Jan Modaal

We have some friends whom we have known for a long time who lead very normal lives. They live in a semi, they have two children, boy & girl. He has a fulltime job, she has a part time job. Their children have grown up seemingly without a ripple. To my eye they have led peaceful and enjoyable lives and have produced two exemplary children. Jan Modaal & family (John Average), if you wish.

I have long admired their world and have said many times to Marion that I wished I could have lived my life in the same way. Contrast with our lives, the highs and lows: divorce, selling our businesses, remarriage, leukemia I, building a new business, leukemia II, death of a child, to name but a few things. Marion just laughed at me everytime I said that I wish I could have lived a quieter life as the neighbour of Jan Modaal: three kids, huisje, boompje, beestje and camping holidays in the summer. She said that it would be like a lion trying to live like a bunny. Ha, we laughed, ridiculous!

But maybe not so ridiculous. I might have said this before, but for many years Marion & I have felt that "the light at the end of the tunnel is actually the next train coming". Everytime we got through one problem, everytime we thought that we'd reached the end of a tunnel another problem would hit us squarely between the eyes (sorry, mixing my metaphores again). The last 15 years or so seem to have been nothing but one long battle with a series of non-trival problems. Indeed, one can argue that some problems have been of our own making. But equally I think that what we have experienced in general puts us so far away from the mean, so far out on the edge of the bell curve, that I'm often left wondering if there's not some meaning in it.

Well, I guess that there are two points of view. The agnostic statisticians amongst you will no doubt be arguing that someone has to be at the extreme end of the bell curve, otherwise it would have no meaning. They would say that the fact that it happens to be me/us living there is merely bad luck, not least because statistics don't apply to individuals.

I would say that that sounds like a very rational explanation. But then I'd argue about just how damned wide this bell curve is and at what point can one conclude that one's experience is so many standard deviations removed from Jan Modaal that one actually lies outside the bell curve and in Job territory. Certainly that's how this all feels to me.

We lie in bed at night and we ask ourselves, why us? What did we do to deserve to lose Kay? What have we done wrong? Where in our lives could we have made a different decision that would have led to Kay being with us now? Why did Kay's leukemia come back when it's practically unheard of for a relapse to happen after so many years? Is there perhaps something wrong with where we live? Xenon gas, heavy metals in the ground? If we'd moved somewhere else when Kay was born would things have gone differently? Etc, bloody etc.

(I just post-added the point about Kay's leukemia relapse, I'd forgotten that one incredible piece of injustice until I reread this text. If you want to know just how far away from the bell curve we are, consider that one fact. Then factor it in to everything else and I don't see how one can possibly avoid the conclusion that we're being dumped on).

But then actually these questions can be broadened: why have we spent so many years facing so many problems? Why have we been consistently tested, time after time? Why have we had to pay the ultimate price? Should we have lain down somewhere along the way and played dead to fate? Stuck our paws in the air and let life roll over us? Should the lion have read the message in the wind and taken up living like a bunny?

There are matters of belief and deity wrapped up in all this but what concerns me here is how to approach the future? What can be concluded from the last 15 years? What should I do differently in the future? How can I try to ensure that we have seen the last of tunnels and trains?

One thing is for sure. Marion & I have reached some kind of upper limit on the amount of negative stuff that we can take. The idea that I'm fated in some way to continue living such an extremely unfortunate life is more than I can possibly take. (And before anyone starts pointing out that the word "unfortunate" hardly applies to someone sitting in his second house in the south of France, let me point out to you in the STRONGEST possible terms that I would swap EVERYTHING to live as Jan Modaal with Marion, Kay, Nattie & Lauren).

Of course, as usual, no answers are to be found anywhere. And this scares me stupid, because we're going to continue blundering along without having learnt anything really important from our lives. How can we know if we've made a mistake? How can we learn if we don't know? How can we avoid repeating the mistake?

I've not really heard Kay clearly in my mind for a while. It's worrying me, has she gone from me? Will I not hear her again? I assume that I'm too deeply buried in grief for her to reach me clearly. But the last time that she 'spoke' to me she told me that Marion & I should rest and that she would look after us. I hope that this means that she will smooth out the future for us, that the price that we have paid by losing her means that no more will we have to battle with tunnels and trains. 

Kay, if you're listening, I could really do with hearing from you right now. I'm not really resting my darling and I could do with hearing you in my head, if not feeling you in my arms.