I take walks with him pretty regularly.
If I think about it – I don’t as often as I’d like – I’ll see him next to me and I’ll put out my hand and he’ll take it and I’ll explain to him where I’m going and what I’m going to do and what it’s like doing this or that now that he’s no longer around.
He doesn’t speak. He likes to walk, the way I imagine it. There was a long time when he loved to walk. He’d walk for so much longer than you’d ever think you could get a kid his age to walk. And the oncologist told us it was good for him to get as much exercise as possible, because that would reduce the chances of the tumor returning. I suppose I should have known something was up when he lost interest in walking in the autumn of 2018.
Today I was walking to work from the subway stop and had to make a detour for cough drops. He showed up and we walked and I told him it was kind of a big day.
For me, I was in the desk chief for the week. It means that I sort of set the tone for our news wire for the week, which really means I spend five days trying to remind everyone hour by hour what I wanted to be done. It’s a little bit more responsibility than usual. It’s a little fun to craft a week. It’s a bit of stress. I haven’t done this job in an age, not since the summer of 2018. First I was in Australia, where things run differently. Then, after I got back to Berlin, every time they tried to get me a desk chief week, either Colin or I got sick. This was my first shot at it in an age.
It felt like returning a little bit to normal.
Also today, Christina went back to work. You’ll have to ask her how that went, but it is, nonetheless, a milestone. And it feels a little bit like returning to normal.
And then I stupidly told Colin how it feels a little bit like things are getting back to normal. Which of course, they aren’t.
He’s not too judgemental. He didn’t make a case about my choice of words. I’m still working through it though.
❤️