On getting better

How very strange to write to you. On a blog, I have my doubts... Somehow though, the blog thing makes sense to me. It sets a frame, a place to meet you and spend time with you. I prepare and plan and then: we meet through my writing activity or thinking about images. I can take the edge of my bursting heart, there is an outlet for all those things I used to tell you, I want to tell you but can't. At the same time, yes, I do hope that maybe someone reads what I need to tell. As you can't hear me, maybe there is someone else who can and understand all these feelings. Someone with a similar experience. Cancer is so common today. Death belongs to our lives. But in our day to day routines there is hardly any space for all of this. Especially if a toddler is involved.

I can't remember anyone asking me how I am really doing now that you have been gone for several months. And often times I am so close to tears I wouldn't even be able to answer without breaking down. Maybe that's why people don't ask. Breaking down is a newer fear that came with time. Shortly after you died the pain was just part of the grieving process. But now I fear falling back into this hole of intense grieve.

Still how very strange to write to you. Is it not? Bah, oh, I miss you terribly. I can not stop repeating myself. Why write to you and how to make the best of it? Somehow in my head I have a timeline. I want to make it through the first year without you. Somehow I believe that after twelve months, or rather experiencing the first anniversary of your death will be the last great hurdle for me to take in this grieving process thing. By now we managed everything else, first day, first week, memorial and funeral, Christmas, new years, first winter, your birthday, first spring. Now first summer without you with our last summer of you in our minds and how the disease dwindled you away within weeks. Your anniversary.

Probably it won't change a thing. But - and that's what has been riddling me for the past days - what can I do to make the most of it? A horrible as it sounds but it is a tough and challenging and crushing year it does make sense to live through it conciously and thoroughly, even if it hurts as nothing has before. I want to remember everything and about you. I won't ever for sure but I want to remember those intense last weeks. Or maybe sometimes not intensive enough weeks because there are some things I regret. Several actually.

So after drifting for the past months being crushed by my grieve like a little object gets aimlessly thrown around by the angry waves of a storm in the sea - the image could be better described... - I decided to focus and remember, to do my grieving homework and to heal. Really how can there be a happy me if I am whining and crying? Which is ok, of course, but I believe there has to be some evolution. I have to find a new place, space, something for you in my live.

I love you and I miss you.

Visions & Fata Morganas

My dearest Mum,

Monday I saw you in a cafe. Your hair, your face, your highlights your style. My heart did a leap! I new it, you couldn't be gone forever... Just for a split second I was incredibly relieved and happy. Naturally it wasn't you. Since then I was mad at my brothers, especially the older one... He can push all my buttons within seconds. I don't quite know why but it is exactly the same effect your brother has on me.

Oh the anger... is one if my biggest challenges currently... I don't know what to do, I just get MAD and ANGRY very easily

I will be a Vegetarian one day

Dearest, Best Mom Ever,

I watched the movie "Samsara" yesterday. Purely visual, no words. See below. It was feautred on Itunes. At first I started watching doing stuff on the side, some research, some blog reading. After a while I got the hang of it and I was fascinated. Creators Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson travelled around the world for five years and captured nature, civilisation – which doesn't seem too civil most of the time – and people. Plus food processing... from animals. I was hardly able to watch and I felt so sick of myself eating meat, drinking milk. I thought about becoming a vegetarian so many times. But I simply love a nice Parma or Parmigiano, spare ribs, a burger, a great steak. Latte Macchiato... It's the Italians fault. Who would be able to travel to Italy without eating meat and dairy? It is just so demanding. Tom end I decided a while ago to pay very close attention to what kind of meat we buy. Consume less animal products. But renounce it entirely?

Yesterday I decided that I would try to be vegetarian. I will find ways around it. I am serious about it definitely. Step by step I will change my diet and will see where it takes me.

However. Today I had to un for a lense UV filter for my new camera (dreadful, but very happy-ending story), stopped by the Italian superstore and bought... yes, Vitello Tonato... I think it's kind of fine chicken slices with tuna – tuna is a whole new problem –  I only realized my "mishap" at the cashier... then we had time until the Radio Shack opened and I was very hungry, MC etc was around the corner and they have the most delicious Bacon and Egg Muffin I rarely eat because I never make it there before 10.00 am. Bacon is the worst and most disgusting.

