about Kuki, again

Kuki, through the lens of Marius

(besides the first picture which I took away from Facebook, - thank you, Marius! - and a picture I took a few years back - the rest of the pictures were taken by Kuki when he came, with Bobi, to visit me and C in 2004.. You and I can see me and a bit of the NL through his eyes)

..Woke up with a startle this morning as someone was knocking on my bedroom's window..
These people are changing something on our facade in the garden and I promised that I would be awake so that they can use my electricity in the morning.

These promises we make..- for me it’s too early in the morning.

I slept too little, again. I am not really a queen of self care these days..

And I am sad. Still sad.
Grieving. Still grieving.

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I asked a friend the other day..
I said, there are all these stories in me.
All these sad (some horrible) stories, they want to be written. so they can go out of me. 

She said, if you write them down, burn them.
So that they go out of you but they also disappear. 
She said, only write what is healed.
I get that. 

In the same time, this sadness wants to be seen.
The grieving.
(If I burn my sad stories then nobody will see them but me. Only Mother Earth, who will take them in her big welcoming belly.)

The healed..
​I can write about the healed.
And about the healing ones and the healing.

Kuki flying to NL

I am not only grieving Kuki.
I am not only grieving them, all the good, incredibly light people that died or are still suffering after #colectiv.
​All the ones who flew away to Heaven, are still not decided or the ones who stay. And the ones who walked away on their own feet, with unseen wounds, with everything they saw, still in their eyes, with the smell forever in their memory. 

It’s now beyond that. And beyond.

Maybe every time we are touched by something so deep, it  goes to the core.

At least, that’s how it is with me.

Like the tsunami time in 2005. (I talked about this here)
On the surface it did not have anything to do with me at all. 
I was in Milan, with someone I loved, we were on a holiday to celebrate Christmas and New Year, I had a great job as an architect, lived in the NL, everything was fine.
Still, I saw the tsunami on the news in our hotel room and it hit me bad. Like the waves hit and killed ME.
..It took ME under water.
I died for a long time.

Maybe it was because the bodies looked so much like the bodies in RO end 89. (and I had not healed my PTSD because in RO we just don't know about that)
Maybe because it was Christmas and New Year’s, just like in RO 89.
Maybe it was because I dreamt the tsunami the night before it happened..
Maybe it was just because I am human and these huge emotions affect us all, unseen. Just like waves, the water on the surface of the ocean. If we allow them.

It was water, then.
​
It was fire, now.

---

@Schiphol coming to get them from the airport

What is important? Why do we live?
These questions, redundant somehow and in the same time, the most important.
We all ask them at one moment in our lives and it’s still important to ask them. To seek our answers.

I ask them often.
Especially when these big moments of sadness arrive.

Why is it not the same with big moments of happiness? I ask myself.
We seem to float faster on happiness but not in the same way and not for long.
..Maybe because we question happiness more than we do, sadness.
..Maybe because we feel that sadness is more “entitled” to have us tight in it’s grip..
(but why?)


From a vibrational point of view, I can see why sadness seems more powerful that happiness and why we let it.
It vibrates much slower.
Sadness makes us feel powerless.

It’s like we are under water and cannot breathe because there is this big - huge! - stone on us and we cannot move. We are trapped.
We think -  to escape this stone we should be able to move it.
We think we will have to gather ALL our strength and push it.
So we try and try and try to push it.
When we are tired, we have to stop. We wait.
We look around and wait, take in everything that would help us gather strength.
We eat and eat and eat.
We drink alcohol to forget about the stone.
We smoke and curse to help with the pain.
We have sex into oblivion..
Or we don’t eat.
​Or we have no words.
We mourn.
We cry...
..We let go.

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qwack qwack

Then, if we did it good, sometimes we become so light that we slip, ever so lightly and unknowingly,  out from under the rock..

Sometimes we find ourselves floating with the mermaids, just looking at this big stone of sadness, feeling almost curiosity.
​
This rock is so heavy, nothing could move it, still, we are not underneath it anymore.

And some other times.. we cannot let go at all.
Some other times we find reasons to not let go of our sadness,  anger and rage.
Some times we stay stuck under it for long long time, Sometimes forever...
Fish in wonderful colours are swimming around, plants are dancing, the sun rays reach us sometimes, somehow, like light pillars and arrows through the water.. We can even see, with the corner of our eye, the mermaids peaking from behind wondrous water creatures, giggling.
Still, we are stuck under the rock. and we think it’s right.
We find reasons to not let go.
In the same time, we cannot breathe.
We suffer.
We are angry and bitter.
We shout at the mermaids: go away with your dance and laughter, I am under a rock here.. I am in pain.
And we are also angry at ourselves for not being able to push the big rock, not knowing that we do not need to push. That pushing is not what will liberate us from under this rock. That lightness is what will liberates us.

