Out of the way

Some thoughts on dead bodies. Maybe not everyone's idea of a fun read.

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I am in a gorgeous part of the countryside (maybe I will manage to post a photo of the gorge by and by) around Oslo at a meeting. It's hard work - despite the green, the water, the trees, I have seen mostly a screen and been in many many hours of meetings.

Working more than eight hours in a day is hard. I get compensated today with a comfortable bed, a good meal, nice wine.

Today I know two women were buried. One, I never knew. The friend of a friend, she was known in some way to many. A life extinguished prematurely, a person who is clearly missed. I see my friends' pain, and understand a little of what I have been like in the past, when I could not share something that hurt so.

The other was a friend. I have lost friends before, but I have never been able to imagine this. She was murdered, apparently by the man who was supposed to have been her lover, the one person who, of his own free choice, was meant to protect her from harm.

I can't understand. I can believe that she is gone in my head, but in my heart she is still somewhere there, complaining about work, looking forward to a holiday, wanting to do something and instead putting it off for some obligation, writing quietly, thinking about tomorrow or last week.

I can't find it in me to forgive and forget. I simply do not care what happens to him. I don't want him to die, or be killed, because that cannot bring her back, cannot take away the pain of the people who love her. I think I hope he lives a long time, and knows what he has done. Maybe he will realise, maybe he will one day understand and learn something. What other good can come of such a tragedy, such a waste of a life, the loss of a friend, a sister, a daughter, a loving person loved, with hopes and dreams and ideas and life?

As long as one person remembers her smile, the way she opened the door or shrugged her shoulders or disappeared into her thoughts, she is still with us. Her body lies with her grandmother in a place I may never go, but her memory is free to visit.

Words can only reflect the emptiness inside. We can do no more than go on loving, caring for ourselves, our lives, and the people around, those who have graced our lives with a moment, with years of their life.

Valete.

And if anyone has any say in it, I would like to have a week of good news please.

I am going to Finland for Assembly '06 at the start of August. The event sounds like fun, like the Gathering (the one in Norway, not the medieval event in Australia). It will be hard, just a few of us have to man a stand 24 hours a day, as well as give talks and maybe an online workshop or two, but hopefully we will get to meet a bunch more Opera users and community members, see some cool new widgets developed, and enjoy ourselves enough to cope with the stress

Afterwards I will get to see a new country - we have planned to spend a couple of days in Talinn, Estonia, to make up for our lost weekend. So I should find some time to resurrect my SVG map that let you interactively say where you have been. (The code is the easy part. The hard bit is gettting the data in the first place).

At some point I am also going to visit a friend's grave in Finland. It's not quite so much fun as geeking out and having drinks with people, but it is important to me (and some other close friends of his who are going). I don't go to a lot of graves or anything, although cemeteries are pretty relaxing places. But this involves some important unfinished business.

Anyway, if you're passing through Helsinki at that time and interested in the gathering, come and say hello (Opera is a sponsor and will have a stand, so we should be easy enough to find). Likewise if you're interested in a chat over a beer in Talinn on the 7th or 8th of August, or have a recommendation for where to do that, please let me know (search engines know my email address). I have never been there before, so I am looking forward to it.

A man died today whom I never met. But he was known to people I know, was a friend, collaborator, co-worker. He is a person whose presence I have felt, whose physical absence was tangible.

It is difficult to lose a friend, someone who has shared a struggle, a moment of triumph, or even a defeat or a setback. It is far more difficult when they are gone forever than when they just went away somewhere, or you haven't spoken in a while.

Being sad is natural, and reasonable. Wallowing in misery for a while is (at least for me) tempting. But it is later, when I think of what I have lost after some time of not having it, that I am really sad. And happy, often. The bittersweet nature of life is that in sadness I realise how lucky I have been to have had such a friend. How sorry I am for the things I left undone, unsaid, for what we never tried, and how glad I am for the things we did. In happiness, I occasionally think with tinges of regret how much I want to share an achievement with someone who is not there to enjoy it with me.

All of this ends up giving me comfort. The beauty of humanity is that people are so fragile, are subject to the inexorable law that our time is limited, and that we never know how much is left. We hurt each other, we forget each other, we don't make enough time for each other. We can be selfish, or busy, or just elsewhere. And at the same time we are capable of loving and caring about people, of thinking of them in moments we can never collect and share.

So I assume that people think, from time to time, of things they don't say. I know that I will never tell everything I want to everyone I want (this blog is in some ways an attempt to do a little more than I used to, but will never achieve the goal entirely). I am sorry to have lost friends, to have neglected friends, to have lost contact with people.

But I am glad to have the friends I have, to have had the friends I have had. People are great. They make life worthwhile.

They don't do Koskenkorva in Euskadi, but tomorrow it's Koskenkorva and
Lakka for remembrance day. Vale?


(This is delayed...)

"...is with a bottle of beer and a gut ful of anger and a belly of fear..." -- Hunters and Collectors

Jock died at home, talking to his wife. 82 years old, he had run away to sea as a child of 14, been a sailor and a soldier, had a family in the country, and grown old. When the end finally came it is hard to know if it would have been a relief, or if he was still worried about his family and how they would be when he was gone.

He had children and grandchildren of whom he was immensely proud, he had mates in the Caledoniand Society, in the Masonic Lodge, in the RSL (Returned Services League). Often they were the same people.

So when the old men lined up to farewell a comrade-in-arms, it was something that was important to those who shared it, and something only they really shared. He never really talked about being in a war, about being sunk 3 times, being in advance of major landings, being a soldier in some particularly bloody conflicts. A group of old men stood in line to place a hero's ribbon and a poppy on a little wooden box, and remember things taht had happened. I heard snippets of stories from people who will soon not be around to tell them - about a shell that carried away the bloke next to him, or about a bomb that threw him into the air as he ran across a miniefield to man an anti-aircraft gun.

Those were things that he never shared with anyone who didn't have to go there. And although it was his job, and it was his job to prepare more people to go there, when his own son was in line to be drafted, it seems he was mighty relieved that a government he could never support stopped sending soldiers to a war that wasn't being won.

The man I knew wasn't a soldier. He was a bloke with a sly "who me?" grin as he fed the dog a few scraps from his plate, a man immensely proud of his children and grandchildren, fiercely loyal to his wife, and an outgoing, social, bon vivant who quietly lived out his time.

The only war story he ever told me was the first story I understood through his accent. He was in New York for the first time, and he and his mates were accused of being in the english navy. Prouder than they were strictly truthful, they pointed out that they were scots, and were therefore logically in the scots navy. And they were served something that claimed to be tea, although it was made with little bags sitting in cups. They had to teach the folks at the café how to put leaves in a pot, and make tea like it was meant to be.

The one vision I had of his presence at the funeral was during teh singing of the first hymn. It was Amazing grace, with none of the jazzy sound that he would have put into it. And I could see him just quietly tapping away with a couple of brushes and the "what, me?" look that he would have hadd if caught drumming in a church.

As I write this, I am sitting in the seat where he used to take his tea and a biscuit, and then another one (which would usually end p inside the dog). I think he had a life well lived, with great joy as well as hardship, and that he went quietly, as he would have chosen to go.

Funerals should all be filled with old mates, people who are no longer steady on their feet or clear in their eyesight.

Vale Jock. I think I'll have a cup of tea.