Nele's Story
When we arrived, my dad, brother, and I started playing tennis together while my mom lay down on a nearby outdoor lounge chair (she wanted to walk all the way to the tennis court while the rest of us came by car) and watched us from a near distance. I have two totally different and contradicting feelings from that day. On one hand, there was a huge sense of love and togetherness. I was happy to be with my family, play tennis together, enjoy the breezy fresh air, and even make jokes while playing. On the other hand, there was immense fear, grief, and pain for my mother who was going through hell. At one point, I had to stop playing because I think my mental state made me physically so ill that I kind of collapsed, and my mom had to give her chair to me. I felt like I was the one who was dying, as my worst fear in life was about to come true. I still look back at that day with so much love and gratitude, and somehow it makes me feel that tennis helped in some small way to bring us together and spend time as a family - perhaps a little escape - while we were going through the most horrendously heartbreaking time of our lives.
