My ongoing struggle with the watchdogs from the Waldfriedhof went into another round on Friday. I want to have a heart on Nadine’s tree somewhere so I nailed one under the plate that carries her name and dates. It cannot be seen when the plate isn’t turned around so I hope this score is finally settled now.

It’s Fantasy Film Fest again and I went there for two movies yesterday – I watched one on my own and one together with a friend. I was reminded how much Nadine loved to do such things and how happy they always made her. She has been so easy to please and so grateful for every little fortune she received. I realized that letting her have such joy and the smile on her beautiful face afterwards are one of the things I miss the most.

On Friday it will be three months since Nadine passed away. Most of her personal things have left the house now: her books and some of her crockery went to Tübingen, her clothes are in a second hand shop, a friend of ours took her bike and her cousins shared her baking equipment. All the remaining stuff I deliberately chose to keep.

All these things are qualified to create moments that feel like little deaths to me. The empty tube of toothpaste pictured above is just one example: with mouth hygiene being important for cancer patients, Nadine started using that special medical toothpaste. I took over later and finished it today.

Everytime something like this happens, I’m left with a sad feeling. I don’t know where he got it from, but little Nick once came up with the image that the memory of Nadine is like a snowman slowly melting away in spring. I don’t know how to tell you how much I hate this to happen…

I spent Easter in my hometown Heidenheim and was away for almost a whole week. When I left last Wednesday, I stopped by Nadines’s tree just to see that the little heart I put there was once again taken away. The only thing that remains constantly untouched is a shell that I dropped down by the roots some weeks ago.

My trip around easter also meant my longest absence from Nadines’s resting place so far. It worked as a distraction, because, unlike in Stuttgart, not all of the places and things in Heidenheim are strongly connected with memories of Nadine. But when I returned on Tuesday and went to Nadine’s tree again everything came back and hit me way harder than at other times.

Even though distraction is a much needed thing – you simply can’t suffer day in day out – it should propably not be overdone.  My assumption is, that when a loved one dies, you have to go through a certain amount of grief. Distraction may postpone your harm, but it is unable to spare you from what has to be experienced. In the end, my little trip strengthened my supposition that the best way to work through such terrible loss is to allow sane dosages of grief in a balanced frequency.  Which is of course not that easy to implement…