Mamma Dies

At 22.24 CET tonight my mamma died.

I was with her when she took her last breath and she was aware that I was there. She was calm and in no pain. 

My darling mamma was always my most devoted supporter and defender. 

I am at a loss.

Covid-19; Yet Another Reason For Using SecondLife

In these, the latter days, with all the panic caused by the pandemic of the Covid-19 virus, and the calls for social distancing to inhibit the spread of the disease virtual realities like SecondLife can fill the void with our needs as humans for safe social interaction.

Although Sweden as yet has only 775 (8 per 100,000 inhabitants) confirmed cases and no deaths so far, signs of the ongoing panic are emerging. When I visited the pharmacy today, I was informed that they were rationing paracetamol to only 2 items per person as people had been stockpiling the medication. I am sure there are other things being rationed also, but I haven't encountered them.

My elderly mother lives in an assisted living facility where relatives have been asked to completely avoid or severely limit visits until further notice, especially if they have upper respiratory symptoms.

Neighbouring Denmark is closing its borders from 12 PM (noon) tomorrow Saturday, March 14^th until April 13^th. Travelers will be rejected at the border if they cannot show that they work in the country or have an exceptional reason for entry.

TBIF!!!

Thank the Babylonians, it's Friday.

I am going to take it easy all weekend, walk around in my boxers and a T-shirt, read, blog, eat, drink, visit in SecondLife, take naps and then some sleep. It's going to be absolutely fabulous!

Sunday afternoon I will visit with mother and in the evening I will spend an hour doing some housework like paying bills, doing my laundry and dishes and then generally just lounge around a bit more.

I still congratulate myself for my wisdom in deciding to have a cleaning company come to me every third Thursday. All those old guilty thoughts about "You have to clean up, this is getting nasty!" have just vanished and the cost is bearable.

TBIF everyone!

When the Fog Descends

It cannot be easy, when the once familiar landscapes that are your life and your memories are covered by a slowly descending fog. Who are you, when you lose your memories of events, people and your actions, your reactions, your feelings, your relationships and your position on the map?

I can understand the fear, the bewilderment and the panic, when you simply cannot remember what you did two days ago or what you said or talked about just a few minutes ago.

Still, it isn't easy to accompany someone on their journey to oblivion, when the fogs are descending and everything that was once important to both of you is being forgotten by them, bit by bit.

North Fork Fog by Lolly Shera

Everytime I visit with my mother these days our talks always start with her telling me how good of me to come, because it's all so terrible and I have to help her. "He" has left her, she tells me, and has moved in with another woman just across the market square from her apartment and "he" now wants a divorce. She is referring to my father who died in January last year after 64 years of marriage.

It is a familiar routine now, to remind her that my father has not left her but has died, that she actually was there when it happened. She then tells me, "Yes, now I remember. I saw through the window how they were trying to resuscitate him. I saw when he died." But then she continues, "Why does he want a divorce, we have always been happy..?" 

After talking it through for a while, she settles down and can talk about other things, mainly about me, my sister and her grandchildren. At least she still remembers us and our names, although most other people are forgotten as if they never have existed.

She has now been prescribed inhibiting drugs to slow down the progression of the dementia. My sister and I and my nephew and nieces all work during the week so we also have her on home care services five times a day, mainly to see to it that she eats properly and takes her medication in an orderly fashion.

Still, I feel a lot of guilt at not taking care of mother properly.

Round Up

Fijne verjaardag! Ik denk nog steeds over u en zorg voor u, zelfs als ik nooit in staat zal zijn om weer met u spreken.

Don't blame me for the lousy translation, blame Google translate.

P.S. Ooooppps, this is a week early, but anyway....
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And in other news...

• Today I start my five (5) day long Easter vacation. No early mornings until Tuesday next week. Yeehaaaaaw!
• My hearing impaired mother managed to break her hearing aid yesterday. Which means the poor miserable woman will be completely incommunicado by telephone and will not be able to listen to radio or watch television (if the programs don't have subtitles). The good news is that she will hopefully get her hearing aid back on Tuesday.

