In the last few weeks Nadine developped a distinct interest in her family’s history. She’s asking her dad a lot about dates and tends to remember past events more clearly. I wouldn’t go so far to say that she’s haunted, but obviously she’s diving for her submerged childhood memories. One story is about how her grandfather died when she was still a toddler. She has a certain picture in mind with him holding her younger sister at Christmas and also got a scene of his dying moments a few days later with people sitting around him in a circle reciting German poet Wilhelm Busch.

But most of her memories are related to her grandmother Erika Requardt, pictured above with her husband Willi and Nadine’s father aund uncle. I’m told that Nadine has a lot in common with Erika, both in character and in look. After having to flee from her hometown in Elbing during the war, Erika ended up in Wiesbaden, where little Nadine visited her quiet often. She describes her grandma’s home as a place where she was allowed to behave unrestricted and has plenty of pleasant memories about being there. Erika died when Nadine was twelve years old. The memories of the funeral of this woman, with whom Nadine shares a strong bound, became also very lively during the last weeks.

I resist turning psychological here and take this phenomenon as an interesting example for what can happen to the human brain under certain circumstances. Call me a physicalist if you like to…

If today’s blood test doesn’t veto, Nadine’s radiation treatment will be continued with seven more sessions to come. That’s good news in a medical sense – the radiation is absolutely crucial to her. But it is also good news for her well-being. It may sound strange, but she told me that she is able to enjoy these sessions, regardless of the irritating fact that somebody is directing rays around her brain. The reason is that she is wearing a customized mask that keeps all external influences away . Did I already tell you that one of her current troubles is stimulus satiation? So it’s good to see that treatment is back on track and that it also provides her some quietness.

Radiation to the head makes you loose your hair after some time and this process kicked in a few days ago. So we decided to set a mark and I shaved her head yesterday. I already got some experience: back in 2014, during her chemotherapy, I had to do the same thing. There were bouts of three weeks then and we decided to use one of the gaps to visit the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona. The one day I shaved her head, the next day we hopped on a plane. Although she felt weak sometimes, she mastered the task of attending a festival with bravery. In the picture above you can see her watching from the sideline wearing one of her newly aquired hats. We decided against a wig because these hats or caps look great on her.

One of the bands we saw at Primavera were Slowdive, an outfit who were completely off the radar for about two decades. Their floating shoegaze-sound always has a comforting effect on Nadine’s mind, even though the live version is a bit more noisy than the album track:

The day before I discouraged you all from visiting Nadine in the near future, our friend Tina Zihsler used the opportunity and got her five minutes. She endowed Nadine with a seagull and told her “to learn to fly again”. The fluffy little fellow seems to be in high regard already…

Learning to fly is in fact the task at hand and Nadine is already putting it into practice. Planning to simplify her life is a first step, requesting her yoga stuff is a second. I’m sure there are many more to come.

The need to find a suitable way through this cannot be emphasized enough. I’m very thankful that I don’t have to do this on my own but can count on the support many of you have already expressed. And: In Conor Oberst I got a spokesman whose music Nadine loves and whom the both of us attended live for two times recently:

P.S.: I went through our photos and compiled the best ones in a gallery: Nadine In Pictures