Had dinner in the center and a little walk around after…
… I’ve finished my Bridgerton part 1 of season 3 binge watch and am eagerly awaiting the second half of the seaon in a month’s time.
…. and the weekend is here (we have a long one ahead of us), where we continue to make our new house a home. The living room is coming along nicely…
Hope everyone has a good one!
It feels a little different this year…
I will miss you forever, mama.
Been unpacking in our new house and hanging things and organizing. With all that work, it’s also good to relax a bit. The weather is starting to get really nice here so Mr E and I biked some 6 or so minutes to a nearby park this evening and had dinner there at a bistro, out in the sun. It was lovely to unwind like that and take a little walk around the park after.
We’ve been on the go since the autumn. It’s been a stressful and highly emotional time with house buying, my mother getting ill and dying, packing up our house and my mother’s house, my friend dying, re-modeling a house, clearing out and leaving our old house where we raised our kids, moving house, Servetus dying, unpacking and organizing everything in the new house. There still is A LOT to do in our new house, but life is starting to feel a little more manageable now. It helps that we only have this one house we can now focus on, so even though there’s so much left to do, it still feels like things are starting to settle down a bit.
Now that the pressure has eased, I am feeling how very bone-tired I am. Physically, mentally, emotionally I am drained. Decompression has now finally started and I hope that will give me a little peace to finally really process the rollercoaster of these past five months. Today was a nice, small first step.
Servetus, from the Me + Richard Armitage blog and possibly the most well-known blogger in Richard Armitage fandom, passed away from cancer on Sunday, April 14th, 2024 at the age of only 55. Her loss deeply saddens me and, although I never met her personally, she has meant very much to me in my blogging and fandom life and even occasionally in my personal life.
To me, she was always around. In February this year she posted about her 14th blogiversary, which means she started blogging in 2010 when I was already a few years into my Richard Armitage admiration. I think I must have stumbled on her blog relatively at the beginning of her Armitage blogging career because I know I was lurking and reading it faithfully long, long before I ever interacted on it and with her. Her blog and a few other blogs at the time (like Guylty’s blog or Herba’s blog) finally inspired me to start blogging myself and I have been doing so since then.
A little over 9 years ago Servetus linked to a post I had written collecting reviews for Richard Armitage in The Hobbit. I had only been blogging for two or three months at that time, with hardly any readers, but then she somehow found my post (we didn’t ‘know’ each other at all at the time) and linked to it and I actually started gaining a reading audience. She was good at putting the spotlight on others like that and I’m sure she sparked other blogging ‘careers’ just like she sparked mine.
Servetus was analytical and critical and she had an ironic sense of humour that I enjoyed. She had a deep knowledge of, among other things, history and theology and politics and she was a walking encyclopedia of Richard Armitage information. She had a phenomenal memory and remembered everything. Although she loved Richard, I liked that she avoided the hero-worship of him with a good dose of critical thinking. She spoke her mind, was exact and direct in the wording she used, didn’t accept bullshit, and with that was sometimes controversial. I do think that her criticism, her sarcasm, her directness and her clear sense of boundaries were sometimes mistaken for insult when it wasn’t really meant that way. She was just trying to make sense of everything in her own, unique, analytical way. She believed in the diversity of fandom, abhorred fandom policing (there is no one ‘right way’ to be a fan) and was able to analyze herself, Richard or fan life in an intelligent, scholarly manner.
Richard Armitage seemed like a journey of discovery for her, a gateway to understanding more about herself, in which she was always open and honest. The “me” in her blog title wasn’t an accident or throw-away thought. It was about making sense of what it was about Richard that fascinated her so much and what that in turn revealed about herself. Whether you agreed or disagreed with her, whether she annoyed you or made you nod in recognition, she always had something interesting to say. She didn’t become the most prolific Armitage blog for nothing.
From a more personal angle, she was always a good blogging friend to me, she was supportive of me, was always open to any questions I had and always ready for discussions. Sometimes she asked me things that really made me pause and consider my response and that helped me organize my thoughts. She challenged me in a positive way, directly and indirectly, through her writing. I learned from her, I laughed at her posts, I felt connected to her for far more than just Richard Armitage.
