Due to my holidays I haven’t been to the Waldfriedhof for more than two weeks. When I arrived there on Tuesday, the site was all covered in leaves and I expect winter to arrive soon.

During my stay in Southern France I deliberately chose not to follow any memorizing rituals in order to find out wether I still need them. It seems like I don’t. I also visited the graveyard only on the fourth day after my return which would have been unthinkable a few months ago. I can see that things are slowly going to change and I feel ambivalent about that. On the one hand side I feel guilty about reducing routines I interpret as acts of reverence. But on the other hand I start feeling better and seem to regain the ability to look forward. I don’t have any clear ideas about my future yet but maybe winter is going to turn that page.

I’m going to leave for Southern France tomorrow morning. I will visit Fitou, the place where Nadine and I spent most of our holidays from the very beginning of our relationship. The place where she always loved to go and felt relaxed immediately . Especially at Leucate Plage, as you can see in the picture. I haven’t been there for about one and a half years but I feel that it’s the right time to go there again now.

This time I will travel with a few guys from my chessclub. We stay at Fitou for one week and take part in a tournament at Cap D’Agde later. So you propably won’t hear from me again before November.

I went to the Katharinenhospital today to fetch Nadine’s paitings from the exhibition and to meet her art therapist. We were talking for a while and it was good to hear someone else speaking about her fondly. She would have never dared to think of herself that way, but she was a person who could definitely leave an impression.

On my way I passed the university park where I used to take Nadine last autumn in order to collect chestnuts for little Nick. Now, the leaves are falling and there are chestnuts all over the place again – but there is no Nadine anymore. Even though this still makes me terribly sad I recognized some changes over the last one or two months: Thinking of her doesn’t always feel like getting my heart ripped out anymore. Instead, I often feel a more calm and warm sadness. It seems like grief gets slowly substituted by melancholy.

But, like it is said in that Dave Kusworth song she’s been listening to over nd over again in winter 2015/2016: there’s a place in my heart where she will always stay. And I would steal her from heaven If I only could…