The Summer of 2015, Part 2: The Struggle

I am a privileged man, born into and raised by warm, loving, caring and accepting parents who created a stable nuclear family with no major dysfunctions. I am socially, materially and financially comfortable with a job I love. I don't suffer from any health issues or conditions that incapacitate me or require lifelong treatment. I have never starved, never been abused and never beaten. What do I have to complain about?

The answer is obvious, nothing really because I am most certainly among the 5% of the world's population who are best off. So I am aware that there are billions upon billions who are worse off if we were comparing or in a suffering contest. But we aren't, are we?

Just writing this post makes me feel petulant, childish and prissy, so please bear with me. With all my fortunate situation, I have still not been happy this whole horrible year.

I hate death!

Death means someone I love leaves. And not only that they leave me. Being left makes me very angry. I have never learned how to relate to that in a good way.

So my father died in January and my mother went sort of crazy for a while after that. I haven't grieved my father's death properly yet. I haven't shed a tear yet, instead I have been sort of balancing and "coping". Whether this lack of reaction is due to my antidepressants or not, I cannot say.

The reaction I have had instead is fatigue and tenseness and being antisocial. I am so tense that I actually gnawed through two perfectly healthy teeth and a tooth implant in my sleep. Now it seems, I may have damaged another one despite the fact that I now have a tooth guard. The fatigue and anti-socialness leads to me withdrawing from the company of almost everyone, except those who are closest to me.

Although the worst bit seems to be over now, there is still a way to go. And I will make it, thanks to myself, my Tomais and my friends in first life and in SecondLife. 

Mother

I just got off the phone with my mother. She called me, crying, and told me she could not take it any longer."He didn't sleep here last night and he hasn't been home all day. He must be with her, I don't understand why he is doing this to me..."

The man she is talking about is my father, who passed away on January 28, 2015.

I tried to get mother calm. I reminded her that she was there when father died and saw when he was given CPR and when he took his last breath. "Yes", she confirmed "I remember all that, but where are these strange thoughts coming from? Why am I thinking of this woman and there being something to do with your father?" We talked on about how they had been married for almost 65 years. How my father loved her very much, and she him from the beginning when they met until the end. How he never ever slept away from her during all those years, if he could help it.

Mother was calm again when we finished and was going to bed, because she was feeling very tired.

I can with absolute knowledge say, that if my father had had an affair and had moved out of the house we in the family would all know. Mine is not a family in which one is allowed to keep such things secret, not for very long and we all get involved in the end - always.

This has been going on for about six weeks, not constantly, but from time to time. At first we - my older sister and I - didn't understand what the hell was going on and we put it down to grief. After a while we were told that hallucinations and a change of mental status sometimes can be the only visible symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI) in elderly people.

Last Friday I took my mother to the doctor for a checkup. The checkup showed no signs of a UTI so that wasn't the cause of the strange thoughts. What was discovered through a blood count test was that my mother had acute anemia. Her hemoglobin count was only 72 g/L (normal (121 to 151 g/L). The doctor believed that this could - possibly - account for mother's strange thoughts and hallucinations.

Mother was immediately admitted to hospital, with many protests and the promise it would only be overnight, and was given three bags of blood.

The reason for the anemia still remains unclear and is going to be investigated without hospitalization, as that is the only way my mother will accept.

It would seem that the blood transfusions haven't helped, not yet anyway. The whole thing makes me very sad and unhappy.

My Unborn Children

The other night Tomais was fixing up his new hangar at New Horizons Airport while Kahvy helped him with door scripts and I stood around helping by merely being my beautiful self.

Somehow the conversation turned to parenting, which I of course am an expert in. Well, at least in theory even if not so much in practice. If you ask me, I actually do believe I could give even Supernanny some constructive criticism and a pointer or two or three on parenting skills...

The conversation has stuck with me afterwards and has made me remember how I, in my mid-teens, used to imagine being a father and having kids, but even then there was somehow never a mother around in my imaginary family. (This was of course before I realized I was a full-blown Kinsey type 6.) I had even decided on names for my kids, the son would be named Simon and the daughter Tekla.

