There is almost an entire lifetime between the Lea at 30, and Ole on the 80, but they were good friends, as they are both part of the kærlighedssorg. Lea had been abandoned by a girlfriend, and joe’s wife had just died, and together they helped each other deal with the pain.
It is the Ole, which opens the door and welcome you into his apartment, where the walls are dominated by paintings of a woman with large eyes, a long nose and wide smiling lips.
Lea stands in the kitchen and making tea. It is clear to see that she often comes with her friend Ole, as she stands there completely comfortable in his kitchen. She grew up in the housing, where Ole also lives, and has known him all his life.
But Ole is 80 years old, and Leah is 30, and there was a death and an unhappy love to bring them together as friends:
three years ago, died Hanne, ole’s wife and life partner through 57 years and the woman on the paintings in the apartment. At the same time, Leah, abandoned by her boyfriend. In the fall she threw out over a podcast project on kærlighedssorg.
“at First I had thought that I should make a story about Ole and ole’s grief. But then I experienced through our conversations, really to be able to recognize many of the feelings, as Ole described,” says Lea.
Out of the podcast, also grew a friendship across age:
Lea and Ole quickly discovered that they had more in common than they had first anticipated.
“It is in love and grief, where we can mirror us most in each other as people. And I also think it is so wild. It’s always something, we can meet in,” says Leah, before Ole voices in:
“Yes, love is like a flame. It stands on the sleep and rises suddenly up again when you fall in love, and the burner never goes out. It is the flame, and it means a lot. Love is the greatest.”
To love and lose the
Ole and Lea are living two very different lives and suffer from two different types of kærlighedssorg, they have found something quite universal to be shared. To have loved and lost. And through many conversations in the context of the Leas podcastprojekter they have shared countless love stories with each other, particularly where one has made a great impression on Lea.
“When you are in the Odd Fellow Palæ, and scout for the girls, and you see Hanne for the very first time, that is the first thing you do, to succumb to her. And the last thing you do before she drives away in the hearse, is also to succumb to her. I also think it is incredibly beautiful,” says Lea, adding:
“For it is a picture of a big gratitude for love. That we may succumb to it when it comes, and again when taking leave of us. It is one of the things that has made an impression on me in relation to my own grief. Both to be able to the bucks for charity and take leave of it again.”
Ole and Hanne had been married for more than 50 years, since Hanne passed away in 2016. Ole lost not just a boyfriend but a life partner.
“I dare not cry, for I know not how badly it gets. I don’t know if I can stop again. But emotionally, I can be,” admits Ole.
leah’s kærlighedssorg is completely different than brian’s. Love left her, knowingly and intentionally. And not at all expected.
“I never got it, as Ole had with Hanne. The love ended too early compared to what my desire was. It was just cut off of,” says Lea.
While the Oles guldbryllupslange marriage ended with the death and art on the walls, ended the Leas relatively short compared with the e-mails and fortrængningsforsøg.
“When it ended, I was very busy to come on. I kogevaskede the bedclothes and gave everything that was his, to a charity shop. I deleted all the mails and messages. I deleted his phone number. And then came the grief, completely overwhelming and almost out of the blue. And I could simply not use the stories with uplifting endings to anything,” she says and continues:
“I would just like to have a mirror, I would read, watch and listen to the stories where people had it absolutely miserable. To some, I do not think that there are many of. But it really helped to talk with Ole.”
The apparition
Despite the different scenario, Ole and Lea meet in their grief and help each other to deal with. Both have felt how grief physically affected their bodies, since the beat down in them.
“On the evening after the funeral, I had fever and difficulty sleeping. It crawled to in the body. Finally dropped my body down, and then I could of course sleep, but I continued to miss her. And I will always do,” says Ole, within Lea adds:
“I lay in my bed for a whole month after my fracture. I had a burning sensation in the upper body and was constantly sore in the throat. I had the feeling of being torn from something that I grew outside. The feeling of having a wounded body. I had to use all my energy to grow physically together again.”
in the Midst of grief and in trying to get rid of it and move on to face Lea constantly with smells, things and movements, which reminds her of her ex-girlfriend.
“I saw my ekskærestes apparitions almost every day. A sudden scent of him. A pull on the mouth in a second face, which otherwise was so special about his. A vindjakkeærme on the escalator in the metro, that could look like his. It gave me the sudden tremors for so long that I almost began to get used to them. And when it happened, they were fewer,” she says and adds:
“But then a cold and dark morning, as I rode my bicycle and thought that I should have had mittens on, turned a bike out from a side road and came straight towards me. There was no other, and I was not in doubt. It was him. My whole body was filled with something warm and tremendously. A sudden dizziness. I stopped, and we got eye contact. He looked like himself, but there was something else, something new in his face. A strangeness.”
Even if Ole can’t physically bump into Hanne longer, sense he also, how the sites, smells and things suddenly reminds him of what once was.
“It means a lot to me, that Hanne is there, even if she is not it. I see her sometimes standing next to me. And sometimes, I also think that she teases me when I’ve misplaced something and can’t find it, and she then put it back again. It is most likely false, but anyway,” he says
Grief is love
Lea does not know whether she has moved on. And she is actually also not sure, that it is meant to be it. But one thing is certain, and that is that she feels the promise of his conversations with Ole.
“I ended up in a completely different place than I had anticipated. For a long time I had hoped that the grief just might disappear. I have learned that I must stop. For the grief is so difficult to go around alone, but when you talk about it with others, and reflecting it in the lives of others, especially in people who live a completely different life than yourself, then it might be better space for it. It can get a new form, and perhaps there may even grow a little bit of hope into it. And it, in my experience, in fact, happened to me,” she says.
How can you so to the book today?
“You could say that grief is love. And that you can experience the heartache, it shows in reality, how much we can hang together with people. The grief continued in the context, and this, I think, is a beautiful and healing image,” she says, while Ole adds:
“For me, is the love absolute respect for people, for each other and for life. And I love life, but I also know that it must end. And I love that too. For I’ve got everything that I wanted to me.”
How does the future look for you, Lea? Have you been ready to open you again?
Lea: “Yes, I hope so. And I think that I can physically feel that I have gained a greater openness after having talked with Ole. For I have been very quiet for a long time about how I’ve had it. I think it has been embarrassing and nasty to walk around with something that I haven’t been able to do something about it. And that hurts so much.”
“But snakkene with Ole has really helped a lot. And having seen another human being in grief in a completely different way than I have been in sorrow, it has also done something. It has manifested, that grief is a human conditions, and that it also is therein, we can meet and connect us to each other.”
published in cooperation with Alt for damerne.
