War within the soul E-Book

Bea Winter

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

Seitenzahl: 120

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

What happens when the parents die? Both within 6 weeks. What happens when the bond breaks? The positions in the nuclear family, including the social environment, have to be realigned. A life event, in the present time made more difficult by Corona and the war in Ukraine. The desire for peace becomes more acute than ever. The story describes the time after death, after the funeral, and the first Christmas without parents. Sadness and the pain of loss take hold. Ultimately, however, so does the greed for the inheritance. What remains is a soul full of question marks...

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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Foreword

What happens when the parents die? What happens in the family when the bond breaks? We are all connected, parents and siblings. When the parent dies, there is an unspoken repositioning. A kind of jigsaw puzzle, the family, which is rearranged. Everyone has their place, and if someone breaks away through death, the positions are realigned. It all happens unconsciously, although it is actually conscious. It is important to me to write about this. To pass on my impressions of the loss of my parents - both of whom died within 6 weeks of each other. I often have the feeling that hardly anyone talks about it. Everyone wants to save face, hardly anyone takes off the mask and talks, even about the things that aren't so nice. In our digital age, everything can be pixelated, if you want, there is no flaw, everything can be glossed over or touched up. There are actually no limits. Even what is not said can become what is said with technology, reality and untruths are mixed together. I have noticed that many people are already creating reality within reality. As if the alleged truth had several truths, the tracks run side by side. There is no longer a straight line. It's no wonder that well-known psychiatrists are now claiming in the media that one in two people is mentally ill. A kind of mass psychosis. And in these difficult times, triggered by coronavirus and the war in Ukraine, parents are dying. The underlying problems that exist in every family then rise like yeast dough. And yet this yeast dough is invisible. It goes on like this and nobody wants to see it. The reality of war in the soul. I changed my sister's name a bit, my brother is just my brother. For a while after my parents died, I was so angry, I only ever talked about my biological family. The content is howI feel and perceive it. It is also known that everyone perceives the same thing differently. It is also known that hardly every witness to an incident will say the same thing, as is known from psychology. I tell things from my point of view, from my position in the family. I want peace in my soul, in the family soul, but sometimes you have to say things out loud and not put on a mask.

Chapter 1

My life

My usual Saturday, I'm cleaning my little terraced house. While I'm cleaning, I'm still thinking about the retired nurse with her autistic daughter. We've been chatting over breakfast at the supermarket restaurant for a while now. I've been eating breakfast there since my parents both died within six weeks of each other. It will soon be the second anniversary of their deaths. More on this later, when there is room for it in my thoughts. For more than 30 years, I've gone to breakfast with my mother almost every Saturday after shopping. For the last few years, I have picked her up for shopping and breakfast and brought her home again. No matter what the weather and whether I went out on Fridays or perhaps didn't have the energy or inclination. The supermarket restaurant is practical for me and, above all, quiet in its own way. I was looking for peace and quiet there, or rather I wanted some peace and quiet, I had simply had enough of this restless, over-excited society, and I had experienced a lot of bad things over the last few years. Sometimes I've been in hell. The nice retired nurse tells me about her life, her autistic daughter sits next to her, listens and doesn't say a word. Only sometimes does she smile. A smile of incredible beauty, surrounded by a radiance. In this smile and moment you can feel and see the purity of the soul, no war in the soul. This lovely lady has experienced so much that I sometimes get quiet and think:can it get any worse or more terrible? What a person can endure, unbelievable.Then I think again about resilience, the subject of my thesis.What has honed and shaped this lady so much that she has got up again and again?I also become calm because I think, maybe my last years aren't so bad after all, I should be more humble and grateful.I'm grateful every night when I lie down in bed, it's clean and I'm living very well.

This Saturday is the first really dreadful day in September. Not warm and such a gloomy day. A real day for cleaning again. I've put up big candles in the house, lit by batteries, for the dark time of year, it gives such a pleasant warmth in the rooms. I've set up a little corner for my parents with a photo, dried roses from the grave or funeral and a decorative light. I'm swapping the candles, dusting off the photo, and that's when the thoughts come back. My sister Rike just doesn't get in touch. The last time I saw her and her husband was at our nephew's wedding in May, and the atmosphere between us was rather chilly. That's because I had the courage to say that some valuable things were missing during the probate of our parents' estate. Since then, there's been this iceberg effect. When she looks at me, I can see the war in her soul, in her eyes. As I dust off the picture, I think:I can actually call her.She should also know that our middle nephew is not doing so well in his soul, he has been diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder. At our parents' funeral, both urns were buried together, he collapsed outside the funeral home and was unable to attend the funeral, so I went to the grave with him in the summer and we lit a candle. I saw his relief at finally being in the place where his grandparents were. His younger brother was also there, a quiet person. When we placed the candle, he smiled, content. It was important to him. Suddenly a butterfly came flying, a white one, it looked like it was playing with us. You'd think we were wrapped in absorbent cotton, as if the world was standing still. Peace in the situation. No war in the soul. As I fiddle with the photo and the candles, I think to myself:Rike should know this, why does she never take part in the children's lives?I firmly pick up the phone and dial her number. Untilsome time ago, I only had her number from her work cell phone, she never gave me her private number. As if I was just a business case or customer. I never wanted to see that and looked the other way. For decades, I was only allowed to call her on Mondays at a certain time. Until years ago, when I stuck my head out of the sand and shouted at her. "I'm not doing this anymore!" Now back to the phone call. She picks up straight away and I start talking about our nephew's visit to the cemetery and how he's not well. She cuts me off and says that they are in hospital and that her mother-in-law has just died. At times she is tearful when she talks, then more composed again. She says she has called me to get my permission because she wants to bury her mother-in-law in the same grave as our parents. My answer is: "I'm a person who is open to life and have nothing against it in principle." She interrupts me and says that she has the right to use the grave and she can do it anyway if she wants to. The tone of her voice was really vicious - war in the soul, ammunition fired, so to speak. The conversation is over in a moment as they are still in hospital. It's been 4 days, she hasn't called back either. War in the soul. Silence, even silence can be war in the soul. Today is the 5th day after the phone call. I sit on the steps by the front door and wait for my youngest nephew, he sometimes gives me a hand. I like to sit there, I have a large front garden with lots of plants and an almost 50-year-old birch tree. When I sit there, I think about a lot of things. Sometimes I think:this birch tree has taken away many a dark thought and pain.This year it has had fewer leaves and in July they all turned brown at once. I will wait until next spring, maybe it was this climate in summer, this global warming. I have no idea. I'm also watering less to save water, but whether that has taken the life out of the birch? I have no idea. I'll contact the gardener one day. Maybe it's sick too, this birch that has taken my pain over the last few years. Sometimes when I walked through it, I felt as if it wanted to stroke me, the birch tree, and say: "Everything will be fine." Peace in my soul, no war. As I'm sitting there, my phone rings, first my nephew, I'm stuck in a traffic jam, and then, oh what a miracle, my sister Rike. In a friendly, cheerful and of course serious voice, she tells me how her mother-in-law, the circumstances, passed away after her illness. Then comes that grave story again, the mother-in-law comes to our parents' grave, but if I want, there's enough room, and she reserves a place for me.Oh, how nice, I think,all together.Even if I said it wasn't right for me, this collective grave for everyone, she would do it anyway. I immediately think of the concentration camp, where everyone was piled together, burned and finished. That's the way it is, everyone has their own ideas, their own reality, their own universe where they live. Sometimes we put on masks so as not to show what we feel or think, in this case I have a mask on because I know from previous experiences with Rike that she does it anyway. She puts her head through it. The sight of the piles of dead bodies in the concentration camp immediately comes to mind. Those poor, innocent people. I like reading books by concentration camp survivors, so I immediately have the image of the piles of people in my head. At least she listens to me today, I tell her about the visit to the cemetery with the sick nephew and that he is very similar to his father, our brother. She immediately thinks he also has something of his mother. That's certainly true, but the circumstances why someone is so ill at the age of twenty are also due to what they experienced as a child and didn't come to terms with. I read a lot to be able to write my thesis, my first thesis at 52, I have it hanging in my living room, in my field of vision so that I can see it. Because of my family structure, I'm used to being in the corner like that. I was a quiet child, and dyslexic to boot. I was always very quiet, but I noticed everything and thought about a lot of things as a child. The others talked, I kept quiet. ButI managed everything at school without being left behind, I have a job, I work in administration in the middle grade and I feed myself. I'm proud of that. My siblings used to call me "dorky" as a child because of my dyslexia, and sometimes I think that still sticks with me in some family matters. At elementary school, we once had to write a fantasy essay. It was full of spelling mistakes. Suddenly the class teacher calls me out, another teacher joins in and praises me for the content. Both teachers are delighted and praise me. Not a sound from the many spelling mistakes. I still remember that today. Educationally valuable, I would say. At technical college, my spelling was almost perfect, and our German professor said more than once that I had too many spelling mistakes, but I would get a B because of the content, he couldn't help it. That boosted my self-confidence. And back to Rike, she offers me a reservation in the family tomb. My usual masked response: "If that's what you want, then do it." I already have the grave of my father's side of the family. My father asked me to take care of it 10 years before he died and I am fulfilling his wish, or rather there is room for me. Who knows what's still to come. My partner Christian once said: "You can also join me in the grave." So everything was settled, peace in my soul. But then I woke up at night and had to think about it, everyone from different families in one grave, I don't really want that, but I know Rike does, and that's that. A little war starts in my soul, I can't fall asleep for a long time. My godmother is due to visit today. If the weather stays like this, we can sit in the garden. Since my parents passed away, I've been visiting Christl every few weeks. In the past, it was only at Christmas with my mother. When I drive the long road out to the outskirts of Vienna, where she lives in a house, it always brings back memories. My parents' house was not far from hers, and I am glad that I don't have to drive past