Looking back I understand now that people thought I needed to talk more about the jungle. About the smell and sight of the dead people. They were worried I was suppressing a trauma. But I wasn’t. I had no issues there. If anything, my jungle experience helped me through the pain. They didn’t know, and I hadn’t yet defined how that worked.
Therapists may shed light on things that are too painful to remember, or that a person is unable to look at, at the time they happen. But I have never forgotten the jungle. I remember every detail. I am aware of it, and I can recall it whenever I want. I have not pushed away what happened to me. I integrated it. I talked to everyone about it for a long time afterward. Then I no longer did. And then I decided to write about it.
I know that therapy can give a safe environment to process painful memories. For me, though, the jungle was that safe environment. The safest of all. So much so that I often go back to it in my mind when I want to feel safe. In those eight days I felt protected, unafraid. I stayed in the present. I did not get into a panic. First it was mind over matter, then it became heart over mind. I surrendered emotionally and physically. To the moment. To nature. To God, really.
Nobody asked, and I didn’t tell. I hadn’t defined yet that I had had some kind of unity experience. It turned out to be a gift. A gift beyond my psyche. I had looked the beyond in the face.
And why did I not think about the maggots? About the smell? Because I made them secondary to the beauty, the peace, and the safety of the jungle. Both in the jungle and afterward, I chose not so much to suppress the bad things as to shift my focus. I chose what to see. I chose what and what not to dwell on. That is different from suppressing memories and forgetting something happened. I had the option to move my eyes away from the maggots to the beauty, and I did.
CONNECTIONS
A fortnight before Christmas, lying in my hospital bed, in the comfort of my parents’ living room, I feel compelled to help the other bereaved. My heart is broken, and I think and act from the depth of that wound. I want to be of service, and thus I make a big effort to get hold of the relatives of the other European victims of the crash: a Swedish man, a British man, and a French woman. I want to let them know I did not feel anything while we were crashing.
With some effort I manage to get their phone numbers from the embassies. I have to convince the embassy staff that I really am that woman who was on that plane with their citizens. That I have good intentions. That I just want to tell the families their loved ones did not spend their last hours or even moments in agony.
The family of the French woman refuses any contact, but I do get the phone numbers of the British and the Swedish families. When I call the father of Hamish, the British victim, I get his sister on the phone. She says her father cannot get to the phone, but she asks me to tell her as many details as I can remember. I do. She thanks me politely and says she will pass it all on to her father.
When I call the Swedish widow, she bursts into tears. She is very grateful for my call. She has been imagining over and over what her husband must have gone through. It has kept her awake every night since the accident. They had been married thirty-eight years. “We were really happy, and I have so many friends who are not. They would be glad for their husbands to die. It is so unfair,” she cries. This was going to be her husband’s last business trip. They had bought an apartment in Portugal and were eagerly looking forward to his retirement. I feel for her. She feels for me.
I have become part of my parents’ daily routine. With my bed in the dining room, I am literally in the middle, between the two of them. I can see my father doing his paperwork in the adjoining living room. When I turn my head, I can see my mother in the kitchen, cleaning after the nonstop visitors. They go back and forth to each other’s domain to talk about things.
One day my father is paying the bills and telling my mother he still owes Willem’s parents half the cost of the notice they put in the newspapers about our disappearance. Mr. van der Pas actually called about that.
“Oh, now that I think of it, they wanted me to ask you if you know whether Willem bought that piece of land in Chile as he was planning to,” my father adds.
I am suddenly furious. I rant and rave about the Dutch, how their cash flow will always come first. In any circumstance, however dire. “Why are they even thinking about money?”
I dealt in the jungle, under great pressure, with shock and denial (the first two phases of grief, I later learn). Now I have to deal with guilt, anger, and depression. I have to deal with them in between the visits. The whys: Why me? Why not Pasje? Why, why, why?
When my mother puts the coffee cups, the teacups, and the beer mugs and wineglasses in the dishwasher, the physical distance between the dining room and kitchen facilitates my cries. I shout my heart out.
