Anyways. I'm glad to announce that my hand pain has improved some, so it seems resting from blogging for a while did help. Hopefully I'll be back to blogging more now.
June is also quite a mixed month for me nowadays as June 8th marked 1 year since my grandmother passed away after a months battle against the effects of a severe stroke. I was there that day at the hospital and held her hand as she passed away and had to deal with a lot that day, but not more than I could handle. I did what I felt was right for me when it comes to being in the room, telling my uncle on the phone that my grandmother was gone and making the call to my mum to let her know as well. Calls the nurses had offered to make, but I felt it was better I did it since I was there and able to. So of course, June 8th was very emotional for me, I cried several times and kinda relived that day a year ago, looking at the time and remembering what I was doing and so on.
I am by no means traumatized by that day, nor am I traumatized by experiencing a similar situation in 1999 when my adoptive grandmother passed away before I even turned 14 and all the adults said I was too young, but I insisted on staying and I'm glad I did.
It's just that first year, the year of all the firsts that I like to call it. All the birthdays and holidays in the first year did go surprisingly well, but on June 8th my facade crumbled from time to time and I just let it all out that I had been keeping within me for a long time, then I was fine again, and I am fine.
I focus on the positives and all the happy memories.
I focus on the fact that I got 16 very happy years together with my grandmother and that she was at good health through those years. I focus on the fact that she had been longing for us to find her and that we found her on time so we got all those beautiful years.
Things could have been so different you know. She could have given my mum away because of not wanting her, she could have wanted nothing to do with us when we found her, or we could have found her at poor health or even too late. But we found her when she was 69 and doing really well, she had been waiting for 43 years for mum to contact her, and those first 11,5 years of my life where my grandmother wasn't actively in my life, those have been well covered for and mum and my grandmother caught up on their 43 years apart as well!
So I focus on the positives and cherish the memories. I live, I laugh and I love!
Other than the one year since my grandmother's passing, this summer has been pretty busy this far. I've been buzzing around like a busy bumblebee lately.
I celebrated our National Day on June 6th at a friend's place over 50 miles away, my friend hosted a BBQ party and Party Lite demonstration for a group of friends to celebrate our National Day. It was a lovely day and it was great to get to hang out with that group of friends again, hadn't met some of them in three years now and a couple of them had been about 9 months since we last met, so it was quite the reunion and we were very fortunate with the weather too! No rain until I was in the car driving back home again in the late afternoon.
On June 10th mum and I went to a nearby lake in the afternoon as we were having a heat wave here, the lake was already as warm as you'd expect it to be in July or August so both mum and I were just soaking in the water for quite a while before getting up to dry in the sun, and then jump into the lake again and dry in the sun once more before going back home. Dad was on a bus trip to Germany at the time and they had a heat wave there as well with extreme temperatures of about 39C which is little over 100F which is extreme for northern Europe. You normally only see those temperatures down in the south like on Balkan or Greece, parts of Spain and such.
Last Wednesday I took part in a peaceful demonstration in Gothenburg against the inaccessible public transportation. We were 10 wheelchair users that occupied a tram for about 1.5 hour, stopping the traffic past that stop during that time, protesting that there's currently only one or two designated wheelchair spots on the trams and those spots are also used by prams, and luggage which means a lot of the time, a wheelchair user will have to wait for a long time before a tram comes where he or she can actually get on to go to their destination. There's plenty of space on the tram that could easily be made into a wheelchair spot. We'd like to see four wheelchair spots on the trams that currently has two, that would mean it's more likely a disabled person can get on a tram sooner, and it also means it would at least in theory be possible for a group of up to four wheelchair users to travel together by public transportation. It's really not much to ask for on a vehicle that's 40 meters long and weighs several tons, it has the capacity, it's just the city and the public transportation company that are asshats. The average city bus in America has more designated wheelchair spots than a tram in Gothenburg has, and the average bus is only about half the length of a tram.
We're also protesting against the often broken ramps into the trams and the fact that many wheelchair users have been verbally abused by tram drivers, some have even been physically abused which resulted in bruises. So we'd also like to see an improved attitude and values among the drivers of buses and trams.
I guess you could call me an accessibility activist these days! And even though I am able to stand up and walk past an obstacle, far from everyone in a wheelchair can! I have friends who can not walk at all, in fact, my friend who took the initiative to the demonstration in Gothenburg, has a high level spinal cord injury, he can't just get up and walk past an obstacle!
I always think one step further when I look at accessibility and think "How would this work for someone with a spinal cord injury who can not walk, or due to their injury have limited or no trunk control?"
My friends and I don't want to stop the traffic and occupy trams, all we want is to be able to use the trams more easily as at this moment, we belong to the category of customers that gets discriminated against the most.
If a group of four walking friends wants to use the public transport to go somewhere, they can just get on the bus or tram and go. If a group of as little as three wheelchair users wants to go somewhere by public transport, they can not go together in Gothenburg. Even just two wheelchair users going somewhere together, can have a really hard time to actually get onto the same tram due to the designated wheelchair space(s) often already being taken.
And as always, everything that makes something more accessible for the disabled, also helps everyone else! Ramps or elevators helps prams as well, or people with a lot of luggage, same goes with curbs that are lower or at least angled so it becomes ramp like. Easy to read signs for people impaired vision and people with mental diagnoses also helps tourists and newly arrived immigrants who don't know the language. There's only benefits by having the public space and shops accessible!
On a completely different note, this past Friday was Midsummer's Eve and my parents and I always celebrate it by an old castle and I always stay in my parents RV over the weekend. It's pure meditation being at the campsite next to the castle, I was just relaxing in the RV on Saturday and despite there being many caravans and RV's in the camp site, the only sound outside was from birds chirping in the trees. It's on times like that you truly feel alive! And it reminds me of my childhood as well as I grew up traveling around every summer, living in a caravan for up to 5 weeks at a time. I miss going out camping like that, so truly enjoy it when I do stay overnight in the RV with my parents these days. My parents went to the campsite already on Thursday, but I came after in the car on Friday.
There's something special about being in a camping vehicle, especially when you've grown up with it. I don't think an RV is as cozy as a caravan is, but yeah, there's something special about it anyways. Something about the simple conditions compared to home, but it's still comfortable. And the pull down bed in the RV is very cozy at night, and also very comfy once you just manage to climb up there!
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