I connected with her for her liberal views and championship of human rights, for her interest in and knowledge about Germany (where she had lived and I had also lived for a while), for being Jewish which feels familiar to me, for her interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder, for her understanding of theology as it was a world familiar to me through my dad who had been a theologian and a scholar and analytical, just like her. She even once helped me figure out a basketball gift for my son, as he loves Giannis Antetokounpo who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks in Wisconsin. Servetus was from Wisconsin and knew more about him than I did. She knew so much about so much!
I really felt for her during those difficult years when she was caring for her ailing father and could also relate to the reality that circumstances in real life sometimes made it difficult to blog. She blogged and also commented here less frequently in the last year or two but once in a while she did reach out with a like or a comment or an e-mail and stated that even though she didn’t often comment, she was still reading. She also had the intention to blog more. In the fall of last year Servetus contacted a few bloggers and came up with an idea to reinvigorate our Richard Armitage blogging lives but alas, real life intervened with that as well.
Even though she wasn’t that active anymore in the blogging world, I liked knowing she was still around and didn’t think that much of it when I hadn’t read anything from her for some weeks; that tended to happen sometimes. In her final post in February, that 14th anniversary one that I reference above, she mentioned being unwell but to me it also sounded like that crisis had been averted and that she was on the mend again. In retrospect I understand that her cancer diagnosis came just a few weeks after that and that it turned out to be very aggressive.
Fast forward to three weeks ago when I found myself wondering about her, right when I was in the middle of my moving house chaos. I distinctly remember working in the new house, clearing kitchen closet space, and thinking about how she might be doing. I told myself that I should really e-mail her to check in with her and I vowed to do so soon. Then two days later the news reached me that she had passed away. I don’t believe in ghosts or even souls really and I’m not religious but the fact that she was in the forefront of my mind that Sunday, which in hindsight was also the day she passed away, really strikes a chord with me.
It’s difficult to imagine that she won’t be out there anymore, at the end of another computer, interacting with me and with us! I will miss reading her blog and her commenting on my posts. I will miss her reaching out to me with something she felt I would find interesting. I will miss her support during challenging times. I am sad that I will now never get to meet her in real life, something I had always hoped would happen some day. I hope she knew how much she meant to me, albeit from afar. Her illness was swift and I guess that if it did have to happen, at least she didn’t have to suffer long. Rest now in peace, dear friend.
I know she loved Bagginshield fan fiction (Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins pairing from The Hobbit), so here is a Bagginshield smile, just for her.
Zikhronah livrakha. May her memory be a blessing. And may her family and friends be comforted in their mourning.
For those who wish to leave a tribute or message of condolence for her family, please visit https://www.lewinfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Susan-R-Boettcher?obId=31196583.
For the coming two weeks (May 5th to May 19th, 2024) if anyone without a platform wishes to share their thoughts or tributes, feel free to reach out to any of the following blogs on our contact pages. We’ll be happy to host your commemorations:
* Sonja on https://guylty.net
* Obscura on https://ancientarmitage.wordpress.com/
* Herba on https://minorherba.wordpress.com
* Sue on https://imfeelingthis.blog/
* Or me, Esther, here on https://bookesther.wordpress.com/
After our move to Utrecht last Thursday we still needed to get back to our old house, throw out a whole bunch of leftover stuff and clean up. We finished it all on Tuesday afternoon (April 30th – and yes we painted around the furniture in that one room)…
… and then went for a last drink at a nearby lakeside restaurant that we’ll probably not frequent much anymore after this…
Then yesterday morning, on May 1st, we signed over our old house to its new owners. We left it with a bit of a heartache as we have lived there very happily for 17,5 years and raised our children there. However, we are also relieved to not have the responsibility of that house anymore as really a lot needs to be done to it to get it back in shape again (which the new owners will now do).
We now finally only have one house to think of, which is also a relief, and we’re able to get on with the unpacking, which is great. We’ve had some warm weather the past two days. So, besides breaks we take on our new balcony (and the cat is adjusting there nicely as well)…
… we also biked into town yesterday evening and had dinner at the foot of the Dom Tower, which is Utrecht’s most famous landmark.
So, that’s a wrap on our old house and our old life! It all still feels a bit unreal. Yesterday evening as we were eating out we said it felt more like a holiday than ‘real life’. I guess when we are more settled and get back to work again, that reality may start to sink in more. We’re remembering our old house and town very fondly but also really looking forward to this new phase in our lives.
The Book of Esther 