As part of my mission this year to watch all the Oscar nominees, I watched ‘A Real Pain’, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, with Kieran Culkin nominated for Best Supporting Actor, in it, the pair visit Poland – their recently deceased grandmother’s homeland – and during their trip, they visit a concentration camp.

The camp they visited wasn’t Auschwitz, it was Majdanek, but it reignited in me the desire to visit Auschwitz. It may seem like an odd desire to have, but it’s a desire all the same and perhaps feels more important than ever given everything going on in the world at the moment. I, obviously, don’t expect to have a good time visiting the place, but I definitely want to see it with my own eyes, and be there in person.

I made the mistake of speaking to my Mum about it, joking that I’d messaged the group chat asking if anyone wanted to join me and how no-one seemed to want to take me up on the offer. Not people’s idea of a good time, I guess, even if paired with a trip to Europa Park (quite the double bill).

“I’d like to go” was her response.

And truth be told, I’d love nothing more than to travel anywhere with her, because to travel with her would imply that she was able to travel and not slowly succumbing to her degenerative illness.

Since her diagnoses, she has generally seemed quite accepting of her fate. Her limitations. Stubborn, like her father, sure, but willing to get on with things and throughout it all a surprisingly good sense of humour about it all. Occasionally though, a massive bout of denial seems to slip through, or, at least, not thinking things through fully.

Technically, there would be nothing stopping her travelling anywhere in the world. We could get her a passport and, at the moment, she can transfer from her wheelchair, so she could get onto a plane, etc easily enough, but what would in any other circumstance be a chill holiday with a parent, would be an exhaustive experience for me. Wherever we stayed would need to be fully accessible, I’d not only need to get myself ready each day, but I’d need to get her showered, too. I’d need to book transport and stuff ahead of time and factor in her and her wheelchair. It is doable, and I wish I could take her, but ultimately, selfishly, any trips I take are a chance for me to forget my life here for what is sometimes only a brief moment.

After the incident in Paris, where I got a call from my Uncle, or rather a missed call, and assumed something had happened to her (it hadn’t), standing in the 5th arrondissement, my panic set in, already working out in my head how I’d get home in the quickest way possible, all in the time it took me to call him back and find out that she was (as far as he was aware, at least, fine). I make sure I call her each day I’m away, just to check in, give myself peace of mind, she doesn’t ask me to, or expect me to, but for me, I have to.

To try and gloss over her travel request I joked that she couldn’t come to Europa Park, she wouldn’t be able to ride the rides (nor would she want to, even if she was able). She suggested she’d happily sit and watch. We eventually moved on from the topic entirely.

But now I feel like I can’t go to Auschwitz/Krakow, without upsetting her, and so despite my desire to go, I don’t know what to do.

I do still want to visit Europa Park though, even if it’s not part of the double bill with Krakow. I’m going to Paris at the end of March for a few days, once we’re back from there, and depending how much money I have when we get back, I’m going to look into booking that trip, for around my birthday/start of the summer, if I can make that work, later if I can’t.

So, yeah, that’s my real pain, I guess…