Being childless is perhaps the only thing that frustrates me from time to time, especially now when I can see how my mother is helped and supported by her doting children and grandchildren. I imagine myself relying on the kindness of strangers when I get old and incapacitated and that doesn't feel very reassuring at times. Although I imagine my nieces and nephews and their kids in turn could possibly be guilted into taking turns to invite me over for Christmas dinner, with the promise of being written into my will.

At other times, I am completely comfortable with with being childless and relieved that I never took on that challenge as I believe I would have been an utterly horrible father, as evidenced by my miserable failure as a step father in the virtual world.

Nonetheless, it is to late now to do anything about it and I have resigned myself to the fact that there will be no issue from my loins or from a turkey baster. Instead I try to pass on "my names" to every pregnant mother or soon-to-be father who happen to cross my ways.

A Looooooooooong Weekend

I was supposed to work half the day tomorrow, but I have taken the day off, Friday is a holiday and then there is the weekend, so now I get f-o-u-r whole wonderful days off from work! WooT!!!

And boy do I need it!

Since my last visit with my sweet Hungarian doctor a month ago I am under instructions to reduce my normal daily dose of antidepressants from 20 mg to 10 mg. I have done that quiet successfully without any major setbacks. I do however feel unfocused, tired and in need of more sleep and I also feel an increased melancholy. Although my doctor told me that I can increase the dosage to 15 mg or 20 mg if and when I feel the need, I still want to give the lower dosage a chance to stabilize so I can get a sense of how I will feel.

I am going to use the long weekend in first life to relax, rest, sleep more and visit with mother once or twice. My laziness during these four days will break every existing record, I can promise you that!

In SecondLife I am going to kick-start the immense "Organize Your Inventory"-project. It hasn't been done before during my more than eight years here, so it is really high time to take control of it and get it in some order. Every time my well organized hubby gets a glimpse of my Inventory he cries out in shock and amazement "You have everything stored in the root folder, that is crazy!" or something to that effect...

Furthermore I am hoping that Botanical will finally release it's new products so that we can finally finish Project -15, the landscaping project in the South-East corner of the sim. It already looks wonderful and I am extremely happy with the results so far of the toils of Samuel Fallen, of Lytton & Fallen, and Tomais Ashdene and Butch Diavolo, of Southern Charm.

Once the landscaping is all done Tomais and I are going to throw a party to celebrate. You will all receive an invitation through the blog and/or personally.

The 8th and 9th Days After

On Thursday I visited with dad one last time.

My father was laying in a casket, without the lid on, in a large chapel where all religious symbols had been removed. The sunlight was streaming in through the big windows, it was a unusually sunny day. Around the casket six large candles had been placed on safe distance so that one could walk between them and the coffin.

Someone had also put a red rose in his left hand. The right hand was covered, as the undertakers assistant told us, because it had been badly bruised and the bruises had torn when he had been stored in the freezer.

I was - thankfully - accompanied to this visit by my oldest niece, who is also a registered nurse.

My dad looked peaceful enough, but as if he had been in a fight at the end. The veins on his eyelids, closest to the lashes, were red and seemed to have burst. He also had two symmetrically placed bruises on his upper lip, which my niece informed me, was from when they had tried to resurrect him in the ambulance and at the hospital.

Dad was cold to the touch, as I felt when I held his hand and caressed his cheeks. One or two of the hairs in his left eyebrow were sticking out, which made me wish that I had brought a pair of small scissors along so I could have cut them. Instead I gently stroked them down and blended them with the rest of his left eyebrow.

Inside I was in complete and utter turmoil, my mind was moving fast through memories of dad from throughout my life. On the outside I must have appeared calm, a few small tears nothing more.

My father was a loving, caring and accepting father. He loved my mother, me and my siblings dearly and did everything he possibly could to protect us, save us and carry us. Dad also knew all my trigger points and was the only person who could - the few times that he wished to - drive me from calm serenity to a wild frenzy in 15 seconds flat, and then he would ask me calmly why I was so angry...

My niece and I only stayed about 20 minutes, not long at all considering. Outside the chapel we hugged and said a few words and then went each on our own way. She was going to pick up her kids from daycare, while I was going back to my mothers home.

