Fai piano, i bimbi grandi non piangono

The above is a quote from one of my favourite Zucchero songs. Granted, most Zucchero songs are among my favourites, but this one, called ´Diamante´, has a special place in the ranking. The song, written by Zucchero and an Italian singer-songwriter called Francesco DeGregori, is about the death of Zucchero’s grandmother, whose name was Diamante. Although my Italian isn’t as good as it should be, I believe a fair enough translation of the sentence above, which in the song is whispered several times during the bridge, would be `Softly now, big kids don’t cry`, which I think is one of the best descriptions of how one feels when someone close passes away.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, my grandfather died. He was 92 years and 22 days old. He had been ill for months, if not years. And in the past few weeks he had been visibly getting weaker and weaker. Basically, everybody, including himself, knew he was going to die soon, and everybody, including himself, were ´at peace with it´. When thinking about older people passing away, I always remember a Billy Christal movie I once saw in which he plays a comedian getting older. Somewhere in the movie his mother dies, and during a service for her he starts telling funny stories about her before breaking down and saying `She was 99 and she died too young!’.

It’s a pretty good line, but in this case I don’t think it’s appropriate. My grandfather died without too much pain, with dignity, with his mind still in excellent shape, and in the room that had been his home for the past 2 years. He was tired, he was done, there really wasn’t anything left he was waiting for, so he gave up and stepped out. My grandmother, who died in 2002, died in much the same way, and although there’s a lot of comfort in there for those left behind, there’s also the problem of having to combine sadness with realization that there really wasn’t another option.

As a kid with a working mom, I spent loads of time with them when I was younger, and I remember that as being in this big hot bath of complete and unconditional love. The funny thing about my grandparents was the difference between them as parents and the way they were with me and my nephews and nieces. They were both raised in the early 20th century and both strict Catholics, so you can imagine that as parents they weren’t always the most adapted to their 1960’s, soon-to-be-atheists, kids. As grandparents, however, they were simply the best: up until the very last moment, if you wanted to see my grandfather smile all you had to do was mention one of his grandchildren.

In the past few years I’d visit him usually once a week, and though the fluffy warmness of my grandmother had passed on, it was replaced by the sort of grown up discussions I never had with my grandmother. We used to talk about politics, news, history, sports and whatever else was going on. Also, clearly showing that we’re related, we spent quite a lot of time making jokes. His favourite material was money. Whenever there was a news story about stock prices falling, he would look at me semi-seriously and say “Don’t worry, sold everything”. “Phew” my mom and me would reply, “thank god the family fortune is safe!”.

The last time I saw him was last Monday but he was hardly able to stay awake for more than a few minutes. The day before I went to see him after work and we spent about twenty minutes talking, somehow ending up talking about food. He asked if I had eaten already, I said I hadn’t, and he then suggested we should get Chinese food together, ignoring for a moment he hadn’t eaten solid food in two weeks. My family doesn’t have many traditions but joking until your very last breath, thank god, is one of them. Eventually we moved on to my grandmothers cooking, and thinking about her food, but more importantly her, he boasted the biggest smile I have seen on him in the past month.

Now, personally I’m not a big philosopher concerning life and death. I don’t believe there is a heaven, and if there is one Mark Twain was probably right in saying he’d prefer heaven for the climate and hell for the company, but my grandfather did, and who knows, maybe he was right. Or maybe the late Dutch songwriter Bram Vermeulen had it right when he wrote

And when I die
Don’t cry
I’m not really dead
You should know
It’s just a body
That I left behind
Dead I’ll only be
Once you’ve forgotten about me.

And if that’s the case both my grandparents will live on for a long, long time.

Oh, and for the record: big kids most definitely do cry.

It's a jungle out there

In a month and a few days I'll be spending a week in Kenya.

Like all trips, preparations usually start about a month in advance, unlike my usual trips preparations for this one are quite important. My normal travel routine is standing in front of my bookcase wondering which cd's to bring (a task that is quite difficult and usually takes several test runs before all the boring cd's are eliminated), this time I have to get medication shot inside me so that I won't die.

Fun, and also, such a comforting thought!

To just get it over with me and my dad went to the KLM Travel Clinic yesterday morning. Since he already had his vaccinations last year I was the only one who actually had to get a shot, and it's been a while. I believe the last time was when I was 12 and all I remember from it is that I missed school and didn't cry (tear up, yes, but no crying!). Thankfully I didn't cry or pass out this time around either. Also, even though I got three shots (one against Yellow Fever, one against something call DTP and one against some other thing) the woman who gave me the shots was quite a professional and it only took about a minute to do it.

And then she talked about all the different things you can get in Kenya. Just so you know, there's this bug in still water around there so you should probably ask around before you take a swim. And if you do catch the bug, she added, you'll know because there will be blood in your urine. Oh, by the way she added, hepatitus B is quite big around there so be careful with any blood contact. For a moment I was confused and wondered who wouldn't be careful touching someone elses blood, but then I figured that if someone would give me 5 minutes I'm sure I'd be able to find at least 20 people on Gaydar. I left the building with a pile of brochures big enough to take up 50% of the luggage weight I'm allowed to take with me on the flight.

Overall the people who worked at the clinic seemed... well, they seemed weird, but they also seemed to know what they were doing. Sort of. There's only one thing that worried me.

While waiting for our turn my dad and I overheard this conversation between a woman of the clinic and a guy asking for some advice. The man was traveling to Indonesia soon and he was planning on staying on Java, would he need anti-malaria pills? The woman replied that no, he didn't because Java is malaria free, however just in case he should rub anti-mosquito stuff on him just in case. Then the man said he was also planning on staying on Lombok, would he need malaria pills for that? The woman looked at him and asked 'Will you be there for more than three nights?', the man replied that he was planning on only staying one night. 'Then you don't need them' the woman said.

Seeing that there are quite a lot of malaria carrying mosquitos in Kenya, this has left me with quite a few questions concerning the mosquito that I sort of would like to have answered before I leave. The most important one being; how could a mosquito know if you're just staying one night? Why would they suddenly get dangerous after three nights? Do they pinch humans the way people do in supermarkets when buying avocados? 'Neah, this one isn't ripe yet, come on guys let's go to the fat German in the other room!'.

Tough one

I was at work last Sunday killing time and chatting with my direct supervisor when I asked her how the hiring was going for other people working at the same place. When I left for my vacation they were still looking for new people to work at the same hours as I do, and I was pretty interested to find out who I’d end up with. My supervisor, a woman who is in her 30´s and seemed perfectly normal till then, explained that so far no people had been hired, though she did do one interview. But, she added, she had decided not to hire him since `well, you know, he had a sexual preference that was a little different than that of most men. Which is perfectly fine of course but I figured you wouldn’t be too comfortable working with him, and everybody should be comfortable going to work!´ after which she continued humming along to a Queen song on the radio.

Apart from the irony that she herself single-handedly destroyed all comfort I may have had in working at the place in those two sentences, and the fact that her gaydar is apparently not as fine-tuned as she thinks it is, the thing that hit me most about all of it was the way she said it. A little different. It reminded me of one of my friend Merel´s favourite stories; years ago during some school trip to the woods she got ill (flu, food poisoning, something like that) and spent a few days lying in bed with fever, nausea, and the urge to bitch at the other girls sharing a room with her. One morning she decided she wasn’t going to get up for breakfast and she stayed in bed, where one of the supervisors on the trip, a geography teacher with a wife and children, came to see how she was doing. He looked at her for a while and then asked the legendary question `Is it a…. you know…. a woman thingie?´.

Right after my supervisor transformed herself from a normal lady into an evil bitch from hell in my head the different me’s started a meeting on how to respond to this full frontal attack. Read-headed me was the first to think and shouted `HIT HER! IN HER FACE! WITH A BOOK! DO IT!´ while white foam was blowing out of his mouth. Against all normal rules he was joined by the idealist in me who, for the time being ignored his anti-violence beliefs, and joined in with a direct `I’d say resign right now, or at least strangle her!` and started unrolling his pride flags and started humming ´Imagine´.

The coward in me joined the realist on the other side of the table. ´Honestly´, the realist said, ´how do you think it will make any difference if we quit? Or kill her? This is a woman who apparently doesn’t like gay people, we don’t like bigots, it’s the exact same thing`. A valid point, to which the coward added a soft `Y-yeah, what he said` from his hiding place under the table. Realist came back with a good point `Guys, come on! Aren’t we the ones that always say `if you don’t say it’s wrong, than that says it’s right`? We have to stand by our principles!´ and started handing out ´We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it´ t-shirts to the other me´s.

By now my head was getting even more crowded than it usually is. The shopping addict in me ran into the room and shouted hysterically that we can’t quit because we need the money to buy things. The Seinfield fan in me wondered how my supervisor knew that the Anonymous Gay Guy was gay? ´I mean, seriously! Was he wearing a ´Kiss me I´m gay t-shirt? Did he tell her?´. The slut in me wondered out loud if we should ask for a phone number but after all the others looked at him in silent disgust for 2 minutes he left the meeting.

After that the stand-off was getting quite difficult. What to do? `KILL HER!´ read headed guy shouted. ´Lecture her!` idealist said. ´Yes! Do lecture her´ history teacher man said but he also was thrown out of the meeting by the others. ´Oh puhlease´ realist replied ´Do you honestly think it’s going to make a difference?´. ´Is she still out there?´ coward asked from beneath the table.

Eventually I decided to leave it for now. I usually find that people’s prejudices fade after one on one contact, but why always take the bullet? You can’t save or change everybody and at least now I have a very valid reason to despise my boss. Also I may quit after all in a few weeks and the nerd boy in me got his way in demanding I’d write a blog about it. But still, the coward in me was much too pleased with this solution.

But maybe, just maybe, I might listen to the bitch in me, the one who gets mad and gets even, and e-mail her loads of gay porn anonymously.