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…

I spent an afternoon in the sun today in Tübingen with Annika’s family, Nadine’s parents and my father who is around these days because of my goduncle’s forthcoming burial. It was nice and I was able to enjoy the day, especially my time with Nick, but I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that somebody crucial was missing…

It seems like I secured a little victory against the harsh greenkeepers of the Waldfriedhof: the little heart built of thread I wedged into the bark of Nadine’s tree last week is still there. Maybe they are going to show some tolerance from now on.

Back in October, I wrote that life is teaching me it’s rules the hard way and that I’m very afraid of the lessons to come. One lesson I had to learn is that there are situations in life when everything might not be enough. We tend to believe that everything can be fixed or saved if we only spend enough effort. But that’s hubris and wrong.

In Nadine’s case, everybody did all they could: her doctors, her friends, her family and me the foremost. But we only managed to make her borrowed time more comfortable and to make her feel loved. I often remember the night she passed away in my arms. The feeling of helplesness when, regardless of all efforts spent, the hand that rocked the cradle wasn’t mine anymore. No, we aren’t that all-powerful as we often believe to be…