29.12.2006
ON GRENSAS ( rehabilitating ward)
ON GRENSAS ( rehabilitating ward)
http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/Purple%20people%20going%20into%20white.mp3
November 8. 1975 I was moved via ambulance from one ward to another so I could increase my rehabilitation, on Grens...as. (See Coma earlier in the story).
-Please tell me. What was I doing there, I ask my parents, brother and sister with a finger closing one nostril, who had come to join me at this turning point in my life. I have no memory.
When my family starts to refreshen my memory about one thing or another my memory returns a bit by bit, anyway what they knew same as I, but everything else seems to have forsaken me permanently.
They inform me that having finished the school I and Svenni had implied for teaching-positions at Hellissandur and gotten the jobs.
We had bought an old, white Volvo; alias the hunch thus not being without wheels up West.
Even though having gone through The Inspection with high honours not so long ago the vehicle seemed more or less out of order, including the brake system.
A school-chum of ours living in the village of Gardur (Siggi Alberts) made it drivable for us.
The fateful weekend we had decided along with many other chums from Laugarvatn to come together in our friend's apartment thus giving ourselves a good farewell party before we either took up a job or started studying in the University. No-one expected anything else than that we would return to Keflavik coming Sunday.
My parents were on a short visit at their friends' in Luxembourg and therefore I said good-bye to my brother and sister, Asgeir and Marta leaving them alone in the house for the weekend, he was eighteen and she fourteen.
I and Sveinn Sigurður Gunnarsson my closest friend had decided to take a one year leave from further studies.
We applied for two vacant teaching positions in Hellissandur which we received.
In our naivety we believed that our taxes would be lower if we were listed in the University at the same time we were working as teachers.
Therefore we enlisted ourselves in the subject that we surely wouldn't choose next year.
I took Theology, but Svenni Physiochemistry because he was rather a languageman and I couldn't picture myself as a clergyman.
He was born in Keflavik on the seventh of August 1955, the son of Fjola Sigurbjornsdottir and Gunnar Sveinsson manager of the town's co-op stores and was raised up on Brekkubraut 5.
Svenni had two younger brothers and a sister and a elder brother.
Kristinn Kristmundsson who was our schoolmaster on Laugarvatn wrote his memoir in the Morgunblad, where he compliments him for be-ing a substantial pupil and that he was growing as such:
"To my knowledge his maturity and proficiency seemed most visible in his final winter in this school and it wasn't concealed from no-one that he was a promising young man.
His appearance was exceedingly affectionate.
He was cheerful and smiling on a every day basis, but under his cheerful appearance there was deep contemplation.
Benevolence constructed his temper and gained him the friend-ship and trust he deserved."
These words of our master I'd like to have been mine, for he was as good as friends could possibly be.
Of the late Eirikur, the lad who travelled to-gether with Svenni to another world is just that to tell, that he graduated two years ahead of us.
He was Asgrimsson, a villager of Laugarvatn just as Bjarni Thorkelsson and his best friend.
The two of them, Bjarni and Eirikur were among the funniest of the human race one might say.
The reason that they were travelling with me and Svenni to the country-dance to which we were going rather than the other car that the old camrades were divided into was sheer coincidence I imagine, but anyhow our trip together ended in a sudden and a horrible way.
MAY THE FABULOUS SVEINN AND EIRIKUR BE REMEMBERED FOR A LONG, LONG TIME!
ll
I tell them about my dream as mentioned before (Dream in a coma?):
-I lay naked on a bed in a white room. Into the dream four doctors enter wearing white robes, they appear to be oriental; Indian, Pakistani or whatever.
They do an operation; cut through the skin with their bare hands just where the four main joints are; where both the arms and legs meet the body.
Subsequently they install some kind of an organic knot into the wounds that didn't bleed by the way.
Thus done they held their hands over the cuts and mysteriously the holes dissappeared.
Before they went away they informed me that if everything wouldn't be ok when I finally woke up I'd get help on "-as".
I could only remember that part and now I'm at a rehabilitation center called "Grens...-as".
-Yes, they are doctors on the other side and are working with Einar on Einarsstadir, mum informs me.
-She hasn't just been sitting by, your mother, oh no not now rather than ever before, dad informs me, distinctly being quite happy with his mate.
She had heard about Einar the healing psychic on Einarsstadir, and when she heard this hospital's doctors´ prediction that most likely you'd be para-lised from the neck down your mother decided to do everything she could to help you out.
She spoke with Sigurdur Haukur, a priest here in Reykjavik whom she knew was a linkage with Einar and begged him to contact Einar on your behalf.
And surprisingly a short while later your body began to show some life again.
-Everybody was praying for you my dear boy, mum says happy at heart, where she sits by my bed with tears in her eyes.
lll
Now I begin an unceasing therapy and practise at Grensas, either with myphysiotherapist who tries almost anything in her power to help me get my strenght back to my feet and hands so that I might be able to walk again and use my hands without any aid and another therapist teaches me to perform with my hands doing things like cross-stitching.
