Bringing It All Back Home

One minute. That’s exactly how long it takes for everything in your world to change.

One day and you can be in a completely different world.

About a month ago now I left Sydney to fly halfway around the world to what was once my hometown, Belgrade, Serbia. It was unplanned, very last minute and something that needed to happen for family reasons.

I hadn’t been back in 8 years, but it felt like at least 20.

I have thought a lot whether to write about why I was there or not, and honestly I don’t think I can talk about the experience of being there without at least mentioning it. My maternal grandparents both have Alzheimer’s and dementia, and I understood intellectually that they wouldn’t recognise me, but to see the people who have been such an monumental part of my life not know who I was really hit me in a way that I didn’t expect.

It made me appreciate what I have and the people who are in my life right at this very moment a heck of a lot more, because you really don’t know what tomorrow brings and they deserve to know how loved they are and how much I appreciate them all.

I tried to take some time off and photograph both Belgrade and my grandparents place, I have so many fond memories of sitting in their lounge room watching old movies with my grandma, building forts out of their couch cushions with my brother and playing cowboys and indians, or playing hide and seek and thinking I could hide behind their sheer curtains.

It’s amazing how quickly things can change.  One day, and I felt like I was taken back to being that kid.