My anger is very much compounded by how Mr. and Mrs. van der Pas behave. How they have so obviously separated themselves from me. And from my parents. Even though my parents have loved Pasje as a son, the van der Pases’s grief is now different; it is theirs. My parents understand this. I don’t. Don’t we share grief?
• • •
Then one day, Pasje’s parents finally come to visit me. When they enter the room, Pasje’s mother is one step ahead of his father. He follows her dutifully. Willem used to say he did not want to become like his father. That he had made that decision when he was sixteen, when his first love left him to go to Paris. “I knew then that I had it in me to be like him, but I decided not to become a pushover.” Well, he didn’t. But he did keep that same warmth as his father. With his mother’s good looks, though.
They sit down next to me. She is cold. He is shy. I look at her eyes. Willem’s eyes, but not quite! I decide to look at his father’s eyes instead while I talk.
I go back to the role I used to have when I stayed at their house. When I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Before Pasje’s mother turned on me for reasons that were never clear. I loved their house. Everything about it. The interior, the food, the garden, and all his family. I always felt at home.
Like I did then, I tell Pasje’s parents stories. I tell them I spoke to the families of the other crash victims: the sister of the Englishman and the Swedish widow. “Can you believe it?” I say. “It was his last business trip! They were going to retire and move to Portugal. Poor woman.”
Willem’s parents look more relaxed now. “The British woman was less eloquent,” I continue, “not as forthcoming. Perhaps you’d like to have their telephone numbers? You may want to organize some kind of class action.” I intend this as a nice gesture, because I am not a beneficiary. They have made it crystal clear to my parents that they are Willem’s legal heirs. I am not! We did not get married, after all. I hand them all the phone numbers. It looks like they are defrosting.
I tell them about Noemi. She called last night and asked whether we would like a school to be named after Pasje.
“The Willem van der Pas School,” I sound out. Now they look thrilled. On the way out, Mr. van der Pas tells my mother that, in a way, he is happy he can share grief with his wife. He has never been able to share the grief from her hard childhood. Now he can, and for that he is grateful. That is seeing the glass half full! If he indeed is a pushover, he is a saintly one. His weakness is his strength.
The Willem van der Pas School with Mr. and Mrs. van der Pas, Santiago, Chile, 1993
GETTING BACK ON MY FEET
On New Year’s Eve, I take my first steps. My whole family is present. My father walks next to me with a look in his eyes he must have had thirty years ago when I first walked on that same carpet. In that same living room, covering the same distance. I am relieved when I make it to the couch. Next to the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is all silver with tinsel around the white bulbs. As always, there are real candles on it as well. My siblings and I used to sit around the tree and watch them. Each of us would pick one candle and wait to see whose would last the longest. At the end, each candle would flicker as if fighting
for its life. My father would compare it to a struggling soul. Pasje would smile wryly. He, and some others, thought my father’s jokes were a bit perverse. My Pasje, who did not get to struggle.
I receive a letter from the international director of Vietnam Airlines, mailed from Hanoi, December 28, 1992: “On the occasion of New Year 1993, I would like to extend to you our warmest wishes. I hope that your health will be recovered soon. Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a happy 1993 to you and your family.”
Not a word about Pasje.
A week later I am notified there is a package for me at the post office. It’s a box sent by Vietnam Airlines. It contains our belongings, found in the jungle. Surrounded by my family, I open the box. My hands are trembling when I open the first package inside. Pasje’s 1940 Rolex! It is rusty and has stopped at twelve p.m.
My belongings are in a separate container: three packets of Philip Morris Super Lights cigarettes, a Bic lighter, and a camera.
It is an emotional moment. My brother ends up making light of it by saying he will have to stop smoking now: “I didn’t quite believe you when you said that you did have cigarettes when you decided to stop smoking. But if you managed to do it there, I should be able to do it here!”
