Life in the Time of Corona Part 12
It will be hard to believe, but the surreal seam of vileness continued and on Monday my brother, Kim, died.
It was actually not long after we first moved to Spain that Kim was bothered by a cough that didn’t go away and he was diagnosed with Mesothelioma, an aggressive and incurable cancer that stems from exposure to asbestos, and only materialises after many decades of lying dormant.
We can’t or won’t say any more, because I don’t think any of us, in the family, wants to dwell on illness, sadness and loss. Kim certainly would not have wanted that.
Instead, we will remember all the very many good times and look forward to many more good times that Kim would love to share. Kim and his family were able to come to our wedding in September 2018, and they saw the construction site where our house now stands. I won’t believe that he can’t be here to see the completed house, take walks with us through this gorgeous countryside, kayak on a flat-calm lake, or sit down outside a bar with an ice-cold beer and some tapas, beneath the shade of a tree and watch the comings and goings. He will share in all this, with and through his lovely family. He will never not be here.
There is a strange parallel between what is going on here and elsewhere and what Kim’s wife, son and daughter are doing at their family home. The vestiges of illness are being eradicated - equipment and medications are being returned and the house restored to the home where they have lived for so many years. As the lock-down in Spain begins a de-escalation process that will gradually unveil a ‘new normal’ it is almost as if we, too, are stripping out those medical appliances and the trappings of sickness so that we can forget about what a bleak time this has all been. We can ultimately leave behind the ventilators, the rows of hospital beds, the medical teams in protective gear and emerge into a world that, for a moment in time, moved on without us. We were, all of us, shunted into some siding in a bleak no-mans-land while nature regrouped and prepared itself for our return.
When we do return, and when the scientific trappings and terminology have all been removed, we owe it to ourselves and those people we love to live a better life otherwise so much will have been in vain. This has been a time of unbearable sadness, but that is no legacy; we will count the good memories as they far outweigh the bad. We will share more good times, and we will laugh, and get tipsy, and enjoy delicious food and breathe clear air and we will be sharing it with those people who cannot, any longer, be here.
If you would like to read earlier posts in our chronicles of Life in the Time of Corona here in Spain, please click on the links below:
