What has been going on in the meanwhile? It’s not all about sunshine and rainbows…

Posted On August 14, 2019

As you might have noticed, I have been busy selling and giving away all of my stuff. I want to take with me as little as possible, and I hate things anyway, so this is a good way to get rid of all the pointless things, I mean the stuff you don’t actually need to survive. Of course, I am not gonna throw away every single thing, I am not that heartless. I am still planning to keep the photo albums, books and some clothes which I don’t think I would need in Spain, but are too precious for a trash can. I am also gonna save my TV and a blender. 😊

I must admit that saying goodbye at work and selling my furniture turned out to be a little harder than I had expected. I guess the reality finally hit me on the last day at work. It felt kind of odd to get an email about my contract termination and to finally realize that this is the very last day now, I am not going to come back on Monday. Moreover, the word home feels different. I sold the bed, one thing that was my castle, my nest. My dear place where I had always felt warm and comfortable. Now it was gone, just an empty space left behind. My apartment floors are covered with boxes and things that are not packed yet. It feels as a temporary shelter, not a home anymore.

On the one hand, I have been really looking forward to my Spanish experience, but one the other hand, I have been also experiencing a really difficult phase in my life. I hesitated a lot if I should write this down here or not, but then I decided to go for it. Life is not all about sunshine and rainbows. Plus, writing things down helps to collect my thoughts and clear my head.

Last summer my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the beginning I didn’t know what to expect or how to react. I guess subconsciously I was hoping she would get better and I did want to make a big deal out if. But the case with the lung cancer is that once it is diagnosed, it means that it has already spread to other organs in the body as the lung itself doesn’t have many nerve cells, so you would not feel anything going on in there until it is too late. This was the case for my grandmother – she already had the final stage and metastases in her brain. She noticed that something was off only when her left hand went partly numb. Unfortunately, she could not be operated as her heart was too weak, so she had a radiation therapy for her brain and it helped as her coordination improved. Sadly, the metastases were fast to spread to her kidneys and the tumor itself was growing day by day, in the end it reached almost 10 cm. The most ironic thing is that she did not even smoke.

In April this year, we could definitely notice her getting weaker and weaker. She had hard times getting up from the sofa, fixing a meal for herself etc. We visited her often and helped her with everything we could. She was always the stubbornest person I knew and only ate the things she liked e.g. frozen raspberries, milk and some mashed potatoes, even though she knew these were no good. In the end she only accepted milk.

It was an early morning in May when she called me as she was in a lot of pain and panicked. I told her to call an ambulance, but as she seemed to be very confused, I did it myself. From there on, she stayed at the hospital and never got back home. I can not put into words how difficult it is too see someone so precious to you in a hospital bed gradually fading away. To see their pain, scared eyes and you can do absolutely nothing about it. You can just visit and be there for them. Plus, the hospitals in general are super depressing. She was in the same room with other very sick people, some moaning, some hallucinating, it felt as if I had stepped into a zone of dying people. I had never in my life been to a hospital so often in such a short period of time. I think the people who are working with dying patients, should be definitely more appreciated. I felt sad and heartbroken, I had never had an experience like this before. Sometimes I did not even want to visit her, because it felt as if I got a fresh glimpse of her suffering each time I went to the hospital. I saw her coughing blood and being unable to move, just waiting for this to be over, for ever.

She definitely kept her good sense of humor until the end. The last time we saw her, I tried to make a joke and told her that we could stay there overnight. She smiled, took a look at the bed and replied that there is certainly some space for two more, one on the one side and the other one on the other side of the bed. We laughed as this was definitely a one person bed.

As to our trip to Spain – decided to make it a road trip. I know that it is a really long way to Spain (4000 km), but going by car would give me a chance to go travelling whenever I want to – Seville, Málaga, Cordoba, Madrid, just name it, maybe even Portugal? Why not! While discussing it, my friends asked if they could join in on the trip. This is when the decision was made to extend the trip and change it into a real road trip. So the plan is that we are going to make the first stop in Poland, just to get a good night’s sleep and then continue on to Austria where we would be staying for a week with my best friends. We want to rest, go hiking and then just do nothing at all. My best friends moved, so they are no longer living in Graz, but now in Klagenfurt, by the nice lake of Wörthersee. I have been there a couple of times before and it is quite amazing. See the picture below. 💓

Our trip would then continue through Northern Italy and straight to France, Nice! This is a place I have never been to before! By the way, one side note, did you know that it is super expensive to travel through Europe by car? Well, I obviously knew that it would be way more expensive than going by plane, but at first I didn’t consider the highway tolls at all. We would need to pay 200€ only for the highway tolls from Estonia to Spain… this is insane! They better be nothing like the roads in Tallinn! 😂

After spending a couple of days in Nice, we would finally reach Spain and our first stop would be in my favourite city – Barcelona.💓💓💓 I have no plans for Nice, guess we will figure it out once there. But in Barcelona there are a million things I want to do e.g. visit La Sagrada Familia again, go to the magic fountain show, maybe visit La Pedrera and Casa Battló once more and just enjoy this spectacular city and swim in the sea where it is never too cold for me, the sea temperature should be around 28 degrees by the time we get there. 😂

The road trip will come to an end for my friends in Barcelona as they would be flying back to Estonia and I would still have another 8 hours to reach Puertollano. I am planning to arrive to my new home by the 1st of September some time in the evening. I don’t even have any idea what my new home is gonna look like, who are the other volunteers I am going to live with and if I survive 47 degrees. 😀

With everything that has happened this year, I feel that the end of one thing has lead to the beginning of another. I feel that going through this really sad stage has made me more than eager to embrace this totally new chapter in my life. Hopefully this will be a happier one and will give me a chance to focus on new experiences, so that I could start letting go of the sorrow I have been carrying around with me.

I am not gonna end this on a sad note, nope! I am super excited! I am unemployed and it feels as if I am about to go on a normal vacation, but this time it is a “little” different, you see, the thing is that I am not gonna return, not in two weeks, not even in a month! And I gotta admit, it feels kind of dreamlike! I don’t know if there is anything better than the feeling that you are going on an endless vacation. 😀 I mean, I am exaggerating, of course, as I am expected to work in Spain, but still!

Spain – be ready for me, your biggest fan is on the way and she is kind of crazy! 💓