Talking About September

The six months that have passed since I last blogged have found my husband’s family buried in sadness and I have had a difficult time figuring out how to blog.

My brain likes chronological order. I feel like I can’t blog about New Year’s until I’ve talked about our trip to Disneyland Paris last month, but I can’t talk about that until I talk about our trip to see the Christmas Markets in Colmar, and I can’t talk about that until I blog about September. And I don’t know how to talk about September. I don’t know how to talk about death.

This blog is meant to be a journal for my son, so when he is older and his memories of living in Germany are just a fuzzy mix of a big river and vineyards, he will know what we did here. It will matter that we pulled him away from all his grandparents to cultivate these experiences and give him another language that he never would have had. So how do I talk about September?

It’s honestly not my story to tell, so the short answer is: I really don’t. I will only say that as you can imagine, it was horrible. Watching someone you love die from Ahlzeimer’s at the age of 66 is painful and unfair. Having to tell your four year old the day after his fourth birthday that Grandma died is impossible. But you do it and somehow life moves on, somehow you shower, get dressed, go back to work and school, and get back to living life. Those first few weeks you think: Why is everyone acting so normal? My life is shattered. My life will never be the same.

I still cry for my son because he will never know how much she loved him. He won’t ever remember her and the bits he will remember, will be when she was under the cloak of sickness. And he still asks me sometimes or really just states “Grandma died.” It takes my breath away because it’s a punch in the gut, a reminder that he may be little but he still feels her loss.

However, as the new year is now upon us, I would like to blog about the last six months. I think I’m finally ready to talk about happiness because there has actually been a lot of happiness mired in between the sadness. So in the next few weeks, The Family Traveler will start to talk about traveling again. I will start with our trip to Legoland and Rothenberg last Labor Day before we flew back to the States.

So while our happiness may still be a bit dulled these days, the Family Traveler is still living life and still traveling around Germany and Europe. Thanks for being a part of our journey.