Escape
Page 25
But you were determined, you had found something quite rare,
Something so special with Joan, you wanted to be there.
And if God showed you no mercy by taking your life,
We must be so grateful He gave you such a wonderful wife,
You had found a happiness that most of us never know,
In a beautiful country with someone who loved you so.
But when you got sick you were so far away,
It was so very hard, we could only hope and pray,
That you knew we were thinking of you, every day,
And wishing we could be there to help in some way.
You still loved to ride, right up to the end,
To feel at one with the road, to hang on to each bend,
To pull out of the garage, put everything else aside,
Just you and your bike, to feel that rush, to ride.
You were so determined you would get well again,
It wasn’t an ‘if’ it was always a ‘when’,
You fought this thing with all of your might,
It was your character never to give up the fight.
I can find no answers to why you had to go,
Or how to cope, when we miss you so,
I’ve concluded we must keep you alive in our head,
And believe that you are somewhere better instead.
And believe that we’ll meet again, in some place unknown,
Where we can all be together, no one left alone,
But still, I find it so hard to make sense of the reason why
We are all here today, to remember and to say goodbye
To someone so special, but who got so sick
You changed my life for ever, I’ll never forget you:
I miss you, Mick.
A few weeks after the funeral we had a memorial service for Meiki in Esher, and Joanie and some of his colleagues, including Steve and Meiki’s police chief Jim Benoit, came over for it. Last summer, we went back to the Weather Vane, where Meiki had that last wonderful meal; we sat at the same table, ordered the same food and ate it with tears running down our faces.
But despite my grief it is not all sadness. Meiki left me wonderful gifts in the form of Joanie, his wife, who is so precious to me; and Debs, the friend whose wedding brought Meiki and Joan together – her family is like part of my own and we love them dearly.
We have endowed a bench in his memory, on the pond in Esher, and on birthdays and anniversaries we go there, and I sit with my son for a while. It is not a place of sadness to me and we often take my grandchildren, Babette’s son AJ and daughter Amy-Lou, to feed the ducks.
I believe Meiki is still close to me and I have had a few experiences that make me sure of it. Once, when I was walking to the shops, I saw a coin on the pavement. I picked it up and it was an old penny, a pre-decimal coin. I turned it over and read the date: 1964, the year of Meiki’s birth. Those pennies went out of circulation a long time ago, yet it was there, waiting to be picked up by me.
I have written a great deal about my son and not much about my daughter Babette. This is no reflection on my love for her, which is every bit as big as my love for Meiki. She is alive and lives near me, we talk every day and we share our lives in a way I no longer can with Meiki. I have no need to write my tribute to her: we are living it. She is a wonderful, caring daughter and an excellent mother.
Babette, who is known as Babs to all her friends, is married to Graham. He has three sons by his first marriage: Stuart, Charlie and Ryan. They see each other regularly and all live within half a mile. Babette and Graham have two children, AJ (Aaron Joseph) and Amy-Lou (Amy Louise Michelle). Babette never knew the full names of my father and mother, and yet she has included ‘Joseph’ and ‘Louise’ in her children’s names, both names of my parents. AJ is a wonderful grandson. He is very much like Meiki and we are very proud of him. He plays football for Cobham and I love to go and cheer him and his team on. He likes to stay over with us and doing ‘man’ things with Ray, like playing snooker, pool, cards and games – or just talking things over.
Amy-Lou is much older than her seven years. She loves to draw and write stories, something that started before she was five. We think she is an old soul and, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, Amy-Lou has definitely been here before. She often says the most incredible things for her young age. Once, when Ray was trying to suck up some crumbs with a hand-held ‘dustbuster’ and got a little frustrated because it wouldn’t work properly, Amy said, ‘Dadad, don’t blame the tools if you can’t or don’t want to do the job.’ She wasn’t even five years old then.
Babette and Graham have very busy lives: she works in PR and Graham is a warehouse manager. They are very dear to us and I adore my grandchildren. We are also very close to Ray’s four children and their wives and children.
Ray and I now live in a spacious flat in the centre of Esher, because we no longer wanted to have to maintain a garden. As well as having had a heart bypass, Ray is diabetic. I also have my health problems: I have had breast cancer and am still being treated for it, but after having an operation and a course of radiotherapy, I hope to make a full recovery and become a government success statistic by surviving for more than five years. More debilitating is the polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) I suffer from, which cripples me and for which I have to take steroids. The steroids have caused plenty of other problems too. But life goes on and we can’t change anything – we just have to make the best of what it throws at us.
Occasionally, when I am feeling sorry for myself, I wonder if Eva and I used up all our good luck in our walk across Germany, because neither of us had good health afterwards. But then I remember what my grandfather told me, that I had inherited his luck – and I know that he was right. Not only have I known great happiness but I have now been given the opportunity finally to put on paper the story of Eva’s and my unbelievable journey, and to reflect on the enormous luck we had to come through it alive. Without that, there wouldn’t have been anything else at all.