As it turns out later, the camera still works. And there is film inside. I have it developed: the pictures slightly yellow but clear. Shots of Numachi and me in Tokyo, and the last picture of Pasje, taken by me on the balcony of his hotel room, November 13, 1992.
• • •
Numachi comes to visit me. He brings two bottles of sake all the way from Tokyo. They are made with splinters of real gold. He shakes one bottle like a snow globe to show me the golden flakes spinning. It touches me profoundly. Numachi was the last person to see my old self. He had also been with me in the jungle in the form of the dead Vietnamese man. In spirit. Now he is in the house that I grew up in. My worlds are colliding.
• • •
The whole month of January I spend getting back on my feet, literally and figuratively. After more than a month in a hospital-like setting, the outside world seems a dire place. My world has become so small. My first haircut feels like a huge undertaking. Riding in a car is scary, even as a passenger. And everyone knows my face from the papers, where I am being described as a “hero.” In reality I feel like a captured and nurtured animal being let back into the wild. The first time I enter a restaurant, the place falls silent. I finally become self-conscious.
Numachi visits, The Hague, January 3, 1992
There are still screws in my jaw that will need to be removed, as well as the many stiches on the skin grafts on my arms, legs, and feet. They will need plastic surgery. My hips are a bit twisted. One of my kidneys has dried up and died. My right foot lacks two toe tops, which creates diabetic-like nerve pain. But I can stand up and walk. And smile—though more witchlike and slightly deformed with my forward chin.
On February 1 I fly back to Madrid. With Jaime. My first flight as a normal passenger. It is awful, even with Jaime tuning in to my every need. But I have no choice. I have to resume my life and go back to work, as a frequent-flying banker.
I start in the office a week later. Nervous colleagues welcome me. My boss is warm and welcoming, but she seems to avoid eye contact. Many others do the same. One of the maintenance officers has made a special stool for me, to put my legs on, as I need to keep them elevated to prevent swelling. It is covered with red carpet.
I return to my old reality with a new skin: a thin one. So far, my friends and family in the Netherlands have provided a warm blanket. They all knew and loved Pasje. In Madrid, nobody knew him. Not even Jaime. This is both better and worse, in addition to the fact that Pasje and I did not share our daily life here. It makes it easier to shift my focus. I have more than enough distractions: the all-consuming job, the nightlife, Jaime’s company. All things that Pasje has not been part of and that I can take part in, albeit with a heavy heart.
It is when I am alone in my apartment that his absence hits me hardest. When I feel the finality of the verdict. The verdict of never and always: my Pasje—my compass, my alter ego—is gone. I can’t call him, hear his voice. Can’t get his view, his perspective. Ever again. Our perspective, gone. We are gone.
As great as they are, my friends cannot make up for my lost future. And I can’t blame them for having their own futures. But I do. Their lives have not stopped. They go on living. Their waning attention, compared to the overdose I received after the accident, hurts. They are busy getting married. Busy having children. It is difficult not to be jealous. I am angry. Angry at death, angry at life, at all my unmet expectations.
There are more than enough things I can focus my anger on. There is Pasje’s family, who I feel have abandoned me and repossessed him. There is his employer, by whom I also feel neglected. And there is the Vietnamese government. Just before Christmas, only one month after the crash, it passed a law specifically aimed at the crash victims and their relatives, limiting the airline’s liability to compensate foreigners.
I don’t believe the people in Madrid really notice. On the outside I am the same as ever, cheerful and making jokes. Inside the same bitter thoughts run through my head, day after day:
A whole new law! Just for us. What a nice Christmas present! Couldn’t they have used their energy to launch a proper inquiry into what happened? Why we crashed, why it took eight days to find us? Twenty thousand US dollars. Is that what Pasje’s life is worth? Is that what my future, my health, my kidney is worth? And ING Bank. Now I know why they call it the grocers’ bank. Why don’t they take care of me? They always treated us as a married couple, in good Dutch spirit. But now? A bunch of flowers, that’s all. No legal assistance, no financial assistance, as if I was just a fling! Bloody cheapskates. In good Dutch spirit indeed! If only we had gotten married. If only we had that piece of paper! Then his parents couldn’t have gotten away with all they did either! They would have no choice but to include me. And as a relative, at least I would have the right to organize a class action against Vietnam Airlines, killing several birds with one piece of paper.
