Raising my glass….

… to my grandma today. My sister reminded me that today would have been her birthday. Her 98th. She died 13 years ago in July and I still miss her… My grandpa died in 1999. Now – they were from a generation that had to live through 2 Worldwars here in Germany. I don’t know much about them during WW I as they both have been babies then but I know some stories from WW II. Not so nice ones. My grandpa was soldier and was a russian prisones of war. He survived this only because at some point someone needed a messenger and he chose my grandfather. He survived but all his companions died. I think it was later that he was a prisoner of war in France. Last year my mom opened some boxes with his belongings and we found pictures from that time. Jeeez, was he skinny. While he was a prisoner of war, my grandma was alone with two kids and she had to get on with her life somehow. They have been evacuated from Cologne for some time. But my mom (and my dad as well) don’t talk much about that time. I know more about how my dad spent that time since my other grandfather was a great fotographer, genealogist and collector of documents for chronicles. So I know the history of my dad’s family since it has all been documented ever since 18hundredsomething. The history of my mom’s family remains a little bit blurry though. I think that they had a lot of difficulties to overcome that we can’t even imagine. Can you imagine your hubby live far away from you for years and not getting emails all the time? This is what happened to them. I mean, it was WAR after all…. something we can’t even imagine any more.

I’ve been wearing one of my grandma’s rings again for a couple of weeks now. Not sure why but maybe because I would like to have something with me that reminds me of her.

When I turned 40 my mom had already told me months before that event that they had a nice present for me and I was a little bit upset since I suspected something rather bad. But then it turned out that they gave me something that I would never had expected since my grandpa had been dead for 3 years by then and I had thought we had thrown this away since it had been so fragile. Little did I know that my mom and my aunt had the idea to have it restored for me. I still have it in my living room and it is a daily reminder of my grandparents:

Cheers Oma, I miss you!