To apeace myself I just had some Prosecco on ice. Because I am SO EXCITED about London tomorrow. Like christmas as a child! Like the club as a twen. London as a Fortsy? What's the efffing, cute word for an almost Forty-something?

I love you. I miss you so very much, tears are ready to jump onto my cheeks all the time. I am tipsy.

Please. Come back.

PS: My nose looks very ugly shot from below.

Samsara Theatrical Trailer from Baraka & Samsara on Vimeo.

Thinking rose-colourish

I decided to pick up speed. I'm done with lamenting and grieving. Well, I will feel sorry for myself but still I'll try to make the best of it. And I started already. I am currently sorting all my files on my computer. What an endeavour!!! Millions of images, badly organised. The booklet I started of Tonies first 52 weeks in life. One image for every week. Meep! Unfinished... The booklet I promised Tom for Christmas 2011 of our first year of marriage. Meep! Unfinished...

My bookmarks are a mess. So many things I like and I will never look at again because I can't keep track. All my videos and Camcorder recordings. All the drawings and paintings. Lingering somewhere in boxes and folders in your attic and my attic and Roberts attic. Or in the basement falling into pieces. No more! Order, order is my mantra for the next weeks! Even my skin is a mess. I need a facial.

Undefined

My dearest Momanimal... whereas you were far away for a while I dreamed of you two nights ago. You were alive but already sick and in bed. We knew what was to come. I woke up and was shocked... it felt like starting from scratch, going through all the emotions of your death fast forward early in the morning before having a coffee. I was devastated. Again. The following two days I didn't know what I felt. Now I know:I feel flat. Like super sparkling water that has lost all it's bubbles. The water is ok, as it's just flat water but it used to be very different. Something is missing. HA! What a metaphor.

I missed you terribly today. And I was mad at you for leaving us behind. I so wish for all the memories we should have had with Tonie and all. You being a grandmother, me being a mom. 13 mths were to short. And wtf I am in the middle of my life you are supposed to be here! Sappy smush, sappy smush. I do have to try harder to find our happy ending.

I love you & I miss you.

Hiding

My dearest Mom,

since I felt so happy and light during our break in Joberg I went right back for the weekend and stayed. Monday, Tuesday Wednesday. Tonie and I went swimming and tobogganning. I watched some stupid TV. Ah, we had fun. There was lots to laugh about and I felt like a very good, sane Mum.

Being away it feels as if you are only a phone call away and I'll speak to you soon to tell you all the latest news and stuff. Back home... is back home where the whole you left is all consuming. I am dreading your house in Munich. In the beginning it felt safe and I spent every other afternoon there just to calm down and feel close to you. But now I cringe only thinking about it, it's a nothing but a weight on my shoulders. Everything looks the same as always, your housekeeper takes care of everything, even decorated easter things. Your brothers and T find it spooky that the house looks like always. Frozen in time. None of us can afford to move into your house. Renting it will be difficult... and sooner or later we will sell. And some company will tear our home down and will build one of those apartment buliding clones. your house is almost the last of its kind in this area.

Anyway. Here is my latest video I created it for my cashmere client. It was my favourite way of working when every step in the process just falls into place. Happens rarely but is the BEST. And itworks. She was really, really happy.

I love you. I understand you won't come back. I think.

Dancing sweater from mimicks on Vimeo.

I hate January

I miss you terribly. January was horrible. Horrible. Horrible. I realised now that it's February. I hate the fact that 2013 is a year you never lived in. I wish for 2012. A year you were alive. I want to relive the past Summer, your last summer. Even if it was the saddest summer ever, to learn about the metastasis in your spine, your surgery, the metastasis in your brain. To know you will die. However bad – you were with me.

I miss you. I am so lonely. So very, very lonely. I don't know who to talk to. I don't know how to talk about you. And I want to, because I think about you all the time. It feels like you are in my thoughts every single minute. To forget about you is scary and bliss at once. It only happens short amounts of time in which I feel normal. Normal. Poor Tonie. Yesterday she started crying because I was. She is very loving, caresses my cheeks, hugs me, tries to comfort me. She is 16 mths! I designed a little photo card for your thank-you letters (for all the flowers and help we got). We have it all around the house and I try to explain to Tonie why I am sad by showing her your picture and giving you little kisses and hugs – imagehugging you. She hugs you, too. And her little hand touches your face tenderly.