---
Nine days after my father had passed away, on Friday, I suddenly realized one of the reason why I was in this strange state of feeling and thinking so much, but not expressing anything, as if I was cloaked in numbness over an uproar of torrential feelings. All was expressed in being much more tired and a slight irritability.

The reason was of course the antidepressants I have been on for 4,5 years now, since a couple of months after Ars died. 20 mg of Cipralex daily has an effect in the long run.

I felt terribly stupid for not having realized the connection earlier.

Catching Up with My Lives

After a good night sleeps my internal hard drives have started working again as they are supposed to do and I have started catching up with my lives.

So what has been going on while I was away in Uppsala for three days and zonked out for a fourth?

My parents, who live on the fifth floor in their building, have been trapped inside for four days because the elevator stopped working, apparently some safety fuse burned out. 

In modern day Sweden it has become customary for the service companies to keep as few essential parts as possible in stock, so they had to order it from the manufacturers in Germany or some similarly "distant" country, and not by express delivery or overnight shipping either. Instead my elderly parents and some of their similarly elder neighbors were held as prisoners in their homes.

My mother told me she had actually gone down to the mailbox, which in modern Swedish buildings are located on the ground floor close to the entrance, on the second day. Going down had been easy she said, but getting back up to the apartment again had taken her several hours in the stairs. I promptly scolded her for this adventurous trip, while at the same time understanding why she did it.

Luckily my parents - as always - had been well stocked with food and other essentials, except they ran out of milk, and could stay indoors.

However it seems to me that modern Swedish society seems to willingly making itself more and more vulnerable and unable to handle "unexpected" or other crisis situations. Our modern day society seems to live with the concept that everyone is young, healthy and fully functional, which should be apparent for everyone that we aren't as the population gets more and more elderly and modern technology exposes us to a larger dependency of spare parts. Nothing these days can be banged into place or fixed with a rubber band, you need an electronic card or something highly complicated.

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My dear friend and mentor in blogging, the amazing Eddi Haskell celebrated his seventh rezday on Wednesday January 22, 2014.

Belated congratulations to you my friend!

Eddi shares some of his accumulated wisdom on life in SecondLife in his celebratory Ask Eddi-post, Ask Eddi: What Advice Can You Give To Others After Being a Second Life Resident For 7 years?


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"Sailor in the wild..." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"911, called." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"Isle of Mousai" Photography by Tomais Ashdene

My husband Tom has been busy photographing and today posted this wonderful picture on his Tumblr. For more of Tomais photography please visit Flickr - Tomais Ashdene or Photomonkey SL (NSFW).

Note: I changed the photos because my hubby informed me that the two above were the ones he actually did while I was away, while the first picture I posted was done several months ago.

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My bosom buddy Apmel Goosson on his blog "My Avatar's Name is Apmel" in two posts informs his readers about the project that has been going on Tom's and my home-sim Southern Charm over the last week, which will come to it's conclusion with a concert by Ultraviolet Alter in an installation by Betty Tureaud today Friday January 24, 2014, 2PM SLT.

SLurl to the event

Apmel's posts can be read here: Oändligt långt från Southern Charm (in Swedish, but translation is available) and here Friday Tip: The Infinity Space over Southern Charm (in Swedish but translation is available)

Early Notice

My eyesight is getting worse almost by the day. Since childhood I have only really had one functional eye. Although my left eye looks normal and moves around as it should, I have never been able to use it for anything other than peripheral vision (I can see things coming at me from the left). No visual aids can correct it.

My right eye is hyperopic (farsighted) with astigmatism and I have used glasses or lenses since I was three. Until about two years ago I could see very well with correctional aids, but I started having problems reading smaller text, like text-messages, on my cellphone. As this problem accelerated I went to my optician and told him I thought I needed a new prescription, but after the examination I was told that my eyesight hadn't changed much from the previous examination. Anyhow I ended up with a new pair of reading glasses after that visit.

Then I started noticing that things got blurry and doubled. If I was looking at something I saw sort of a shadow image slightly off which blurred the whole image. A visit to the eye-doctor, I was diagnosed with having cataracts but the silly woman told me it was too early to operate even if I tried to convince her of my unfortunate situation. 

