Grief & healing: It can be sad to remember fun vacations

It’s strange how memories can be both happy and sad at the same time. After Baheej died, I realized this happens.

Travel was a big part of our life together. And we usually took a major international vacation together every summer. And sometimes another one in the winter over Christmas and New Year. We’d just go to a destination and immerse ourselves in the culture, exploring everything — food, local customs, art, nature, all of it.

Sometimes the vacation was here in the USA but to a part of the country where we’d never been before. The Grand Canyon, the Grand Teton mountains in Wyoming. Bar Harbor in Maine. All wonderful trips.

So I often think back fondly on those trips and rich experiences. But strangely I’ve also found these memories can also trigger sadness.

Somehow remembering too many details triggers grief, even many years later.

So this presents a bit of a dilemma. What shall we do?

Well, I usually start by filtering out the worrisome parts and remembering the happy parts.

A couple years before Baheej died, we spent two weeks in Paris sitting in sidewalk cafes and eating escargot and other delicious French specialties. We took it slowly but Baheej was all right. We had been to Paris several times over the years and it was a favorite destination.

I should have noticed some of the warning signs like when he slipped and fell on a steep moving walkway in the airport in Paris.

On our last big trip together to Oslo and Bergen, Norway, I like to think of us walking together from our harbor hotel on along the pier by the Briggen shops to the restaurant on the harbor. That restaurant had the most wonderful seafood and the biggest crab legs in the world. Each bite was the size of a small lobster tail. Steamed and served at a table right there by the water.

In Bergen, I realized Baheej was not well, but thought it was his knees. We walked slowly. Had wonderful days there. We visited the museum of one of his favorite playwrights, Henrik Ibsen. Baheej died of a stroke eight months later.

Sometimes I replay these trips and specific scenes in my mind. And they are packed with both sad and happy memories.

The point is: I guess that’s it, how it works. Sad and happy mixed together. So it is with grief. It all blends together and usually just sits there. It’s not something people want to hear about or talk about.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@aol.com.