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06/19/2005: "Finally a long awaited update about the past week"

It's been a week again since I have written and I apologise to you all.
Only somewhere last week I mentioned to people that I will now more regularly update my journal... and what do I do? Wait a week.

This is because it has been such a weird and wonderful (partly) week and it went so fast that before I knew it we landed at today. So here's the long, long story about the past week.

The week began Monday. When I walked to the busstop and called Angela everything was fine. She sorta sounded fine and said she felt ok. However, all of this changed about an hour later just after I came home. There was something stupid with a website that had changed and she wanted to search for something on it. Of course now, because it had changed, she could not find what she was looking forward and somehow that totally pushed her downhill. She suddenly was so negative, staring in the distance, saying she did not know how to get out anymore, that all the shit was just too much to deal with. Even when I said I knew there is a light at the end of the tunnel (somewhere) she didn't know where or how to reach it. Basically: it scared the hell out of me, seeing her like that. Just the total negativeness and total helplesness...
However, in the following week we did turn this around for the most part, talking a lot and trying to get onto the positive road again, more about thaqt later. I guess the talking about how we are gonna get ourselves on the road again and how we can get out of this mess was the only good thing that came out of this evening!
In the end I think it was 23:30 that I finally tried to get some sleep, as I was already knackered when I came home from work. Sleeping was difficult though, with her emotions fresh in my mind I guess I just collapsed from total exhaustion. Sleeping but not resting, that was the kind of way I came through the night.

Pete's cremation

Tuesday's I would start work earlier (I had discussed this with my office manager) as Angela would already pick me up at 11:15 to go to Pete's cremation. However, I only managed to get to work half an hour early, because of what happened Monday evening.
Anyway, Angela only picked me up at 11:30 as she had already been in the first queue while driving to my work. Basically: 3 queues and a missed exit later (and about 2 hours later) we finally drove onto the parking lot of the crematorium. Then we could not find the correct entrance there and there was honestly no one around to ask... So we finally ran into the correct room at 13:40, it had said 13:30 on the card...and 1 minute later we heard: This was the service for.... So we had missed it!!!

The ceremony had in total only been 13 minutes and we had missed it. The lunch with all people who had been there afterwards took longer. However, this was the way Pete had wanted it and we have to respect that. During the lunch we talked a long time to one of his best friends who had also read his eulogy. He had more copies of this and when we asked whether we could read it (as we had missed it) he just gave the paper to us. We also talked to some other fellow radioamateurs, about Pete, about what he would be missed for but we also laughed about him and shared our stories. I guess that way we still sorta had a ceremony for him, not officially but one which was unofficial and personal.
I guess it was only about 2 hours (at least) later that we went on our way again.
And even though we missed the official part, it still feels in some weird way that we said goodbye to Pete in the correct way. We will never forget him!

After this we drove to someone who had bought some things from the radioclub and as this was in the neighbourhood we could combine it. He was happy and we were too, the car was now empty again...!

As it was such a glorious day we drove home over the small roads, not the highway. This also because we drove through some of the nicest parts of the Netherlands: de Veluwe. Marvellous nature, small vilages... great.
We had an icecream in some small village and then continued driving. Somewhere at the Veluwe we decided to have a stop and try to get dinner somewhere. We ended up at a really nice 'restaurant' in the woods. It was small but cosy and great to sit outside in the woods, hearing the birds and the wind and enjoying the weather. The food was delicious! The people were so nice and friendly (unlike here in the west) and it was just so relaxing. The idea of sitting there, enjoying the forest, enjoying the weather and the nice dinner and not having to hurry to get somewhere. Being able to take your time and just enjoy and relax. That has done us so much good! Also during the drive home and while having dinner we had some really really good conversations about where to go from here. It was just an awesome day overall, just the kind of reprise we needed. We have to do that last part of the day more often..just drive somewhere without being in a hurry and just enjoying the landscape, the forest, the sea...and just talk and listen to each other.

We were home around 22:30 ( I think) but it had been such a good end of the day that we felt much more relaxed and refreshed. It had certainly done us worlds of good!

There's much more to tell, but I have to shower now and then we are off to the club. Will tell something about the rest of the week tonight...