New old memories

We’re at Christina’s parents for a few days as we do the best we can in terms of vacationing during this time of coronavirus. It didn’t really dawn on me until we got here that it had been more than two years since we had been here as a family, which meant that we were a family of five last time we were here, in April 2018.

Since then, I made a pit stop here with the kids in early 2019 while en route to a vacation with them while Christina and Colin were stuck at the rehab clinic. And the kids came here for a while last summer because we wanted to get them out of the hospice for a while. And Christina came and visited her parents in February without us. But it wasn’t until we were walking down the main drag of Freising yesterday that it dawned on me that the reason it felt like so many of the stores I knew were gone and so many of the stores that are here are new is because I haven’t been here in so long.

It’s no one’s fault, but it’s a very limited vacation. The pool is open but, honestly, I’m leery of going. Many regional attractions are shut down or limited. We’re thinking about taking the kids downtown for ice cream tonight or tomorrow and even that feels like a logistical hurdle with face masks and social-distancing.

But it’s the memories that are standing out mostly. I had not expected this, since I’ve been dealing with the memories of Colin for nine months now. And we weren’t here with him all that often. But it was enough. So, when I walked by the playground yesterday I remembered the few times I was there with him. The grandparents have pictures of him up and they are not the same ones we have up, so that’s another moment to stop and take in. I see the whole house differently than I used to. It makes me wonder, should vacations ever become a thing again, how much of a getaway they’ll be. The kids want to go to Denmark again, where we traveled with Colin in 2015 and 2017. Do I really want to do that to us again? There’s so much of the world we haven’t had a chance to see thanks to the madness of the last five years, but will that feel like we’re just avoiding his memory? It’s all so hard to say.

Maybe other places will have less resonance than Freising. It doesn’t help that we’re debating the details of his gravestone while we vacation without him. It doesn’t help that we’re trying to decide if we should run by the bank here, where Opa set up a college fund for him and where they still haven’t managed to close it down, despite the boatload of paperwork they had us sign months ago. I guess very little of it helps.

We’re going to go and try to see an old Roman fort in a little bit. We’ll see how it goes. And then the rest of the vacation will beckon. Stay safe everyone.