A little background on the grief trips -

As the one-year anniversary of my mom's passing approached, I asked my brother (who lives in Salt Lake) if he wanted to meet in Glenwood Springs so that we could be together for the anniversary and hike Hanging Lake, which we had hiked with my mom less than 3 months before we found out she had metastatic (terminal) cancer. That trip to the mountains was the last vacation we got to take with my mom, so we decided to celebrate her memory by reliving it. I don't think we called it a grief trip at the time, but it started a tradition that we've kept up ever since.

 

When my dad passed suddenly in May of 2021, we decided to start the same tradition for him as well. So every October, we travel for my mom and every May, we travel for my dad. And I guess we really travel each time for both of them at this point. It's a special time that we set aside to be together as siblings and to give ourselves time and space to remember them, talk about them, and feel the connection we still have and always will have to them. We try to pick locations we've either visited with them before and/or places we know they loved and/or wanted to visit but maybe never made it to (Hawaii for my mom).