Monday 22nd October 2007.

Today started out like any other relaxing holiday day. But Papa got a call over lunch time that they had been expecting – but still, was not nice. Regina, a very close friend of theirs, passed away this morning. She’d been ill for a long time, and was here in Jemgum last year when I was. We spent a fair bit of time together and she was a nice person to spend time with. I don’t know the name of the disease she had (nobody’s ever told me), but it was slowly killing off her brain cells. She’d lost a lot of muscle strength by last year (and she’s only been sick for about 6 months at that stage), and she was having trouble swallowing, and had to be careful. It took a little while for me to understand her properly, because she spoke like someone who’d had a stroke, a bit, plus she’s from waaaay down south – and I can hardly understand them anyway – they speak funny J I have included one of the photos of her, sitting in the sun. We spent a lot of time out there together, drinking tea. She also had double vision really badly. I remember very clearly though, Mama taking her into Leer, to her Optitian to see if he could help at all. Papa and I met them in there after doing some shopping ourselves. The optitian had made great headway, and thought he had found the right prism of lenses and was pushing her (she was mostly confined to a wheelchair already) outside to give the lenses a test run (yeah – so wearing those sexy things they test your eyes with wasn’t maybe THE look for spring). Her face lit up like a child let free in a toy shop. He’d cracked it and she could see so perfectly again – the first time in months. He himself was really chuffed – it wasn’t an easy problem to fix, but he did. Unfortunately the glasses took a week to be made, since they were so specialized, and I had already left by then – but it was the coolest thing to see them having fought and won that battle. It gave her back some dignity (squinting one eye closed every time she wanted to see anything (including her food and drink) clearly wasn’t something she liked to do if anyone else was visiting), and at that stage it improved the quality of her life enormously.

So I will be going to Vera and Marc’s on Thursday, not Friday, since Mama and Papa need to go to Nürnberg (about 800kms south) for the funeral, which is early Friday morning.

We went into Leer to get the train ticket (it’s cheaper if you buy it a few days in advance), and I got a special into the bargain, which is great. Unfortunately I might have some delays on the last leg of my journey, since there is a strike planned for Thursday (I do seem to know when to pick the right days to travel, huh!). Distance trains are not allowed to be included in the strike, so I will get as far a Hamburg, no problem. From Hamburg to Kiel might be a bit of an issue, but it shouldn’t be as there are a couple of options with private local trains – so, yeah, they stop at every single station, but I should get there pretty much according to plan.
As you can imagine, the mood in the house is a little somber at the moment. Gina was a really good friend of Mama’s – they worked together, years ago, when Mama first headed south with her job.