THE MANNER TO WHICH SHE COULD EASILY BECOME ACCUSTOMED- - MONDAY 18TH AUGUST - DIKSMUIDE

No sooner had one of us drifted off to sleep last night than he was awakened by the first grey sky of dawn.   Feeling a little cheated but none the less having things to do, people to contact, places to go, he reached for the computer.   Before he could say “it’s probably breakfast time”, he’d checked in for tomorrow’s flights, confirmed the driver and wheelchair instructions, and given Dave and Thijs fair warning that we “might” be half an hour late.  By then onto his third coffee, with the last load of towels already in the dryer, he was ready to face the final countdown.

The other did a wonderful job of hiding her frustration at not being able to take part in the kerfuffle, although the angst of not being able to help was telling to those aboard who’d known her for more than half a century.  

As we shipped her from tidy part of boat to not yet tidy and back again she not once complained.  Sighed perhaps, groaned a bit under the effort, but generally spent her time quietly worrying enough for both of us as to how exactly we were going to get her ashore when the time came.

When the time came, albeit an hour or two later than we might have predicted, but with everything more or less shipshape and “good enough” to leave, Thijs miraculously appeared seemingly out of thin air with a wheelchair he’d conjured up using some sort of boatyard magic.

After bundling her into Dave and Ria’s car, with what will be all of our possessions for the next day or two, and arriving safely in their apartment carpark, she had to face her next test.  She has not actually “walked” more than a few steps on dry land with the aid of crutches in five weeks.   Figuring it would probably be no more difficult than using them in a confined, rocking space that is the boat, with just a little assistance she found herself ensconced on a rather sumptuous couch in a living room that would be her place in the world for the next two dozen hours.

We had done it.  We’d packed up, and were on our way and it was only mid afternoon.   Without warning, now within spitting distance of boarding a flight home, all of the events of the past weeks enveloped us with an enormous aching tiredness.

So we did what any sensible person would do, and settled in for a lovely, completely therapeutic snooze.