I hope that I’ve been able to share some of my luck by giving back to others who needed something – care, compassion or sometimes just a smile, a hug, a helping hand or a little time to listen.
‘Life is what you make it!’ Mutti used to teach us. And I believe that I have made mine as well as I could.
Of course there are misfortunes and unhappiness, as in any life. But usually I don’t think about these. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I have had a good and interesting life, and I am happy with it.
Today, my husband says I am more English than the English. I think and dream in English, and when I return to Germany it takes me a couple of hours to adjust to hearing my own language being spoken all around me. I still cook traditional German food and I serve my guests Stollen and poppy-seed cake and apfelstrudel (everyone’s favourite), so I suppose I still make my home life a little bit German. But England is definitely home.
Yet the older I get, the closer I feel to my childhood. The body may age, but inside we remain the same people we always were, and the most lasting imprint on our lives and our personalities is made when we are children. My journey with my sister is always with me, deeply embedded in my thoughts and my memories. In thirty-three days, just a little over a month, I saw and experienced events that together were woven into a tapestry of horrors: I saw death and destruction, and I experienced terror, hunger and confusion. But if this is the warp, the weft is compassion, humour and great love, all of which played their part in our journey. Now, towards the end of my life and with so many experiences behind me, I can say with great certainty that love is the strongest thread in my life. The love my sister Eva gave me on that long walk, the way she battled to protect me at whatever cost to herself, lives with me on a daily basis and has, I hope, shaped all my dealings with others. Her love for me made all our terrible experiences bearable. I hope and pray that the love we all had for my son Michael made it easier for him to bear his illness and dea
th.
For myself, I am sustained daily by my love for my husband Ray, for my daughter and her family, and for all the rest of our extended family and my many friends.
Love has been the theme of my life.
Epilogue
I have told you my story, but there are so many other people involved, especially members of my family, that I want to give you an update about what happened to them all.
My Parents
My father died in November 1966, after a series of strokes left him partially paralysed. Mutti eventually left the apartment she loved in old Horn and moved into a nursing home in Flottbek, just across the road from my sister Eva and her family. It was a beautiful place, a big house split into individual apartments, and hers was furnished with her own belongings. The home was run by an organisation associated with the Froebel Institute, where she had been educated, so it was full circle for her. Eventually, when she became too frail to stay in her own apartment, she moved into a wing where she received full-time nursing care. She died in 1990, at the age of eighty-six.
The evening before she died, the nursing sister came in to turn off the light and say goodnight, and Mutti said, ‘I want to say a great big thank you to everyone who was wonderful to me.’ She never woke up. It was a peaceful death, all any of us can ever wish for.
Eva
She and Kurt had two daughters, Angelika and Gunda. Eva’s health was never good and she was very ill with asthma all her life, which left her debilitated. When her daughters were older, she ran a crèche for babies up to a year old at the large house she and Kurt lived in. Looking after the babies, whose mothers were students at the university, helped her health and there was even an article about her in the local newspaper, under the headline ‘Very Ill Woman is Healed by Babies’. The crèche was beautifully organised and I used to love going there to cuddle the babies.
Until her death, we talked on the phone three times a week or more and visited each other regularly. Sometimes we would have what we called ‘Sisters’ Day’, when we’d spend time together, just the two of us. Inevitably we’d reminisce about our long walk. We’d laugh, cry and remember our terror. One of us would say something like ‘Can you still see the face of the witch?’ and we’d be off, reliving those weeks. Most of all we’d talk about the incredible kindness we encountered from strangers, families who took us in and gave us shelter, and soldiers, whether they were American, British or German.
But our wartime memories didn’t dominate everything; we talked all the time about other things too. There was an incredible bond between us. Eva and Kurt had a caravan, and we would go with them on trips to the seaside or the mountains, where the pure air helped her breathing.
Although Eva’s health was poor, she always said, ‘If only I can outlive Mutti.’ She did, but only by four months, dying in January 1991, aged only sixty-five. Her lungs were weakened by asthma and she had pleurisy. In the months before she died she lost a lot of weight and even though she was hungry she could not hold down any food. Eva only developed asthma after Ruth died and, since Eva died, I myself have started to suffer from it. It is an odd coincidence – perhaps we sisters have handed it on to each other.
When Eva died I was distraught. I had lost both her and Mutti, my two angels, so close to each other. It was a very difficult time for me.
Kurt is still alive, living in a nursing home in Hamburg. Angelika has four children and lives in Hamburg. Gunda followed me and Henning into working for Lufthansa, but has now switched to Malaysian Airlines and lives south of Perth in Australia.
Uncle Willi and Aunt Hilda
Uncle Willi and Aunt Hilda divided their time between Hamburg, where their daughter Thekla lives, and the USA, where their sons Ulrich and Volker made their homes. They spent six months of the year in each country. Uncle Willi died in 1959, aged only fifty-seven, and Aunt Hilda in 1989, aged eighty-six.
