Fernweh, An Ache for Distant Places

To Roger

Published by

fernwehtun

July 28, 2016

My grandfather Roger was a military man turned sales executive for a large chain department store.

He was passionate about road trips, filming and taking photos, and telling stories. He loved to just drive around and look at things. I credit him for planting those first seeds of desire for the world in my mind.

Roger was also a chain smoker and passed away from cancer when I was nine.

I mourn that I never got to know him as an adult, and that he never got to know me either.

I used to sit as close as I could get to him and interrupt his work, his news, his shows, his potato peeling, his naps, and later on, his chemo. I listened while he told me about his time in the military and his travels. I must have driven him crazy.

I stared intently at these photos in black and white, committing every monument, fountain, and statue to memory. I was fascinated and determined to see, smell, and touch everything for myself.

I wanted to experience the languages, the architecture, the air, the food, the markets, and to wander up and down those same streets.

He spent so much time on the telephone for work. I used to sit on the floor in his office impatiently waiting for him to hang up.

I watched him drop quarters into his globes and spin them around the axis and I, pretending I was one of them, spun around him in circles.

The photos in this slideshow are from his travels to Italy and Geneva, Switzerland.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

*************
© Fernwehtun, 2015- Current. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Fernwehtun and Fernwehtun.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

One response to “To Roger”

The Samhain Sabbat – Venerate Your Dead

October 29, 2019

[…] is the man to whom I credit my first taste/desire to explore the world, and I wrote Roger That for him. He died from cancer when I was almost ten but I still talk to him […]

LikeLike

Reply