In 2013, my dad died from prostate cancer. He was 56, and I was 25 at the time.
Losing him made my family realize how short our time on this earth — and our time together — really is. With part of his life insurance payout, my mom decided to take my sister and me on a vacation.
None of us had ever considered a cruise. The idea always seemed tacky and commercial to us. But cruising turned out to be an affordable way for us to travel internationally — and, as we learned, a more peaceful way for us to grieve.
We were never “cruise people”
Our family had never been on a cruise together. If I’m being honest, it wasn’t really our type of thing. We were more of the “stay in the self-catering chalet and drive yourselves on safari” kind of people.
Growing up in South Africa, my dad worked for a government organization that maintained wildlife conservation areas. We could stay in these areas for free, so almost all of our family vacation time consisted of self-catered stays in basic accommodation in some of the wildest and most beautiful places in the country. It was a privilege that I can only fully appreciate now as an adult.
After my dad passed away, my mom decided to use some of the money from his life insurance policy for us girls to celebrate his life. We knew we wanted to do something different and memorable — the kind of vacation we’d never been able to take as a family of four.
At first, a cruise was the furthest thing from our minds. We pictured them as crowded and commercial — the exact opposite of how we’d always traveled. But the price was right, and not wanting to invest a lot of time in planning something while we were grieving, we decided to go for it.
Courtesy of Shea Karssing.
It turned out to be the easiest kind of travel we’d ever done
In 2014, we went on our voyage. The three of us visited six Mediterranean cities over seven days.
With accommodation, meals, and transport between countries bundled into one upfront cost, it was significantly cheaper than any land-based trip we could have planned. And the real value wasn’t financial; it was practical, too.
I love traveling, but it’s certainly not stress-free.
“It’s this way.”
“No, we need to get on this bus.”
“Wait, who’s got the passports?”
Tensions only escalate when family is involved, especially when everyone is carrying their grief with them, too.
The cruise lightened the mental load of a difficult trip
Without the daily decision-making drama of where to eat, where to go, and how to get there, we spent more time actually enjoying one another’s company, which is what Dad would have wanted.
We were all navigating our own versions of grief, but, for the first time since my dad died, we could just be together without needing to manage anything else.
Like those people we used to roll our eyes at, we attended all the evening shows, joined the morning aerobics on the deck, spent hours people-watching, and got my mom hooked on strawberry daiquiris (the virgin ones, because they were cheaper). Looking back, I think those moments mattered more than any destination we visited during the trip.
Courtesy of Shea Karssing.
We didn’t become “cruise people” after that, but we understood the appeal
After my dad’s death, my mom fought to keep the free accommodation at the conservation areas. My sister now lives in Dubai, and whenever she comes home, we go back to those same self-catering, DIY stays that hold so many memories of Dad. This time, with homemade strawberry daiquiris in hand.
Who would have thought that a cruise could give us the space to appreciate those old family trips in a completely new way?
