Mind matters

Friday night, around nine o’clock, my dear friend Tomi passed away. He had been diagnosed with leukemia in january and on tuesday this week he received a bone marrow transplant, a risky procedure.

Until I found out that he had died, around 11.30 pm on friday night, I thought that he would make it, no doubt about it. Todays medicine is so advanced that few people die in leukemia, was my reasoning. So it was a bit of a chock for me.

I immediately rushed to the hospital where Kristina, Tomi’s girlfriend, and Peter, a friend from aikido, where talking with a doctor and a priest.

After some talking I felt quite calm and not that affected by Tomi’s death. Kristina spent some time with the body while we others, me, Peter and the priest sat talking about different things. Then Kristina came and asked for us to join her. When I saw Tomi lying there dead, the reality of the situation hit me. I had never before seen a dead body, and seeing a friend lying there, not breathing, not moving, blue in the face and with white hands, was a kick in the head.

He looked really peacefull, but I expected to see some kind of movement, something to indicate that the body was still alive. There was no breathing, no movement of the eyes or any other body part. It was a surreal situation.

Afterwards I headed with Kristina to her place, and me and Peter held her company for a while. After a while Peter ventured home and I stayed at Kristina’s place for the night. I’ve been there the whole day, comforting Kristina, facing my own fears about death and trying to muster up the strength and courage to help Kristina cope with her grief. Now Peter is there instead while I have returned home for the night to get some rest and build up my strength for the days ahead, when Kristina will be needing a lot of support.

Tomi was a man with a big heart. He almost always had a smile on his face and he faced every day with new joy! Even faced with leukemia he just said ‘Oh well, now I’m sick with this, and I have to deal with it’. He looked life square in the face and smiled. He was a person that many felt happy around. I always felt a smile on my own lips when I saw him, and I enjoyed many good parties, aikido traingings and laughs together with him.

I will miss him dearly. My heart aches and my tears flow as I now try to cope with my own grief.

This is the way I will remember Tomi. It’s taken from a Halloween party where he put my plastic vampire teeths upside down and ruffled his hair so that he would become this spitting image of an Ogre!

Here’s a picture of how he looked after the first cytotoxin treatment.

Rest in peace, my dear friend Tomi. I will miss you…

Today, a slow day since I only slept for 3.5 hours this night, my friend Edward called me and asked me a favor. A huge favour he said, but when he described it it didn’t seem so huge to me. He asked me if I could take my bike out to Tornby, a shopping area in the outskirts of Linköping, not too far from where I live and fetch a package from a store there.

Edward is a very good friend who has done me favours in the past, so I felt happy I could return a favour!

Before going outside I looked outside to see if it was raining. I saw that the sidewalk was getting dry from the rain that fell this morgning, so it seemed like a safe time to go to Tornby. It was 5 pm at that time, and the store closed at 6 pm.

The moment I opened the front door it started hailing! They were huge! See! I took this authentic picture of me, standing there in the onslaught! But luckily it didn’t keep up for so long.

So despite the frisky wind I decided to continue my journey. I figured it would be a rather easy ride and I would be able to clock some more minutes for Funbeat. Little did I know…

When I got just a couple of meters from my front door, the wind escalated to tornado strength! It was really difficult to make the bike move forward. See! Here’s another picture. Look how hard it looks to get forward!

And it rained, blew and hailed, all the way to Tornby! I was cursing my luck! When I got where I was supposed to be, I was all drenched and tired. The ride that usually takes me 10 minutes, took me 30 minutes!

Then the clerk I was talking to couldn’t find the package and I tried to call Edward to get some clarification about it, but he wouldn’t answer his phone right then. Ooo, when I realised I might have to return back empty handed I threathened to tear all his limbs from his body if he didn’t call me back immediately!

Luckily he did And the ride home was easy!

Here’s me trying to figure out how to take timed pictures with my camcorder: