Silence

It took us 9 months to clear out the apartment where I had grown up during my school years and where my mother had lived for 55 years until she passed away.

In the first weeks I was rarely in the apartment, just taking care of the flowers and taking only books and small things with me. The silence was so unfamiliar that I called out "Hello" after unlocking the door, just as I always did. With each box of clothes I took to the Red Cross, with each piece of furniture we cleared out, with each lamp, with each carpet, the silence became more bearable, less personal, more normal, more past, more memory.

June 15

At the age of 93,

On June 15th, 2021 at 15.20h she died, while I was on a business trip in the east of Germany. When the nurse called me, I was walking on a crossover at a chemical plant with a client, and could not take the call. But I knew it anyway.

That evening, alone in the hotel in a town where I have not been before, I went out for something to eat and found a small Italian restaurant with a lovely terrasse, touched by the late evening sun. The wind was chilly but I didn’t care.

Ward E2 West

On Tuesday after Easter, April 6th, I took my mother to the hospital. She knew long before we did that her time was almost up. It was not the fear of death that worried her, it was the sadness that her time with the people she loved would irretrievably melt away, that she would no longer be able to participate in our lives, would no longer be able to take care of us, and would leave us alone for ever.

. . .

As I wait outside the ward door for my Corona test result, the hospital seems deserted, as if the virus had sucked the life out of the corridors. No other visitors, no staff with beds, no doctor with a stethoscope in his pocket. Only distant noises and the omnipresent hospital smell of floor wax and disinfectant distract me.

The ward door opens.