Ausflug
tomorrow Ulrich and I will depart on a short overnight trip with his mother Beate and uncle Henrik to wolfenbüttel, a historical town with beautiful architecture about three hours northeast of where we live. wolfenbüttel also happens to be the birthplace of jägermeister, but that’s not why we’re making the trip. we are going there because Beate and Henrik would like to visit their elder sister Ilse, who has been suffering from macular degeneration for years and dementia for a subset of that time and recently moved into a senior home in wolfenbüttel.
this will be the third time in about two years that we are making the trip to see Ilse as well as her son Marlon and his wife Ramona, who live about fifteen minutes away from ilse’s senior home. the first time we visited we tried to make it there and back in one day, without spending the night, and afterwards Ulrich experienced debilitating back pain for weeks. we thought it might have come from scrunching his back for the long car ride twice in one day (factoring in stops, the drive takes about 5 hours each way). that first trip took place while Ulrich’s father was still alive but struggling with various chronic health problems, so his mother couldn’t have stayed away for a night anyway. but then Ulrich’s father passed away, and uncle Henrik’s wife passed away suddenly just a few months after that, which indirectly opened up the path for Henrik and Beate to spend time with their sister in her most vulnerable moment. she knows their voices but struggles to see and understand them, having lost most of her vision to macular degeneration and the infrastructure of her thoughts to dementia. the last time we saw ilse she had been fantasizing about suicide, threatening to throw herself from the window of her room at the senior home. now, says Beate, she seems more even-keeled when they speak on the phone, though she still often insists that her days are numbered.
our drives typically start out something like this: shortly before 11 am, Ulrich and I leave to pick up his mother, who lives about 20 minutes away from us by car. Then we swing by uncle Henrik’s, about a further 25 minutes away from Beate. from there we begin the drive to wolfenbüttel, where Ulrich and I will switch off driving about halfway, after a quick stop at a rest area and a lunch of buttered rolls stuffed with sliced cheese. henrik rides in the passenger seat because of his bad hip, and Beate sits in the backseat behind him. Beate and I are mostly quiet during the trip; uncle Henrik will occasionally point to a passing landmark outside his window and share historical tidbits and memories of old business trips where he had to drive the same highway which we are taking on our way northeast. he likes to count down the kilometer posts the way he did on his trips, signaling how close or far away he was from home. occasionally he will bring up memories of himself, Ilse and Beate when they were growing up. the three of them were orphaned as young children after their mother died of cancer, which was only a few years after their father was killed during one of the last air raids of WWII, after the nazis had already surrendered to the allies. this is when Beate will perk up and chime in from the backseat, visibly excited to hear what her older brother has to say about a woman whose voice she can no longer remember (their mother passed away when Beate was just a toddler; she never met her father).
the first thing we will do when we arrive at Marlon and Ramona’s house is have coffee and cake, of course. this time Beate is bringing a homemade cheesecake along with us (Ulrich’s special request), and Ulrich and i are planning to offer some coffee beans from a local roaster here in Dortmund. after that, until we depart again on sunday, we will probably play things by ear - Ulrich and I are hoping that his mother and uncle will spend more time with aunt ilse at the senior home this time, in order to take some of the pressure off of marlon and ramona from having to host us all at their home. but we will see! perhaps this time i will order an after-dinner shot of jägermeister somewhere, just to see if it tastes as sticky and sweet from the tap as i remember it from the jäger bomb dive bars i frequented in college, the only places on st. mark’s place which would accept my fake ID.