I spent the weekend in Stuttgart, Germany. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hooray: It’s possible to have such experiences. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Boo: It was for a funeral. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
At least I got to hear my husband speaking German all weekend. He really is fluent in the language (and in French, and Japanese). It’s fun to admire the abilities of people you loved anyway. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I didn’t know the person who died — a friend of Craig’s — but in the same way that we learn to draw a chair properly by sketching the “negative space” around it, by the end of the weekend, after spending time with his siblings and partner, hearing stories about him, I felt like he was a friend I knew and cared for. That, Craig said, is why he wanted me to go. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He was perfectly willing for me to stay home, but after he’d booked his travel I had one of those nagging feelings, something I’ve recognised from an early age, that says “You know what you should do here.” And that should<\/em> is not enculturated guilt, it’s part of me that points out the path that will lead me to be the person I could be, someone bigger<\/em> or more<\/em>, whereas I’m totally free to opt for the other path, but there’ll be a sacrifice inherent in the choice. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n In this case, I didn’t want to go to the expense and hassle of travelling right after getting home from a month abroad. And I don’t speak German. And I’d never met this friend of Craig’s. Still, I thought about how I want our relationship to be, and I knew that I was supposed to be with my husband as he went through this difficult experience, even if there was no other reason for me to be there and nothing I could really do<\/em> there. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n The instinct was right. Seeing how he was moved by the funeral and the events around it, I can’t imagine having stayed home just for the convenience of it. And, yeah, there’s a pointless emotional cost to discovering someone quite amazing whom I’ll never know and then in the same instant having to grieve for him. But I’m glad I went. We also had some enjoyable moments with Daniel, another of this person’s friends who travelled with us and stayed in the same hotel, and Stuttgart, like so many European cities, had a compelling life to its streets and some beautiful buildings. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Now I’m back home, and, sure enough, all the stuff I wanted to do could wait just fine.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spent the weekend in Stuttgart, Germany. Hooray: It’s possible to have such experiences. Boo: It was for a funeral. At least I got to hear my husband speaking German all weekend. He really is fluent in the language (and in French, and Japanese). It’s fun to admire the abilities of people you loved anyway. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}