Blerch. This is a soppy smusch. I can't help it. I miss you, I miss you, I miss everything. I miss my life with you and the life I imagined for us. The grandmother you were supposed to be. The vacations we were supposed to take. Tonie taking naps with you. Telling me she wants to go to your place. I miss the way you listened to me. Nobody will ever see me the way you did. Flawless even though you know all my weaknesses, only a mom... Whom to tell all those little stories? Even if I have very close friends it is simply different. And because I can't tell you I somehow don't want to tell a thing. Funny enough many people think it helps if they tell me about you or what a loss was like for their grandmother or how they cope. If they get near the topic of you. Which most people don't. I am unfair.

It is Valentines. I don't think you ever gave a sh. But another chance for me to let you know: I miss you and I love you. By now I sometimes feel it: you won't come back.

Questionmarks

My dearest Mom,

it seems like I am getting sadder and sadder, not better and better. The more time passes... even if I knew it's final all along, everyday I have the same thought: It can't be true. That I will never see or talk to you again. I so long for a call from you. And as it is nothing but frustrating to even write about it, I don't want to write about it all.

Tonie walks! Two weeks now... really long stretches and more and more every day. I have a new computer, the old one almost bombed. Tonie and I are very sick, we both have a very painful cold and we have a rough time with each other as we both feel so bad. Before that, about three days ago I was crying basically for two consecutive days. My skin felt raw, no, it feels like I have no skin on my body at all and everything I did hurt. The air around me was enough to hurt me... poor Tonie, she is the one who lives through my pain more than anyone and she shouldn't be. I am very lonely as I am scared to dump all the pain on someone else. Calling a friend to gnaw her ears of about how painful it feels... somehow I can't talk about it.

I love you more than I ever knew and I miss you almost every minute of the day, even at night. Wouldn't it be great, if reality didn't exist and you could simply come back just because I ask you to. Love.

Your birthday

Happy, happy, happy birthday. Bunny-jumping birthday song! Best Mom ever on the whole wide world! Even if you yourself can't celebrate your birthday today – and you probably wouldn't if you could as you hated birthdays... there are a million reasons for me to think of you and celebrate this day and the littlest and biggest reason is Tonie. Without you she wouldn't be and I wouldn't be and Mooks and W wouldn't be. Imagine! Thank you. I miss you. It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warmish. At "your place" with your friends and lunch after. It was a new image of your loss I had not realized before. Because this time I was watching from the outside: Seeing your girlfriends I was constantly filling you in before my inner eye and you were so obviously missing...

I love you so. When will you be back?

PS Tonie called you cell yesterday. 15 month old: she unlocked the Iphone and managed to click your name on my list of favorites... Mama Cell... But your phone is already disconnected.

I'm not me

It has been 16 weeks since you have been diagnosed with brain metastasis. I miss you. It can't be true. I  will never speak to you again, see you again, touch you, shop with you, drink with you, blablabla. I don't know who I am without you. There's such a big whole right in the middle of me.

We are in Austria. Skiing. See below. I miss you and I love you, please come back.

"Time is a rubberband"

I wish you were here. I wonder where you are. Thinking about time. The time we had. What time felt for you when you knew you would die. Now there is no time for you. Waiting for the urn to crash or whatever an urn does to disintegrate.

I was about eleven when I played around with a selfmade towel doll. Awa, about maybe... 63 at that time – younger than you – watched me and explained how the experience of time changes while growing older. And I used to feel time speeding up, days disappearing and weeks rushing by. But since my pregnancy time became slohoowwwwww. Waiting for Tonie, 3 wks, 4 wks, 12 wks, 20 wks, waiting for her to grow, to be born, we moved... waiiiiitin for her arrival for hours on end, our first exciting months. Your diagnose and waiting for your death and waiting to learn how to live without you. My time feels like eternity. Probably a good thing.

All I wish for Christmas is you. I miss u. Come back. This is no fun.

PS the quote is from "Girls". I gorged through the first season last weekend. I hated the first and the second episode while knowing I was hooked. You will be shocked and you will wonder whether live's like that for twenty something. Gawd, they are awkward. I remember.