Relatives and friends seem willing to do anything for "poor" me;
I get numerous invitations;
a television into my bedroom; Gunnar, an uncle of mine and I go to a movie, by the way the same Gunnar that later supervised the campaign for Vigdis Finnbogadottir when she became president of Iceland;
chinese massage from Kolbrun, his wife and numerous pleasant visits from relatives and friends.
My mother has returned to her usual life-style back home in Keflavik, but my brother who studies at the junior college in Hamrahlid visits me as often as he´s able to.
Soon I'm allowed to spend week-ends in my hometown.
On Grensas I recognize some faces of people who are there rehabilitating, amongst them the members of Althingi Einar Agustsson and Magnus Kjartansson who propably have fought for a better facilitation in the succession of being there.
I also come acquainted with Jon who becomes my room-mate for a short number of weeks and together we do a few shady things, e.g. we travel alone and without permission downtown to the center of Reykjavik, where we visit a number of places, e.g. the tobacco-store Bristol, both of us in wheel-chairs.
Fortunately there's no snow on the pavement and relatively warm-like weather at the time we go down-town, even though it´s winter and we had no mishabs in that journey.
But I wasn't so lucky a few days later.
On the ground floor there is a double door used when patients arrive by ambulance for their reha-bilitation program.
Because the door is a few centimeters above the pavement there is an upward slope.
Once when Jon and I were killing time in our wheel-chairs we decided to slide our chairs down the slope outside.
The weather was beautiful at the moment but a little bit frosty, and even though my mind was brave and indifferent my body wasn't agreeing.
In my coma I'd lost a lot of weight; I used to be 70, but now I´m 49 kilos and of course my physical strenght is nothing compared to what it was.
Badly clad we slided into the cold winter weather.
Outside we drive our chairs around the cemented pavement.
It's easy for Jon to slide back inside, but for me it was impossible to return up the lamentable low slope.
There beneath the slope I had to stay until my friend had fetched assistance.
This perilous journey had bad aftermaths.
I became really sick; high temperature and a bad cold which delayed my recovery for a while.
In my sickness I started sneezing whenever my nose felt irritated and each time Jon used to say:
-Hopefully the Devil won´t get you, instead of the usual God bless. Of course I thought it very funny and began using it myself with little delight amongst my female relatives.
lV
-Your girlfriend made you a visit while you were in a coma, my mum tells me shortly after I had begun my rehabilitation at Grensas.
-Girlfriend? What girlfriend, I ask astonished at the same time as her beautiful image enters my mind again.
I remember how sorry I was when we parted last spring at the end of the school-year and she returned to her home in Sweeden perhaps for good. Who knew?
When her sister who lives on Selfoss read about the accident at Svinavatn, and noticed that Svenni and Eirikur were killed she concluded, that you might have been one of the other two boys that had been in the car.
Therefore she made a phone call to Sweeden notifying her sister of her suspicions.
Your girlfriend rang to us in Keflavik and was told that you were lying on the Borgarspitali.
-Is Anna still here in Iceland, I ask hoping she might...
-No, sorry to say she had to return to her job in Sweeden.
V
Into my private bedroom at Grensas, where I'm amidst various electrical tools that we modern hum-ans have become accustombed to, such as the 14 inch. TV which Stella, one of my mother's sisters lent me, and my own Hi-Fi's, a Pioneer receiver-amplifier and an Akai tape deck, one day a liberal looking man appears introducing himself as a phsychologist who's supposed to put me under a test.
Suddenly I'm covered with cold sweat, when I convince myself in my ownfoolishness that the learned man is supposed to judge whether I have enough intelligence left after I got the blow on my head to be called a "student" (graduate).
I'm so terrified that I haven´t the guts to ask him what might be the reason for this test.
Thus I avoid getting any confirmation of my suspision!
I'm all of a tremble trying to solve various trials, but it is all in vain.
The phsychologist thanks me as he leaves my room leaving me feeling as a total failure.
I'm quite sure that big brother will deprive me of the diploma that I had aimed at for four years of my life.
The childishness, let alone the utter foolery of mine to rage outside during Icelandic winter-weather badly dressed in a wheel-chair has the result that I become really, really sick; delirious high temperature and bad coughing.
I become quite desperate and lose the heart that I had had in all the construction of my body and soul.
I had lost all faith in my rehabilitation.
I simply don't have any energy left and have become lazy.
But then my mother again takes all matters into her magical hands and informs me that she has been corresponding with my girlfriend.
She had been writing about that I had begun rehabilitation,
making great progress in getting my strenght back. -Will she return?
-I understand that she´ll return next February or March, and imagine yourself how happy she´ll be if you will have regained your former self.
My mother's answer´s like a vitamin-injection for me because I restarted my rehab with greater energy, because I had found a reason for all practise.
