Travel Diaries - Germany, week 3

ich verstehe nichts

When my mom was dying, I was lucky enough to get her a lovely room in a local nonprofit end-of-life facility. It was great from my perspective, because there was no way I would’ve been able to handle taking care of her at my house. I just am not that person.

But from my mom’s perspective, an impersonal place was probably not ideal. Even though the nurses were nice, and the facility was small and beautiful, she had to go through her process in front of people she didn’t know. And I think that was probably one of her greatest fears in life.

Once she was settled in her room, she wanted to have her brass statues of Buddha and Ganesha with her, but she didn’t want to keep them out where they could be seen because she didn’t want people to know she identified as something other than Christian. Even at the end, she was private. You could even call it closed-off; we never really spoke about anything of substance through her illness, then it became too late.

She never wanted anyone to know she was a German with the last name of Hirschfeld, because it sounded Jewish, and she didn’t want to explain her family history to people.

She was unable and unwilling to share much about herself. But why would you want to, if most of it sucked, or if someone judged you for simply being you?

She was the most private person I’ve ever known. I knew hardly anything about her in many ways. And I was the one closest to her.

But after this trip to Germany, I think I have a better idea of who she was. I can put her in the context of the place where she spent her most formative years.

This is the country where, when she was maybe nine or so, her mom and her mom’s friends made fun of her and called her by the maid’s name. This is the place where her mom left on a two week vacation but forgot to give her daughter any money to take care of the younger siblings. This is where she was snuck out of the country by a stranger when the borders were closing on East Germany. 

Sometimes I’m still a little bit (irrationally) angry at her for passing some of these traumas on to me, but I think I come away from this experience with much more compassion. Those kinds of emotions are hard for me, perhaps because when I do feel them they are so overwhelming.

But I think I see more now, so as hard as it’s been and as hard as life might still get, I think I understand a little bit more about her. And I suppose that’s all we can really ask of each other.

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