Family time

My sweetest & cutest Mom,

I miss u. Today felt better. I met with my brothers. It's tough to establish a new bond. Without you. We are just so very, very, utterly different. We went looking for a gravestone. What wonderful to-dos! Yay.

Now you are there for real. I think I have to get used to it. But unexpectedly I do like the idea that I can visit you, even if it's nothing but your ashes. Whereas before I never liked the concept of a graveyard.

Talked about the house. What to do with all your things? What to do with your home in the mountains? And at this point I don't care about anything but your bedroom and dressing room. I like to got there, to look at your clothes, flip through them and to lie on your bed while Tonie makes a mess on your bedstand. Boooh, the image of me browsing around is spooky. But what can I say, it helps me feel close. And once your clothes and room are gone your smell will fade away also... SPOOKY!

Anyway. I try. I started the Grief Recovery book – which I will explain to you – but there are assignments to do which I naturally dread. Lighter stuff... The night before your burial, Tonie and I changed the sheets to get my mind of things or in order. Or whatever. She happily freaked out, me too. With a strange mixture of happiness and sad tears.

RIP

My dearest, sweetest Mommanimal,

today you found your final resting place. The day after you died we went looking for a family grave. And the three of us all liked a small space beneath a birch tree surrounded by hedges. This is where the rest of you resides for now and ever. Your ashes fit into a tiny metal box and we have chosen the simplest, purest ceramic urn for you. You can't imagine the ugliness of urns. Urn designs are very, bery strange. I don't think you would have wanted a dolphin jumping into the sunset airbrushed onto your biodegradable plastic urn? See. I figured. Your urn looked beautiful. Your death date was wrong on the metal box inside... they wanted to place the ugliest cross onto your grave with a black veil around it. argh. Really strange, again. But your friend and I came prepared, a very sleek and simple grey slate bears your name for now, until we find the perfect gravestone.

I love u. I love u. I love u.

And it doesn't get better. Everyday I wish you were with us. I wish I could hear your voice and I wish I could tell you everything that happened these past weeks.

We went for lunch afterwards. I left Tonie with the sitter. She slept through your burial.

It is late in the afternoon now and I am waiting for them to return from there walk right now.

I miss u. I miss u. I miss u. Come back. Come back. Come back.

I love you. Now this process of dying and burying is behind us. Today I saw you for the first time since your death. The last I saw of your face, bedded in synthetic sheets with a cross, roses in your hands. Have you ever imagined yourself in a coffin in your living room? I believe not. And I am sorry the coffin was so... wooden. The images of our last weekend together are anchored into my mind. Sometimes they are hard to deal with, sometimes they help.

The day draws to a close. Thomas is back. Tonie is asleep. This was the last of the ceremonies. The last step of knowing you will die. Beginning in August when they found the metastases in your back. Knowing you will die.Waiting for and dreading your death. The weekend you died. Seeing you dead. The funeral service. The first weeks without. Your burial. The lunch after. Now the weekend after.

I love u and miss u.

Birthday tunes

My dearest, dearest Mom...

I miss u. It's Thomas' birthday today. What a beautiful, what a painful day today. Tears welled up as I prepared the cake yesterday – your favorite recipe. As I sang a your favorite birthday tune... I bought his presents in the department store where we went in spring and you bought a pair of jeans for me. Because I didn't know what to wear once the pregnant pounds faded but left my body totally different and strangely reshaped. Even though my weight really isn't the issue anymore. I fit into the smallest sizes. I can see my rips and for once in a longtime have almost spindly legs. And I don't do a thing for it. I am not sick. I just feel sick most of the time, because I miss u. Naturally death is final but how can I understand. You were with us a minute ago. So many moments pass in front of my inner eye. And I wish it was last summer again. We knew you would die but I couldn't grasp in the least what it meant.  No forum for breast cancer I visited, no book about dying or grief prepared me for what's happening now and how my life changed. I hate it. I don't want to be the me before your death and the me after your death. Especially as I have no clue who this  latter me is. To be defined.

I love u & I miss u and I would give anything to talk to you. Please call soon. I hope you are well and happy wherever you are and say hi to grandma Awa if you can.

A million kisses, Gi

PS I will upload pictures of tiny Tonie later on. She wore the cutest outfit for the day.