Philep's Last Journey

Description

Journaling reads:

In the summer of 2007 I made the trip of a lifetime. Together with my brother, parents and grandparents, we traveled through Indonesia and stayed in 7 different cities; Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Malang, Tanah Lot and Singapore.
It was 60 years ago that Philep and Willy left Indonesia because of the war and came to live in The Netherlands. During this trip they were able to show us where they grew up, visit their family members that got lost during the war and stayed in Indonesia and visit the grave of my grandfather’s mother of which he took some sand with him in a tiny box. We experienced a lot of beautiful and some very emotional moments.
During the 3 weeks we were there we also noticed some peculiarities concerning my grandfather. For example, he would just stand still and take over a hundred pictures of the same view or suddenly get confused and think he’s in Amsterdam. This made us a bit concerned, so when we were back home we took my grandfather to the doctor and there he got the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. His memory loss rapidly got worse and when he began wandering on the highway, we decided he would benefit from the extra help a special nursing home could give him. There he would spend the last 7 years of his life as his mental and physical health slowly declined.
Hindsight is 20/20 we can explain his confusion during the trip to Indonesia, which apparently turned out to be his last trip ever. I am so very thankful that we were able to go on this journey at a time that my grandfather was still able to experience all these precious moments with us and share his childhood memories. A few months later he would have forgotten his life stories and even wouldn't recognize us anymore.
I still wonder sometimes what he wished for when he put his hand through a stupa of the Borobudur temple and touched the Buddah statue. He probably did not expect this end of his life. I miss him. Every day...

To create this layout I used the following bundles by Little Butterfly Wings:
- YOLO
- Today
- A New Me
- Beauti-fall
- Stay Golden
- Gather Together
- Weekend Stories
- M3 April 17 Add-On
- Makers Gonna Make
- Afternoons, Sunsets & Goodbyes

And the wood background paper from the bundle Scoop by Allison Pennington