While I was Away This Summer: Remembering

Tom and I went for a very long road trip this summer to Prague, Krakow, Berlin, Budapest, Venice, and Israel, thus a post less blog. 

This trip was the result of my parents living with us in the summer of 2009 and the life changes that the future will for sure bring upon us.  Watching my parents struggle with day to day life and the burden of memory issues I grew increasingly concerned that I had better live my life now the way I want to or I may never have the chance to do all the things I have dreamed of.  Top on the list was and remains, travel with Tom, my husband.  The trip was born of fear of forgetting and in a very strange turn of events it was a trip of remembering.
  Remembering our past and the past of our people became our journey over the five weeks we traveled.  As we traveled Europe we stayed with friends and  lovers we had long ago lost touch with.  A smile comes across my face as I think about these visits because somehow we picked up and enjoyed these friends as if we had been in touch only yesterday.  Same as it ever was in some odd ways but so much better because for this brief moment in life we were old enough to be much richer and more interesting people and young enough to play and run and swim with vigor. As my dad says a great deal these days:"It would be great if it stayed like this." All of had aging parents, even the youngest of us, and a sense of what lay ahead. Certainly this is not something we had a sense of 30 years ago and it was odd to see how it created an added dimension to life choices and future planning.

But the largest journey of remembrance was the journey through the Central European Jewish communities and death camps that we spent our days exploring.   In some cities there are almost no Jews left, such as Krakow, and the burden and responsibility of remembering has fallen on caring young adults that find it "interesting" and the tourists that pass through the cities each year.   It struck me that the generation that tells this story is rapidly dying or forgetting the Holocaust.   I want to tell more but this is not what this blog is all about.

As we traveled I missed my family and my husband's family as I never had earlier in life.   I want more time with my parents and have grown very close to my sisters and missed the daily check ins and emails that start out about mom and turn into sister stuff.  My first moments home with my mom and dad were so difficult. I wanted to sit down and tell them all about it but instead had to help my mm get dressed for an event.  She had forgotten me even more and kept saying what a nice woman I was.  I always responded she, my mom taught me well how to care for others.  Depending on the day she has a sense of who I am.   Dad nicely reminds her multiple times a day:" I am your husband Eddie and I love you Millie."  He is an expert at this and we follow suit.  I joke and say" I am your second most favorite daughter Debi"  or  "I am your favorite daughter Debi"  She laughs with me if she is alert enough to make sense of a long standing joke.