Two months ago a nearsighted colleague at work had laser surgery done on his eyes, he came back to work a few days later with perfect vision. He suggested I should make an appointment with that place and get a check-up there to see if they could help. Two weeks after this my 83 y.o. mother had both her eyes operated on (at the same time), her sight is now nearly perfect also. 

I must be able to read and write easily, as those and my devious brain are the tools of my trade. There is also the possibility .that my drivers licence could be recalled as I may no longer fulfill the requirements set. It doesn't help me at all to get an operation later in life, I need it now to be able to work properly.

So a few weeks ago I went to the clinic where I after a full and extensive examination was told that they could help me if my left eye had not been in such a poor condition. As the situation was they refused to perform any operation on my right eye. They however referred me to a specialist on eye surgery for a second opinion. A short while afterwards I had an appointment for an examination with a possible operation on Monday June 17th.

So on the first morning of my upcoming vacation I am hoping to get operated on. If the surgeon seems to hesitate I am going to bargain, argue, plead, beg and possibly even threaten him to make him perform the operation.   As the main - but minute - risk with the operation is the possibility of infection I am also going to tell him I can come to the clinic as often as he wishes for them to keep that risk at bay.

Although both my colleague and my mother noticed immediate improvements, I am not sure what to expect for myself, so I wanted to inform you not to worry if there are no posts for a couple of days.

Email to the Wilson´s

From: X.X.
Sent: December 15, 2012 8:53 PM
To: Debbie.X.
Subject: Happy Holidays

Dearest Debbie, Marie and the rest of my American family,

We have another Christmas and New Year coming up and I wish you all the best for the holidays and the coming year. I hope this email reaches you all in good health and that you are all doing well!

In my first life, 2012 has been a kind and consoling year and it seems that I, in spite of a few bad turns during the year, will be meeting it will all my loved ones still with me. My mother and father have both been hospitalized during the year but are both now doing very well and are – as always – enjoying each other’s company. I have two more grandnieces/grandnephews as my sisters children continue to multiply.

On a personal level I am doing well too. Although I still think of Doug/Ars on a daily basis it is now happy memories that appear in my mind. You should also know, that whenever I think of him I also think about you. Of course I already knew that you were an extraordinary family but recounts of other peoples experiences in similar circumstances have made it quite obvious to me that you are unique. The warmth, kindness and consideration with which the Wilson family received me and accepted me in such a difficult situation is still unparalleled by anything I have yet heard of. I will be forever grateful to you for that.

My SecondLife is also doing well, Guyke, Millimina and Dej are still close, in fact Dej has moved in and set up house on the south west corner of Southern Charm sim. I am sure all three of them and Jeb also send you their warmest greetings for the holidays and the new year.

With love and big hugs!
Bock

Two Turtle Doves

My parents are - finally - reunited again after my fathers short stint at the local hospital.

When I saw my father yesterday he was despondent, feeling abandoned and talking about how he was going to die in the hospital bed where he had been since September 29.

"Everyone else goes home after a day or two here, but they keep me. They will never send me home! I am bored to death and I worry about mother. She doesn't like to be alone, you know, and I don't like to leave her alone either. I miss her."

The two met when my father was 15 and my mother was 16. They married in april 1950 and since then have never been much away from each other, except for their various hospital stays in recent years.

As far as I can remember my parents have always shown their love for each other in an unassuming but highly visible way, except for a short period nearly thirty years ago when I was in my early teens.

As far as I and my older sister (who was married and had moved away by then) have been able to piece together from what we remember and overheard, my father must have had a short romantic fling at the office. When my father broke it off after a few weeks the woman felt obliged to call my mother to inform her of what had been going on.

I remember my mother crying a lot and my father going around and looking like a whipped dog. At the time it felt like this went on for an eternity, but in hindsight it cannot have been for longer than two months until they found their way back to each other. At first very tentatively and carefully but soon their love flowed again and filled the whole family with joy and reassurance that everything was still well in the world.

I remembered that time when I saw them together today. Both radiating with happiness at seeing and touching each other and for being together again.