Thekla
Their oldest child married and has a daughter, Oliva. She is now a widow, and still lives in the house in the Jenfeld district of Hamburg that she and her parents built after the war on their land. She lives on the upper floor, and below live her daughter and son-in-law and their son. She spends a lot of time tending her beautiful garden.
Ulrich
He died in 2004, having moved to America soon after the war. Because his father, Uncle Willi, had been born in New York (more or less by chance: his mother was travelling when she broke a leg and had to stay there until after the birth) Willi always had dual nationality, which he passed to his children. Ulrich joined the US army and remained as madcap as he had been as a child. He believed in UFOs and thought he had been abducted by aliens. He married twice and has two daughters from his first marriage. His first wife Thea is a really good friend of mine.
Volker
‘My twin’ lives in Florida and we are still very close: Ray and I often go out there to stay with him and his family. In Germany, when we were young, Volker did not think much of school but at the age of fourteen he went to live in the USA and there he graduated from high school. He discovered his skills as a businessman and has always been his own boss. He deals in cars, but they are rather specialised ones in the American market, all German and British models like Mercedes, BMW, VW, even Rolls-Royce and MG. He also sells boats, which is his real love, as he is happiest when he is out on his own boat, a beauty with a huge forty-foot mast. She was badly damaged in one of the hurricanes that hit Florida and swept two miles down the Indian river, but she is now back on the water. Volker has left his car business to be run by his wife Michelle, although he is still very involved, travelling to car auctions in Orlando or Palm Beach, and driving across the States to deliver cars. He loves visiting boat shows, where he knows a great many people. He and Michelle have two sons, Hans and Brent, both great boys. With his first wife Maggie he has two children, Keith and Ellen, and Ellen has presented him with three grandchildren, Tristan, little Maggie and the baby Makena.
Whenever we are together we are still like brother and sister. Ray plays the piano and we sing together. His home is a beautiful house with stunning gardens and we feel very much at home there. Michelle is one of my best friends and when she learned that I was writing this book she arranged an ‘English tea party’ in her garden in my honour. I was very touched.
Aunt Irma and Uncle Hermann
Aunt Irma and Uncle Hermann bought an apartment in Hoheluft in Hamburg, where their son Henning still lives. Aunt Irma died in 1974 and Uncle Hermann in 1979.
Henning
We still refer to him as ‘little Henning’ and he followed me into working for Lufthansa. He had a really interesting job looking after the famous people who used the airline, so he has met lots of politicians, actors, actresses, film stars and musicians. He is retired now and he never married. His life is an incredible social whirl: if you ring Henning and catch him at home you feel you have really achieved something. There is not a play, a show, a concert or an exhibition in Hamburg that Henning has not been to, unless he missed them because he was travelling to Thailand, Australia or other exotic places.
Aunt Else
My father’s sister, who lived near Berlin, and her family were in East Germany after the partition of the country between the Allies. Uncle Artur died soon after the war. One of her sons, Günther, never returned from the war. The other two are Horst, who is now dead, and Heinz, who is still alive. Her youngest child, Ruth, was the same age as me. She and her mother used to visit us in the West, but the conditions laid down by the East German government meant that they were not allowed to take money out of the country, so my father always had to pay for their fares and all their spending money, and send them back with bags full of goodies. Although there was only three weeks’ difference in our ages, when we met as teenagers Ruth always seemed much older than me. She and her mother were very dowdily dressed by our standards. Ruth married young, at eighteen or nineteen, a man twelve years older than her and has two children, now grown up of course. I remember h
er telling me that when her son was in school, he was pumped full of anti-West German propaganda and came home saying things like ‘Adenauer is a schweinhund’. They did not dare contradict him in case he repeated what they said at school, which could have landed the whole family in trouble. Ruth and her husband still live at the same address they were at fifty years ago. I keep in touch by phone calls or letters on birthdays and at Christmas.
Ingo
My first boyfriend. He later married and has three sons and two daughters. I’m still in touch with his sister Heide, her husband Horst and daughter Maren.
Ilse
She lives south of Hamburg with her husband Eberhard. We are in regular contact and visit each other.
Ursi
My childhood friend, who used to make dresses with me and was with me in Geneva and later in London, sadly died in September 2000.
Miriam
She is coming to visit us this June.
The Sundermann Family
The kind people who lived near Posen have always kept in touch with my family. Mr and Mrs Sundermann are dead, and so is their son Fritz, who died in his twenties. But Heinz is still alive and I have visited him occasionally. He has two daughters and when they were little I remember they were fascinated by my blue eyeshadow, which was fashionable in England at the time but unusual in Germany. We spent a fun afternoon with me letting them try my make-up. Heinz worked for the railways until he retired.
Wandsbecker Chaussee