And thoughts against Pasje’s parents, who seem to believe more and more that they are entitled to his belongings:
“It’s the law,” they say. Simple as that. The belongings of a grown man. Thirty-six years old! His things from our thirteen years as a couple are now at his parents’ house. Pictures, letters, the many things we bought together, collected bit by bit for our future home. Never mind the money I gave him to invest in the piece of land in Chile: for our retirement. And on top of that, they monopolize our friends! My friends. Mr. and Mrs. van der Pas have started a trust benefiting the school Noemi named after Pasje. They involved everyone but me.Thank God for Miebeth. At least she lets me pick up my personal belongings. She has orders to write down, meticulously, what I take. Two silver salt and pepper shakers Pasje and I bought in Chile. The many letters and notes I wrote to Pasje. He saved them all, tucked them so neatly into a tin box.
I am bitter. Very bitter. If only I were an official widow. Dressed in black, even. People would have to take notice of my loss. I wouldn’t feel so alone.
I resolve my anger with both ING Bank and Vietnam Airlines by writing them what I think I deserve. Although both efforts are to no avail, it gives me relief: I have done what I can.
By accepting the verdict of never, I have planted the seed of always.
Perspectives
MIEBETH: It was two months later, at the end of January, that we heard of a possible body exchange. That the bodies of the three European men who had died in the crash might have ended up in the wrong coffins. Jack, the father of Hamish, the British victim, had suspected foul play by the Vietnamese after the crash. He had ordered another autopsy and had found out that this was not his son’s body. Hamish was not blond like the Swede. He had dark hair, like Willem.
The British authorities had approached the city of Breda. They wanted to exhume the body we had buried. In March we
heard that it was indeed Hamish’s body, that we had not buried Willem in Breda but the British crash victim.
It turned out that Willem had been cremated in Sweden. The Swede was still in a morgue in the UK. My parents went to Stockholm to pick up the ashes.
We all felt we should have some kind of simple ceremony, but my mother started to plan a complete second funeral. She was determined to have it her way, all the way this time.
I understood my mother’s grief, but she and I reacted in the exact opposite manner when it came to Annette. Where my mother chose to exclude, I had simply shifted all the love I felt for Willem to Annette.
A SECOND FUNERAL
In March my mother tells me that Pasje’s body has been inadvertently exchanged. It is difficult to believe that Pasje’s friends had carried an Englishman to his grave. That he has been cremated in Sweden. Apparently, Pasje’s parents traveled to Sweden to pick up his ashes and hid his urn in their carry-on to avoid formalities. Apparently, there would be a “second funeral” in Breda. I am invited for the ceremony but not for the tea afterward in their home. My parents, however, are able to arrange for me to be alone with his ashes on the day of the funeral, before everyone arrives.
At the cemetery, I walk past all the graves. It is a beautiful cemetery. Rustic, quiet. Surrounded on all sides by Dutch landscape: meadows of bright green grass with sturdy trees; dense, dark green bushes encroaching around the sides of the tombstones, pulling them into nature. I hadn’t noticed the view the first time. I remember pictures of the cemetery I saw in magazines but none in my mind. Just the white roses on the coffin. My roses. I am anxious. How can I not remember my Pasje’s grave? I look around. How did we get here? How did our story turn from a fairy tale into a horror movie into a soap opera?
Last time I remember being in these woods, Pasje and I were still on track. He had been bragging about his beloved Breda. As always, he was trying to convince me to settle there one day. I was extremely reluctant. Having grown up both in a bigger city and by the sea, I found it a strange notion to think of settling away from either. We had gone for a walk, against my lazy will. It was more than worth the effort. We had walked and talked for hours, with his arm around my shoulders—his favorite way.
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