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It has given me laughter and it has given me tears.”
Spread of Pasje’s funeral in Weekend, a Dutch magazine, Breda, December 26, 1992;
photo by Peter Mulder
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* * *
AFTER
BACK HOME
My family arranges for me to be home for Christmas. They think it is important. It is. How lucky I am to have parents who can take me in like that, in a hospital bed with a handgrip, in their dining room.
I come with many instructions. The wounds on my arms and legs have to be nursed. I have received two skin grafts. Two parallel strips of skin have been taken from my thigh. They look as if they have been sliced with a cheese slicer, the same type we use to slice the cheese for our daily bread in Holland. Sliced with a little too much enthusiasm and too thick for my thigh ever to heal properly, leaving an obvious souvenir: two perfectly parallel scars. Like two little landing strips.
The yielded skin has been stretched out to cover the giant, gaping wound on my shin, or rather to cover the bone, and to cover two other big wounds on my right arm. One is on my elbow. I can hardly move that arm.
There are four screws in my jaw. I still can’t chew properly. I am so thin. I am almost getting bedsores. Like an old lady. My mother knows what to do. She treated her mother’s bedsores toward the end of her life. I end up with a silicone pillow to cushion my bony behind.
Visitors come and go, from morning to evening. My friends, my mother’s friends, cousins, aunts, and more friends. I forgot how many I have in Holland. My mother entertains. I am entertaining. In the morning the pain is only throbbing, but as the day and the many visitors go by, it gets worse and worse. In between visitors I cry. By nighttime, when everyone has left, I cry that I cannot take it anymore. In Calvinistic Holland, I am only allowed paracetamol.
My toes are the worst. Two tips are missing, and the nerves have gone haywire. The other tops are still black. A month or so later the black tops will just fall off. Like thimbles.
Jaime has bought me a new Nintendo system. It is even better than the Game Boy I had in the hospital. Others can now join in or watch me play on TV. It mesmerizes my guests, who are not yet electronically savvy. I play all the time. To distract me from my thoughts. To distract me from my pain. To distract me from me. It helps.
It is strange to be back in Holland in such a different role. Or rather, many different roles. It is the first time I have been lost and I am seeing life from the other side. Empty-handed.
I become a listener. Many of my friends seem to want to confide in me. Perhaps because I am an outsider, no longer living in the country. Perhaps because I have become a person who has seen and faced death. Whatever the reason, it is fine; it seems natural. I am somehow in a serene state of mind; I want to help. Though I have become softer overall, my sharp tongue is still intact. I sound out my new reality by joking about my instant membership in several “losers’ clubs.” I have noticed that certain people feel a special connection with me: people who have lost, one way or another. Some of my mom’s friends who have been widowed. The widows’ club. A friend who has diabetes. The hole-in-the-leg club.
I do connect to some extent, but I also feel the need to separate myself. I only get one foot wet.
Hey, that’s you! Not me! I think all the time, partly out of bravado, partly in self-defense. I still find it hard to believe what has happened, and the established club members make my new reality more final by treating me as if I am already a member of their clubs. I am still learning my new lines. I haven’t considered yet what it will be like not to be invited to dinner parties because I am not part of a couple. I have not thought about buying special tights to hide my scars, or whether I will wear a bikini on the beach. I am not mentally there yet. But now that I think about it, what a bummer about my legs. They used to be quite an asset.
Of course, I am also a plane crash victim, a survivor. That is a very small club. I get a letter from a Dutch man who survived a crash in 1954. He advises me not to settle with Vietnam Airlines right away. He had many more injuries than initially diagnosed. “The extent of the damage can only be seen over time,” he writes. It isn’t uplifting, but it prepares me for the consequences of that lonely
membership and for what might come with it.
While I am in the hospital, two planes crash into each other on a runway somewhere in Portugal. All the passengers survive. It is constantly on TV, on all channels. It doesn’t affect me, but everyone keeps looking at me, waiting for a reaction. Like I am supposed to have one.
My mother marvels at the teams of psychologists, instantly ready to support the crash victims. “You didn’t even have one therapist!” she says.
The truth is, I really don’t want a therapist. I am annoyed that my family whispers about it behind my back. The nation’s trauma expert, a professor in psychiatry, has analyzed me on a whole page of a popular newspaper. He has never met me. Then he writes to my parents offering to treat me for free, as I am such an interesting case. “Thank you, but no thank you,” I say.
If anything is driving me crazy, it is all the fussing over me. And of course, the throbbing pain. Constant pain. My body is traumatized, not my mind. And my heart needs mending, not my mind.
Reflection: Analysis
It wasn’t clear to me back then why people thought I needed therapy. Was it about what I felt, or was it about what they felt I should be feeling? Did they think I was uncomfortable talking about the accident? I wasn’t. Were they? Anyway, I did talk. About Pasje, nonstop. And I have continued to talk about Pasje, uncomfortable or not. My biggest wound was that I had lost Pasje, that even though we had not officially been married yet, I felt “widowed.” That was hard and sad, but there were millions of widows in the world, I was just another one of them.
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