Arrivals and Departures

Please note: this piece contains descriptions of loss and grief some readers may find upsetting.

Arrivals and Departures.

The Citizen M hotel at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport overlooks the parking piers for long-haul airliners. I watched as passengers disembarked. Children jumped up and down, freed from the constraint of hours in an aeroplane seat. Men in suits stormed past chattering families, pushing them to the side, irritated that these lesser mortals were delaying business. An elderly man with a long beard and flowing robes was pushed up the ramp in a wheelchair. He looked around him, absorbing the sights, sounds and smells of a busy airport. As the last of the passengers made their way in to the terminal, an army of Marigold-wearing men and women with mops, vacuum cleaners and antiseptic sprays boarded the plane.

I wondered whether any of those doing the cleaning would experience the luxury of Quatar Airways or KLM First Class. They were more likely to be scrimping to make a pilgrimage to visit family and friends in their country of origin. These travellers were easily identified in the Departure Lounges, with their enormous suitcases and smartly dressed children, desperate to show relatives that they had made good in a strange land.

I was also on a pilgrimage to visit a friend, but I carried one small backpack. The hotel receptionist asked what I planned to do during my visit, and had I been thinking straight, I would have said that I was visiting the galleries and museums. I was not thinking straight. I watched as his smile faded.

‘I am visiting my friend in the Spaarne Gasthuis in Haarlem. Her name is Anna. She was diagnosed with lung cancer six weeks ago. Now she is dying, and this is the last time that I will ever see her.’ Maybe I needed to hear myself say it to believe it.

The poor guy flushed to the roots of his red hair and I had a momentary image of a young van Gogh. I felt for him.

‘I am so sorry. If there is anything we can do to help. Please let us know.’

‘It’s OK. You were not to know. I will.’

I lied. It was not OK. It was unjust, cruel and unthinkable. How could Anna be dying?

Two years before, separated by Covid, I watched on Zoom as her partner was carried from their home in a wicker coffin. Anna’s sobs reverberated around the room.

When a child, Jan was a prisoner of war of the Japanese. This experience left him with mental health issues and he could not hold down a job. A lesser woman might have buckled under the strain of living with someone with Complex PTSD but Anna’s devotion was such that she made their home a safe haven where he could express himself in art and cookery.

She developed their home as a Bed and Breakfast and 20 years before, I was one of the first guests,. I visited many times and through shared interests in art, politics and spirituality, our friendship deepened. We became soul sisters, consulting one another on important or intimate issues. For a time, I lived between the Netherlands and London, and their house was my Dutch home.

The three of us spent many evenings in gezelligheid drinking red wine, discussing books and quietly conversing by the light of the candles in the window.

After Jan died we continued this routine, but Anna sat in his armchair. A great darkness engulfed her.

She found some distraction visiting galleries and museums so one morning we set off to visit the ‘Museum van de Geest’ in Haarlem. On finding it closed, we chatted on the banks of the nearby lake instead. Anna wanted to show me the cemetery where Jan was buried, but after the short walk there, she could not bear to enter. She simply indicated the area of the grave, saying that one day she would join Jan there.

She was tired and she had a bad cough, so she returned home while I shopped for food for supper in Albert Hein. I added a few special treats but when I unpacked them, Anna was crabby, almost angry. She loved good food, so I was surprised, but I assumed that her disinterest in eating was a result of the depression she was experiencing.

Now, I was visiting Anna in the Gasthuis. I had often passed it, but I had never been inside. The only sounds in the room were that of the piped oxygen hissing and her chest rasping and bubbling as she fought for breath. Not since my nursing days, had I seen someone so cyanosed and so poorly. She had requested that I visit, and she was thrilled to see me. Between her gasps and bouts of coughing, we said what we needed to say, my Dutch sister and I. It was good. We held hands and neither of us cried. I repeated my promise to care for her should she return home to die, but it was not to be.

Anna the kind, Anna the generous, Anna who adored the flat polders and sandy dunes of her native land, Anna who loved me, her Scottish sister, will never join me on boat or cycle trips or to museums again.

Anna has departed.