Sunlight and Shadows

On Saturday, I visited my paternal grandmother in Styria. I had planned to visit her before Easter anyway, but my parents also decided to visit her that day as she had taken a turn for the worse in the days before and my father had not been able in the past two weeks when he had the flu.

It was a day of blue skies and glorious sunshine and while the view was most spectacular from the road, I could not just stop to take a picture there and therefore had to stand on my toes and take a peek over the rooftops in the residential area where my aunt and uncle live. A truly lovely early spring day and even though the weather almost seemed to mock us in view of our gloomy moods, it was probably just as well as rain would not exactly have lifted our spirits, either.

My Mum and me walking to the nearby nursing home rather than taking the car

Even though I overcompensated my sadness with forced chirpiness in view of my poor little granny lying in her bed in a state of restless semi-sleep, I knew deep down that this would probably be last time I would see her alive. I was almost surprised at myself how calm and detached I was and thought the condensed dose of visits to nursing homes and geriatric wards of hospitals I have experienced in recent years had made me almost immune. Not really.

Every time my phone rang in the past two days, I was relieved when it wasn't my parents' number, until early this morning, it was and I intercepted my Dad with "Bad news, right?" in order not to have to hear the dreaded sentence out loud.