GLOBETROTTERS MONTHLY CHALLENGE

The Last Holiday With My Grandpa

It was freezing cold and white outside

It was very cold but so beautiful. The snow was stacked high on the side of the roads and the skiing slopes were empty. Of course, nobody dared to go out in those freezing temperatures.

One side or the other of my grandparents were always with us on skiing holidays with the family. We visited the same skiing resort for over 20 years staying in the same flat each year. It wasn’t a resort as you know it, just a small alpine village with a few skiing lifts. Perfect for us kids.

I made so many memories over the years, it became my second home. And once I grew out of the time when you go on vacations with your parents, I took my grandparents for a trip.

I was studying at the time and so we weren’t bound to school holidays. While the rest of my friends were partying the nights through, I fetched my grandparents borrowing my parents' car.

Traveling during the off-season allowed us cheaper accommodation prices even though we couldn’t stay in ‘our’ flat. I found a lovely apartment in a farmhouse just out of town.

It had snowed the weeks before our arrival so much, one couldn’t see anything of the village upon driving through. The snow was stacked several meters high on the side of the road.

The way I liked it.

Everything was covered in white.

While my grandparents didn’t ski, my grandma would go on the kiddie's slope pulling her sled a kilometer from our home to get a couple of runs out of it. She’d walk up each time again, having a blast sliding down on the frozen slope.

My grandpa sadly had deteriorated a lot and after several strokes had lost all his short-term memory. He mostly stayed indoors and only went for walks when either my grandma or I came back to take him out.

We kind of knew we were hitting a cold time but didn’t expect the temperatures to drop that low. On the second or third day, we reached -30°C (-22°F). The day after, -31°C. The coldest I have ever experienced.

The entire week the temperatures stayed below minus twenty degrees offering us glistening powdery soft snow and solid icicles. It was beautiful.

But cold. Very cold.

And yes, I did venture out on my own. Looking at the pictures now, this must have been the transition period where I switched from a lifelong and passionate skier to a snowboarder.

And yes, I did not wear a helmet skiing but did wear one snowboarding as I had just learned how to board and still fell a lot. But look at those views. My absolute dream.

The slopes were empty. Like really empty. That empty I was every morning the first and the second person on the ski lift. Yes, I did a ride up and a run down and was back on the lift before the first people arrived.

I might have been a little crazy. All the lift boys knew me. Not only due to my shining jacket but also because of the amount of runs I was doing in these freezing temperatures.

I took the picture below from the lift. All those lines seen below are mine. It was such a dream powdering through the soft snow.

But yes, I did get cold quickly. I lasted about an hour on the slopes before I stopped at the first skiing hut to warm up inside and have a cup of tea.

Sometime during the middle of the week, I remember receiving a text from my dad asking me if I was still feeling my toes and fingers which I thought was a weird question.

A colleague of his had just returned to work with frostbites after skiing in the same resort I was on and that’s when my dad worried about me.

But I had good clothing and was layered up.

Whenever I came home for lunch, Grandma had cooked a delicious meal warming me up for the afternoon session on the slopes I wasn’t going to miss.

In the evenings, I would go with my grandma for walks on the hill behind our apartment. I remember one evening fondly when we walked toward the setting sun.

It was magical.

Like a true winter wonderland. Just with a splash of color.

When I stopped to take pictures my grandma walked ahead and then I saw her writing something in the snow. When I came closer and read her words she had the biggest and prettiest smile on her face.

I also remember taking my grandpa out for a walk on one of those extremely cold days. He was complaining before we had even left the warmth of our apartment.

He was like that in his late days. He complained a lot. I convinced or forced him to come outside and I remember him telling me on the doorstep that this is really too cold and dangerous. We should turn around.

I kept on telling him how important exercise is for him and managed to do a small loop around the farmhouse with him. But I’m telling you what, he was extremely happy once we were back inside.

When my grandma came home and I told her how much he complained she said it’s no wonder. It was too cold for him to go outside. Then I felt bad. But he was fine.

In the evenings we played Rummikub and I remember always looking over my grandpa’s shoulder as he couldn’t see anything on his left side and was usually too lazy to turn his head and see what cards he had on that side.

He was mostly quiet but sometimes threw out some jokes that Grandma and I looked at each other in astonishment. While he mostly just wanted to sleep all day and night, I think we got the best of him on this trip.

This was my last holiday with both of them as my grandpa passed away a year later while I was in Ghana. I didn’t fly home for the funeral. There was no point for me in doing that. For whom?

We were all grieving, if on-site at the funeral or thousands of kilometers away, and we were all filled with tears.

Looking back at it now I am just so happy I did all those trips with them. As gray as my day might feel thinking of him, my memories are filled with happy moments. That is that little splash of color on the horizon in an otherwise very monochrome landscape.

Remember that. Once the time has come to say goodbye to a loved one, you’ll never think of any time spent with them as a mistake. It’s about those trips you didn’t take, those will make you cry. And it’s not about the family gatherings. It’s about one-on-one time. The days when true memories are made.

This is a writing prompt to Globetrotter’s monthly challenge. Read the submission guidelines below and feel free to join. Two more days are left.

And here are two other prompt submissions I recommend you to check out.

Adrienne Beaumont also took snow as the topic of monochrome landscapes and shared with us how much she enjoys snow.

Oksana Kukurudza's Sunflowers Rarely Break goes a lot deeper. Into the ocean and into an environmental problem.

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