For some reason I started singing a rewritten stanza from The twelve days of Christmas to myself in the car on my way home, again and again and again... "two turtle doves and a son in a virtual reality" (Yeah, I know the words don´t fit the music well - but I did not receive the Nobel Prize in Literature this year either.)

"Doing A Bock"

When I walked into the lunchroom at work today I overheard two co-workers talking.
- "Yesterday I did a Bock!"
- "Oh, what do you mean?"
- "Well, I went to bed when I came home and slept until midnight. Then I got up went to the bathroom. ate a little, drank a little, watched television a little and went back to bed again two hours later to sleep until it was time to get up for work."

The word of my strange habits seem to be spreading. Actually I have done two Bock´s in a row this week, yesterday and the day before, and still i feel tired. I am blaming the arrival of autumn and the darned continuous raining.

After work most days I check in with my dad at the hospital, then over to my mother to see that she is OK too and then home to hit the bed after taking two painkillers for my more or less permanent headache. Anyway my father is getting better and my mother is doing well, so all is well in the world!

Pro-cras-ti-na-tion

I don´t understand whats going on with me at the moment. Although I long to immerse myself in SecondLife and get back in touch with my friends and family there and with my home things seem to come up to stop me all the time.

Today I had planned to log in. I had taken half the day of from work for a with my dental hygienist and my doctor and a few other essential errands and once they were done I was going to log back in and check the tings I know are waiting in my mailbox and see how the sim was doing and get back in touch with you all.

This time I was "only" going to take a short nap before getting in, the nap lasted six hours and I just woke up and am still tired- Other days, I feel like I have had an "overdose of people" and just cannot handle more social contact but just want to be alone, which is rather strange for me because usually I cannot get enough of friends or family.

Otherwise my first life is running smoothly. I have just signed up a team of cleaners that will drop by for three hours every third week, My parents are doing very well and are in love again - at 81 and 82 and after 62 years together - believe it or not. Is it strange that I am a creature of habit and long lasting relationships with such an inheritance?

Well, all I can say now is that I am now p-l-a-n-n-i-n-g to reenter SecondLife tomorrow Friday. Hopefully noting will interfere this time.

EURO 2012™

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012™ starts today, June 8, and goes on until July 1.

• My mother will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• My father will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• My sister and my brother in-law in first life will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• Millimina Salamander will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• Apmel Goosson - and all his Apmels - will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• Anton Hysén will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• All of my friends and family, gay or straight and men or women, in first life will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• All of my workmates, gay or straight and men or women, will be watching it and talking about it all the time.
• Every straight or gay man and almost every woman and child in Europe will be watching it and talking about it all the time-
• Every gay or straight European male avatar and almost every European female avatar in SecondLife will be watching it and talking about it all the time

The only redeeming thing about this months of boring soccer matches will be the opportunity to look at the nice legs of the soccer players once in awhile.

Soccer Legs by A la Corey

Soccer Legs by Lawrenz Loh

The Old Spice Guy

It´s father´s day in Sweden today and I just got off the phone with my own father.

I love my father dearly and I also know that my father loves me with a deep and unfailing love, just like he has always loved my mother and my sisters. Nonetheless we have always had some problem communicating directly with each other ever since I was an adolescent. For deep heart-to-heart conversations we always needed my mother presence - or one of my sisters - otherwise we end up yelling at each other. It´s strange, really strange, because both of us want to avoid these unnecessary conflicts but we end up misunderstanding each other without an interpreter to cool things down.

My father´s passion for his immediate family stems from his strange childhood, I believe. He was born in the 1930´s when my grandmother and grandfather had not yet been married. Apparently it was a huge scandal those days, so my grandmother traveled with my infant father from the countryside where she was living to the largest town close by.

With the infant boy in her arms she apparently walked the streets of the small town and asked women she met if they would like to have him and take care of him. Finally she met a woman who agreed to do this and my father was handed over to the other woman.

My father did not meet his mother again until he was 18 years old. The reason for this meeting was that he was going to do his military service and the military asked him which of three surnames was his true one. They sent him to his birth mother to find out. Dad went to meet her together with my mother, whom he had met and fallen madly in love with when he was 15.