Maybe this is one of the reasons we have put a timeline on grief.
40 days and then.. it should be over. 
I used to find it so irreverent to the dead. And to me.
The funerals where people laugh.. I found impossible to understand and accept.

I was 11 or 12 when my grandpa died, another one of the most wonderful people on Earth..
A few months before, my grandma, his wife, died, and my soul was already badly bruised.
People came at our place after the funeral, my own room was full of people.
They had coliva and they talked, at the beginning softly, like my grandpa was still sleeping - and then harder and harder.
To me, it was like they said, ok, he is not sleeping, he is dead and buried and gone. He will not wake up anymore. We can talk loudly, he does not hear anymore. 
And even - some dared to laugh and make jokes!!!!!
It was the most impossible thing to bear.
How dare they laugh! Tataie was dead and I felt I wanted to die, too.

I carried that big stone with me until recently, when I finally let go of my grandpa. Tataie.
It feels so wrong, doesn’t it, letting go of people we love.

In the same time, I discovered, it’s also a thing about culture, about what we collectively learned and assume.
Other people understand this differently. 
Especially if someone like Kuki, as wonderful, funny, kind, cheeky, with his beautiful smile and warm blue eyes, good like honey, dies.

In the NL his funeral or cremation would probably be totally different than in RO.
At his funeral in the NL people would probably remember him as he was, they would look together at pictures and videos of him, enjoy his favourite music, remember his jokes, those past times when he said and did something funny or wonderful. Kuki would come unseen at his own funeral and laugh at our jokes, would say goodbye to us, one by one would kiss our foreheads and maybe.. maybe be happy, smile and laugh with us. 

Some of my friends here (in the NL) have talked to me about their funerals and I suppose everybody (besides probably my Romanian-Dutch friends) has it already planned: What music they would want played (and no, in the NL it’s not only the priest singing); Where they would be cremated or buried and how. Some of them will live for more than 90 years and still, they have it all planned.

I found it really morbid in the beginning.
I still cringe when insurance companies ask me (which they often do): did you already plan your cremation?
No. I didn’t yet.
But I probably will, soon.

---

in A'dam

Death is part of life and it can happen anytime. It's worth saying it even if "we know it". Sometimes it happens sooner than later. 
We don’t want to see it  / talk about it (even in the NL, even if we plan our funerals or cremations long before we die).. Maybe because we don’t know what’s on the other side.
And we fear our own disappearance. We don't want to think about it and feel the pain of our mortality.
And we are sad that we cannot see and hug our beloveds that passed. We don’t know where they are.

Only now we actually kind of know.
It is not a thing about “believing" anymore.
It is part of our collective awakening - that we are souls incarnated in a body.
That the body is like a vessel that we, as souls, inhabit and fare in through the world..
That our soul, that spark of light that is immortal, the 26 g, is freed by death to fly and choose a new adventure.
That we choose, that it’s our choice to come live on Earth in this vessel, that we choose our parents and some circumstances, that we choose to forget our immortal-ness so that we can take responsibility for life...

These things and more are clear for me..
And.. knowing these things helps me see things differently.
I know grieve and unfinished business keeps our souls trapped between worlds when we die. 
I know my grieve can keep the soul of a loved one attached to Earth.. 
​
In the same time, if Kuki dies, I grieve enormously.
So I grieve and I let go.
And when I'll see myself next to the sadness stone, floating in the water with the mermaids, I will rejoice.

---

in A'dam (@wagamama?)

As a society - and I believe more in RO than NL, we learned and learn to feel guilty when we stop mourning. 
Why, why do we have to feel guilty?

Yes, we should keep the memory alive, especially one of such a wonderful person as Kuki. But what we also tend to do, we also hold on to the rage and deep sadness that his death brought.

Sometimes for a long long time.

Sometimes forever.

---

In this case, the rage for what happened in #colectiv is fuelling a good change in the political life in RO.
Maybe.
(if we’ll not change rotten appels for rotten apples. We’ll see).
We want the guilty to be punished.

Rage.

Solidarity.

The dead and wounded are “our heroes”.

I am sorry, but no, they are not.
They are not our heroes.

A hero is someone who chooses to sacrifice her/himself for the good of others.
These good people were sacrificed (consciously or not).
They did not choose to sacrifice their lives, they LOVED life.
(ok, maybe on the soul level, they did choose. I don’t know that for sure and I am not talking about that level now).

And yes, some of these people are heroes because they went back into the fire to save other lives. And some of them died. They are our heroes because they chose selflessness in that moment of tragedy.
But they did not choose to be there in the fire.
They were put in that situation by other people: the un-heroes.

Consciously, the people who suffered in #colectiv would’ve never chosen to die by fire and suffocation, to have their flesh melted, so that we, the other Romanians, would finally move in such a big number, get a new prime-minister or a new mayor - even a new “Prea-Fericit”.. For us to “wake up” (again!!!) and get to the streets.. For us to shout against the corruption.

Sadly, corruption and “laissez faire”, (“merge si-asa"), which are the main culprits in this (if it was not criminal intent!!!), will be changed very-very-very little by this. If at all..

@home in The Hague

The rage that is fuelling us these days had a timely result.

Some of the people that had their hands in this will be punished. Some of the big rotten apples resigned.

And.. it should not stop here, not in the least.
We have to take many many steps further.

BUT.. the flame of this rage will die soon if it did not already.

Sadness is feeling powerless so sadness also has to be let go of.

Sadness and rage are not wise advisors and companions when we want long term, sustainable change.

We should choose another fuel if we want good, responsible changes. 

We should choose awareness.
Awareness should be the foundation for every other step we take.

---

I visited Kuki at work

On a personal level, I am aware of what our grief is doing to Kuki’s soul - and to mine.

When I let go of the sadness and rage, what remains is the gratefulness and love.

That he was part of my life, that I got to know him and be with him some of the days of my life, that I saw him travel this life as one of the kindest ever people.

That even when people were doing bad things to him, he never said a bad word about anybody.

People cheated him and he never said a bad word about them. Never cursed them. Never wished them dead.

Do you know how difficult that is? I found it excruciatingly difficult even to watch at the time. I told him he should fight.
But he was too kind to do that, even to people who were unkind to him.

And now, now I see people curse and insult each other in the wake of his death.
Wishing each other’s death because he and others had died.

​And I am in awe of Kuki.
And my grief turns to gratefulness - that I witnessed such grace. That he was my friend. I am grateful to have known him.
​
It takes me from under my rock, and it lets me float with the mermaids - and even smile a little, even laugh a little..

On a bigger level, the societal level, how can we fuel the changes with awareness?
How can we choose better for the future of RO (or even, for the future of Mother Earth?)? 
How can we choose with the eyes of love instead of the eyes of rage?
How can we make ourselves feel - and be! - powerful?
I believe we should give ourselves time to find really good people to lead Romania, not rush into elections when we do not know even anybody good enough. 
I believe we should put awareness into every little step we take these days, so we can take time and look, really look where we are going.
So that we choose wisely, more wisely than these last 26 years.
So we can see where we want to go. 
​
Just as I, on a personal level, had to learn to see again where I am walking after these last days of intense grief.

I believe we should concentrate on what we want - with love, recognition and gratefulness for what we want - in place of raging over what we don’t want.

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making swirls in A'dam

We tend to wrap ourselves around that big rock of grief, sadness and rage, pull a thick rope around it, fix our foot in the loop next to the stone, even strangle ourselves with the rope, on top of not being able to breathe the air because we are under water..
​
We tend to feel that we would not do our grief justice if we do not stick to it, if we don’t look at it all the time.

Some of us stand next to our grief our whole lives, never letting go of it, never taking our eyes of it, even sticking our foot and hands under it as much as possible, so it would hurt even more.

Because for some of us, consciously or unconsciously, if it does not hurt, life is not worth it. 

I believe that is not the reason we came to Earth for.

I believe, we did not come here to hold on to big rocks on the bottom of the ocean, where we cannot breathe and cannot see the light.

I believe, after a while, we should let the big boulder on the bottom of the water and not call it ours anymore.

I believe we should let our bodies float, in the beginning around the big stone, loving it and saying goodbye.
I believe we should see, really look at it, maybe take a picture of it in our hearts and then… let go.
I believe we should rise to the surface - the sun rays will catch us, caress us, welcome us back to life.

I will soon be able to see life as amazing as it is again.
And now I also have the eyes of Kuki to look through, Kuki loved life so much.
Thank you, Kuki.

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