The philosopher Albert Schweitzer said: "The only important thing in life are the traces of love that we leave behind when we leave." Here you can read two stories from people who have achieved the most important things in their lives.
Even if most of us don't like to think about it, one day we will all reach the point where we can only look back. Where we either lack the strength or the time to look ahead and actively shape our lives. What we are left with at this point, however, are the memories …
The authors Marija Barišić and Laura Fischer have written for their wonderful book "What remains in the end" Visited people in nursing homes and talked to them about love. The result was a collection of stories that make you thoughtful, touching – and inevitably bring tears to your eyes. We can share two of these stories with you here in abbreviated form. Many thanks to the narrator and the authors for these enriching and deeply moving insights! ❤️
Fox you stole the goose
"At first he seems as if he doesn't understand if you ask him. But it is only the brief time he needs to go inside and get the memory out. Two to three seconds of silence, then the past comes back. "
"I met Rosa when I was already old, 28 I think. She was 31. Rosa's parents didn't like me and my parents didn't like them. It was particularly bad with my mother. She treated us like servants and whores, she always scolded Rosa, especially. At first I didn't even notice, and later I didn't say anything for a long time. Of course that was wrong. When I finally got involved, Rosa was happy, but it didn't make it any better. From then on it was said: we both against the rest of the family. I divided the siblings as a result, they were always against us.
But me and Rosa always got on well. We ran the farm together, we have a daughter, four granddaughters and even a great-granddaughter. I enjoyed spending a lot of time with the grandchildren, for example I took them to the bathroom. In the pension I finally had time for something like that. My whole life as a farmer has not been on vacation, not even a honeymoon was an option. We did our first excursions in the pension, for example to Italy. My wife was still healthy then.
It was in the kitchen, I remember that. Rosa sat on the corner seat at the table and I sat at the chair. At that time she couldn't walk so well anymore. She got up, slipped, and whoosh she was on the floor. Her head hit the floor, but nothing at first. She got a headache a few days later and we drove to the hospital.
There they discovered that there is a cerebral haemorrhage.
That was the second time that Rosa was seriously ill, before that she had survived breast cancer. A cerebral haemorrhage, it's like a stroke. She was conscious and noticed everything, but there wasn't much else left.
In the beginning Rosa couldn't speak at all. Every day I sat in the armchair next to her bed in the hospital and talked to her. When I wanted to go home again, she always cried, even when she couldn't talk. She wanted to go home with me. In the end I didn't say anything when I'm gone, just: 'I have to fix something in the car' and didn't even say goodbye. Then it got a little better. The sisters told me to do it that way.
Once, while I was sitting there again, one of the nurses came to me. 'Can you sing?' 'No,' I said of course. 'What should a farmer who has only worked on the farm all his life be able to sing?' But then I remembered the simple songs from before, 'Fox, you stole the goose' and stuff that I could still do. That was the first song I sang for Rosa. She didn't sing along then, but she smiled, she was happy. Over time, other songs came to my mind, and at some point she started singing along.
With a speech therapist, she slowly learned to speak again. From the hospital in Horn she came to Zwettl for rehab for a few weeks. There she learned to eat and walk again, actually everything. I visited her every day in rehab and talked to her. And after four or five weeks when she was released, I picked her up and brought her back home.
Then everything was fine, after that she was back to the way it was before. She survived the cancer, the cerebral hemorrhage too, only the dementia that came later has not passed. We were married for 53 years. Rosa died this year. "
encounter
"Ursula is sitting in her wheelchair and pushes her feet backwards along the corridor to get to her room. That works best that way, she says, except that some residents get annoyed when she accidentally brushes against them as they drive past." "Drive normally!" They call to her. She has been living in the nursing home in Horn for three years. This year she will be 85. "
"Sometimes, when all of this here becomes too much for me, I pull myself back to my room and remember Mr. Johann. He always sat next to me at the table when we ate, was a very intelligent man who traveled the whole world and always had a lot to talk about. We got on very well and chatted for hours about his travels, God and the world. Every evening when I had to go to bed he would accompany me to the room, lead me to the sink and take off my hearing aid for me. Then he put my hand in his, gave it a very light squeeze, and is back in his bed.
At some point he couldn't get up, he was so weak because of the chemotherapy. The poor man had prostate cancer, was heavily irradiated and weaker and weaker until the cancer tied him to the bed. Every other day I would drive in my wheelchair and tell him what was new. I think he was very happy about it – talking to other people is the quickest way to forget that you are old and sick and that death is not far away. This forgetting is sometimes really good.
'Make sure you get a single room!' He said to me over and over again. Mr. Johann himself lived in a single room. At the time I shared mine with an old woman who was paralyzed and couldn't talk. Of course it was an awkward situation, but I wasn't alone with it. All of us who live here would probably like to move into our own room. But it's not that simple, the rush is too big, the number of single rooms too small and the waiting lists are getting longer and longer. "It's not my turn, there are three others on the list before me!" I said to him. 'You will get something, you will get something,' he reassured me.
The nurse fetched me and asked: 'Do you want to say goodbye?' I said yes and said goodbye. I was so sorry. Although we had only known each other for half a year. Before he died, he left me three phone numbers: from his sister, niece and girlfriend. And then he said: 'Ms. Ursula, if something happens, please make sure that the three of them are called!' I made sure of that after his death, of course.
Shortly before he died, he declined all visits except mine. I don't know why. I think he didn't want to show how bad things were for him. In the end he was terribly emaciated and really no longer a pretty sight.
Two days after his death, a sister came to me and asked: 'Would you like Mr. John's room?' I don't know how he did it. All I know is that I was able to move into his room right here after he died. And that although three other people were on the waiting list before me. Somehow he made sure that I got his room.
He must have liked me very much, Mr. Johann, I already know that. But only in retrospect, strangely enough, I didn't even think about it. It takes a certain self-confidence and courage to think so far at my age that you could please someone. And I don't consider myself particularly brave. It wasn't until he was dead that I suddenly realized how he had always looked at me. So profound somehow. Once, he was lying in his bed and I was sitting in front of him in my wheelchair, he looked at me for a long time and then said to me: 'Mrs. Ursula, you have such beautiful black eyes.'
I have to think about this moment again and again when my thoughts wander and accidentally land on him. Then I think to myself: 'Herr Johann, he was kind of charming.' "