At the meeting my grandmother told my father that she had married my grandfather soon after dropping off my father. They now had five more children together. She had however never considered bringing back my father. The visit was successful in the sense that my father could return to the military and inform them of his correct surname, but in every other way it was seemingly a total disaster.

The contact between my grandmother and my father in particular, but also with my mother, remained strained for the rest of my grandmothers life. I cannot remember meeting her more than at the most 10 times, partly because we were living abroad but also because there was no will on either part to meet.

This background and the intense love between my parents has made us a very close knit family. Both my parents have always showered us kids with love and support in every situation. We still great each other with pecks on the lips and hugs.

Since my childhood there is one scent that I will forever associate with my father, even through the years when it was no longer fashionable, and that is the scent of the original "Old Spice".

All Is Well In Both Worlds

"The Artists Mother" by Edouard Manet

Today mother is finally back home again.

My mother is tired and happy and has her oxygen plugged in while she rest in her own bed without lumps and with her own soft pillows and with her old companion pampering and fussing over her.

My father is happy and tired because he didn't sleep at all last night from was worrying that something would happen to prevent mother from coming home. (So now you know where I get my worrying from.)

I am just happy that they are both happy. What the future holds we do not know, but we will deal with it when it comes.

Bill, Mum & Dad

I have been thinking about Ars and this song all day, so let me share it with you all. I have posted it once before, but that was during this blogs Swedish era.

"Bill"
lyrics P. G. Wodehouse & music Jerome Kern

I used to dream that I would discover
The perfect lover someday.
I knew I'd recognize him if ever
He came 'round my way.
I always used to fancy then
He'd be one of the God-like kind of men
With a giant brain and a noble head
Like the heroes bold
In the books I've read.
But along came Bill
Who's not the type at all,
You'd meet him on the street
And never notice him.
His form and face,
His manly grace
Are not the kind that you
Would find in a statue,
And I can't explain,
It's surely not his brain
That makes me thrill -
I love him because he's wonderful,
Because he's just my Bill.

He can't play golf or tennis or polo,
Or sing a solo, or row.
He isn't half as handsome
As dozens of men that I know.
He isn't tall or straight or slim
And he dresses far worse than Ted or Jim.
And I can't explain why he should be
Just the one, one man in the world for me.
He's just my Bill an ordinary man,
He hasn't got a thing that I can brag about.
And yet to be
Upon his knee
So comfy and roomy
Seems natural to me.
Oh, I can't explain,
It's surely not his brain
That makes me thrill -
I love him because he's - I don't know...
Because he's just my Bill.

Helen Morgan completely owns this song and makes it all her own, in every little gesture, note and tone of voice. The excerpt is from the film musical "Show Boat" (1936).
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Now an update on my mother.

She is still in the hospital because the doctors decided it would be better to check where she is slowly bleeding from before sending her home. They suspect an ulcer or something in the gastrointestinal tract. This examination will take place on Monday, so we are all hoping she gets released from hospital on Tuesday.

All in all she is doing much better, even if she gets winded when she exerts herself. She is bored with the hospital routines and misses my father badly. Although my parents have talked with each other over the phone at least 3-4 times a day my father had only visited with her twice during these two weeks.

Every time I have asked father if he wants to come with me to visit her, he has said that his bad knees and feet were hurting him too much. My father was a very good soccer player in his youth, this career resulted in many injuries to his feet and knees which are unfortunately punishing him severely now.

So yesterday I meddled and told father that she misses him a lot. He answered that he misses her very much also but that his knees were hurting him really badly. Anyway, we agreed that I would take him there on Sunday, because we had a christening in the family today and I had to go there.

When I arrived for my visit with mother today after the christening, you can imagine my surprise to find my father already there. He had sneaked away behind my back and taken a taxi there while I was at the christening. They were both happily chatting away and both of them had roses on their cheeks and were in a really good mood.

It was good to see them. The love between my parents has always been visible and very strong. Through out my childhood and adulthood I can always remember seeing them light up when they saw each other. Their love made us, their children, feel safe and loved also. All was good in the world and would remain good as long as that love was there.

When I took my father home after his four hour visit, he was happy although he had severe pains.