As you can tell from the title, we are in Italy!
By choice, but not really a free choice… 14 hours of driving by Camper brought us back to Versilia, and in some ways even a little bit back in time.
Here is home. But I don’t know whether this home still feels like my own.
Here colors are bright and sounds are loud, and I don’t know if I like them or not: they are beautiful but somehow overwhelming.
There are so many people around us, and so much affection, but in some ways I feel more out of place than ever.
Perhaps because I had convinced myself that I had found my little place in the world.
There are friends, there is noise, and yet it is as if silence gets even louder.
Franci says that for him, home is where the cats and I are, and for me home is him.
What would home be if he were no longer here?
I don’t know, I can’t answer that and it terrifies me to even think about it.
Before we left, the last CT scan confirmed further progression of the disease.
The German doctors advised us to stop treatment, as there was not much time left, and we fled to Italy!
We came back to have the support of friends and family, to feel less alone and because if something bad is going to happen, I don’t want it to happen in Berlin.
But we didn’t give up. We put some hope in the Italian doctors, who did not let us down….
Nobody has promised us miracles, let’s be clear, but already seeing the doctors’ focus on his well-being and quality of life, it gave us a strong push to keep going.
I have rediscovered a little love for these people and I recognise myself in their attitude.
Here you do what you can, and a bit more! There are many lazy people for sure, and those who have the will to do something, they will go as far as they can, and yet then they always find a way to push even further and go the extra mile. (Yey great customer care skills!)
So here we are, among ice cream, fruit that tastes like proper fruit, the highest summer temperatures we have ever seen in the last nine summers of our lives, and a new member of the Bianchi family: Tomato.
In all this I got a little lost, but I know this is the right decision to have made.
I’m going to take a deep breath now, and have a chat with that 15-year-old girl who somehow still lives here! Maybe we can compare notes, and together find our way and a place in the world – perhaps, even more comfortable than before.