Farewell

I hate funerals. I hate all what is leading to it. I hate how time is working against one while it is so convenient just to live along until you are confronted with the absolute outcome of death. I am scared for what lies ahead. I do not know how to deal with the losses to come.

Canon · EOS R5 · 50mm · ƒ/2.8 · 1/125s · ISO 640

My grandfather Klaus (* 1941, † 2026) died in June after an exhausting physical and mental decline. Leading up to his death, taking care of him wasn’t easy for my grandmother, nor for my mother, who cared for them both. It was not difficult for me because I lived along. Until yesterday.

I don’t remember who he was in the last five years - I do not know the person he was at the end. I remember who he was 30 years ago and it’s great memories. From early school age to my teen years, every year I went with him and my grandmother on vacation, either the mountains or the Baltic Sea. Eventually I was 15/16 and we stopped going together on vacation. Before that, besides vacation I remember being a small boy and spending time with them in their garden not far from where they lived, a camping trailer, a nice little inflatable boat with a motor - I thought then they must be rich having a boat. I remember the taste and smell from fresh berries straight from the bushes in their garden. I do not remember what happened to all of this. Why?

I remember it not always being easy, them being strict to me, high expectations on how to behave, how to talk, what to do but still caring, grown up in post-WW2 East Germany in the GDR is an environment I can not fathom to start a family in even. Eventually their strictness and high expectations drove continuously a wedge between them, myself, my father and my sisters. When I spoke to my grandparents, not more than once a year, I sensed they felt the distance between them and the rest, they longed for being more part of our adult lives and eventually when we spoke projected a more intact world when I was a little kid still. Recalling stories of vacations and time together.

We never really reconnected when I grew older and the misbelief on their end why there is so little closeness between them and their grand- and great-grandchildren. We never told them what was pushing us away. We all made it too complicated for everyone involved and now it’s too late for my grandfather. I do not think anything would have changed - in a sense of improvement - had we spoken, met and shared more. But I can never know. Yet not having done it feels like a phantom-pain of regret you can’t make go away.

Someone once said to me: Sven, extrapolate the times you saw a person in the last five years by the time you think you still have left together. Then see the number is a lot smaller than you thought. It’s finite.

I do not know what will change now, I know my grandmother lost her partner for life, I know my mother will be there for her in the best way and I know I will take Tilian and Kellin next week to meet their great-grandmother, for the first time in two years.