A Second Life E-Book

Iris Wameling

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 79

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

"Thinking is a bold and risky game," writes Michel de Montaigne in 'Philosophizing means learning to die': In the midst of life, the author is confronted with a fatal diagnosis and the short time left to her. She looks back on her life, her great love and her family and tries to see our world in a new light in order to learn to die. In doing so, she realizes that true beauty is only visible in the light of impermanence and that life in all its depth can only be experienced in the face of death. She understands that in our universe, not only is everything connected to everything, but also that all life in all its forms and differences is worthy of life and love, interdependent and interrelated – in life and in death.

Leseprobe

Any inconsistencies in the text are due to the fact that it was translated using computer-aided technology for a company-wide study.

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A SECOND LIFE

"How long?"

The question of all questions.

"A few weeks, maybe a few more months!"

"Death comes to people quickly, no deadline is given to them." Friedrich Schiller in "William Tell "1

What deadline?

Why do I want to know this?

Do I even want to know?

Does anyone, anyone at all want to know this?

Without a warning, it is here: Death. I am alone, irritated and disturbed, confrontedalone with my own perception.

At some point in our development as human beings, we acquired the knowledge of our mortality through our own awareness. But does that mean we live more consciously, more responsibly, more sadly, more happily?

We believe that our fellow species, which we refer to as animals and therefore as objects instead of subjects,are without awareness of death because they live as if death does not exist.

What makes us different then, if they live as if it doesn't exist - just as we live as if it doesn't exist. Is the truth about death so terrible that we have to live as if it doesn't exist?

"Death must be abolished. This damned mess has to stop. Anyone who speaks a word of comfort is a traitor." Bazon Brock2

"As we know, death is unnecessary." Georges Bataille³

With the news of the diagnosis, I lose control over the deep pain that has been there for so long. Why am I only now becoming aware of it, even though it has been deep inside me for so long? With the diagnosis, it gets a name and it overwhelms me, so that I slip out of my chair and into in a slanted position. How could I ignore it for so long? How could I even control it for so long?

"You will now be given opiates. You are also welcome to lie down again. You don't have to endure anything anymore."

I remember falling down a flight of stairs about two years ago and lying motionless until, no longer numbed by the pain, I was able to slowly and carefully sit up. Since thenthis pain has been my companion, but somehow I was able to control it. I was able to control myself.

From that moment on, it controls me.

When I could no longer climb stairs and could only play tennis from an upright position, I had myself examined by an orthopaedist because I thought I had injured my hips when I fell.

"You have completely intact hips, but you probably have a gynecological problem."

Since we moved to Berlin five years ago, I had neglected to look for a gynecologist in the city, so I continued to travel to Munich for preventive appointments. But I haven't had time for that for two years. As always, my work was more important. This time, my current building project was even more tightly scheduled and, of course, as always I was liable for compliance with all costs and deadlines.

The gynecologist I finally consulted after the project handover examines me thoroughly, closes her office immediately and literally takes me by the hand to clarify her diagnosis with the new head physician at a nearby clinic.

Now two very empathetic people are sitting in front of me and looking at me with concern.

"You have a huge tumor, ovarian cancer, too big to operate on."

I can't believe it and think of my beloved daughter, who was operated on in this very hospital by the predecessor of the doctor sitting in front of me. She had a dermoid, a cyst, that had grown from germ cells, on her right fallopian tube. It was in danger of bursting after a fall. The operation was life-saving.

My objection that I could also have such a dermoid is answered calmly and patiently: "There is no genetic predisposition for this. You also don't have a dermoid cyst or teratoma, but rather a solid tumor. Immature teratomas can certainly develop into solid tumors, but when they get that large, they always degenerate. Yours is so huge that it fills the entirestomach space."

Hope and despair in a single heartbeat. There is no way out.

Knowing that I have found the best possible doctors, I lose all hope. I no longer have a future, only the memory of a moment many years ago, when I saw someone again, that opened up a whole universe to me, what is called life. That was when our life together began. When he spoke to me, two words were enough to know that we would build and inhabit a world together that perhaps only very few people have. This is now the moment that closes this universe, because life is dying, because my life is dying.

"It takes a lot of years for a tumor to grow that big. Why are you only coming now?"

"We only live for the blink of an eye, then we disappear again, and in this short period of time we cannot even recognize the seemingly simplest thing, reality." Ferdinand von Schirach4

I could answer that my Munich gynecologist should have discovered it two years ago.

But it's pointless to waste any more thought on it.

I can't think clearly any more and stammer that I simply didn't have time because I had to finish my project and was only able to hand it over to the museum management last weekend to hang the pictures.

"And in two weeks, I have a press conference to open the museum to the public."

"Until then, we can keep you fit. And I'd like to have a laparoscopy tomorrow to get an overview of which surrounding organs are affected. And since your hormone levels are highly elevated, like those of a teenager, there may still be the possibility of attacking the tumor hormonally or working against it." I have no doubts about putting myself in his hands, about trusting him completely,even if he makes me understand that there is not much more he can do for me.

What a coincidence and what a tragedy at the same time that this doctor was not only recently sought and found by a headhunter as the headphysician for this clinic, but also, when he moved from Düsseldorf to Berlin, visited all the surrounding gynecologists in order to introduce himself to them so that they could deliver patientsto him. My new doctor knew immediately that she had to take me to this man with his great ambition, exceptional skills and international reputation for minimally invasive surgical techniques. My personal tragedy is that it is already too late.

"What else do you have planned, what else would you like to do?"

It's Monday and I'm planning to fly to Riga on Thursday for four days with my diploma father, the famous colleague. Organized by the German Architecture Centre, he wants to show me, the man of my life and a small group of colleagues the city of his birth.

Over 25 years ago, we used to go out with this professor in Braunschweig.

"Who is this guy?" he whispered to me from the back seat of the limousine. It sounded respectful, but also jealous. My friend was at the wheel and became my life's man, the greatest happiness of my life.

"We knew about each other. All finding is finding again." Ferdinand von Schirach5

When I first saw him, for the first time, I found him uninteresting. Not that I didn't like him.

We were three couples at a table in a bar in my hometown, which was no longer my home because my parents had moved to Munich. I had just started studying architecture in Braunschweig and was staying with my boyfriend's older brother while visiting my old hometown. They were all much older and knew each other well. It was an interesting and cheerful evening. But his wife actually managed to completely ignore me. How could he be married to this woman?

I thought of that when I saw him again four years later. He spoke to me and this time everything felt right.

I knew he was no longer married. The whole world knew it. We were completely at ease, trusted each other and had wonderful conversations.

From that moment on, he never let me out of his sight in that bar, at a stag party of mutual friends. I didn't stay with him that night, even though he asked me, but went skiing in the mountains the next day, wheremy boyfriend at the time was waiting for me, because that was the plan. And it took a serious accident for me to realize, in the moment when I thought itwould be my last that I actually wanted to see him again. Then I lost consciousness.

He found me again, we found each other again.

"All finding is finding again."5

To this day, there is this incredible certainty that we belong together. It is this unconditional love that sustains us and keeps us together, independently and powerfully.

"Do your trip! Then we'll postpone it until next week. Come to the clinic on Monday evening for an overnight stay so that we can perform the laparoscopy the very next morning."

I can't remember when and how I said goodbye. In the meantime, a psychologist is waiting for me in the next room. Her first question is whether I have suffered a great loss in recent years. She identifies my grief over my mother's death with her many years of previous suffering as the traumatic cause of my cancer. An absurd attribution of blame. Does that help me?

Rather, it manifests their own theory of cell degeneration and carcinogenesis.