In the early Thursday evening we set off in a VW bus across the Elbe bridges to the south. It’s October before the pandemic. The plumes of smoke from the industrial chimneys, the harbor cranes, the mountains from shipping containers unloaded from the freighters, say goodbye to me. I have two days and the capacity of a T4 to pick out the essentials from among the possessions of my mother, who is moving to Hamburg.
So far she lives 700 kilometers away. With luck I found a room for her in the nursing home, in a villa on Elbchaussee with hanging beeches in front of the window. The Reutlingen Social Welfare Office also pays for this noble address. There is no way my mother can return home from the geriatric psychiatric ward, where she has spent the past four years with brief interruptions. Home: to Edmund, her partner. She has lived with him for 17 years. He is the first man in her life since my father, who left her before I was born.
At first my mother was happy. She and Ed had moved to the new housing estate on the outskirts together. The orchards begin in front of the front door, where they took his dog for a walk, with a view of the mountain ridges of the Swabian Alb. She threw the kitchen, something she had never had time for in her working life. The remote control for the television was in his hands.
Then the dog died and they went out less. The news came as a surprise to me that my 71-year-old mother was suddenly confused. Ed’s daughter took her to the hospital. I was depressed, couldn’t possibly leave everything in Hamburg, promised to come the week after next. In addition to being depressed, my mother had obsessive thoughts: she couldn’t pay for the treatment and would soon be on the street.
The houses are gone
The therapies did not work, and neither did the medication. After endless weeks, the doctors resorted to something that I had terrible associations with: electroconvulsive therapy. The legal support, in the past one would have said “incapacitation”, went to me. On my behalf, I consented to the treatment. The ECT worked, my mother was released to Ed for a short time, but for four years she was more in geriatric psychiatry than at home. Having fallen and operated on several times, she was now in a wheelchair.
A “supportive environment” is essential, the young doctor explained to me in soft Swabian high German. I raced over, got on the ICE at Dammtor, drove seven hours, stayed in her small room. Ed and I exchanged a few nice sentences over a snack I had brought along, me with a pen and paper. If he and I were her safety net, it had far too few meshes.
In the evening I lay in bed in the small room. My dolls sat on the shelf above me, photos of my children covered the wall, the albums that documented my growing up were close together. There were only pictures left of the family heirlooms that had been lugged from apartment to apartment in better days: the wedding picture of the great-grandparents. Then the family villa, surrounded by a wonderful garden. Both died within a year. Their five children were distributed among the relatives, the house was sold, and the proceeds were used to support them.
Even the house of my grandfather, one of these orphans, rebuilt after the war, was not an ancestral home for generations. It was on the slope and had the beautiful address Sonnenhalde. If the ball was lost while playing ball on the street, one of the siblings or children in the neighborhood had to run down the hump and then up again. Also my grandpa, Dr. phil., owner of a mail order company and writer, died unexpectedly. He had failed to make provisions, there were mortgages and debts. The house went to the creditors.
My mother did an apprenticeship as a retoucher and technical draftsman, an unusual profession for a young woman at the time. She found a new apartment in a small town nearby and moved in with her mother and sister. At almost 20 years of age, my mother financed the remaining family largely on her own.
My father appeared on the scene. The relationship led to my conception, but not to the creation of a new family. My mother stayed with her mother, meanwhile without the younger sister who had married, but with a baby, that is, with me.
So I grew up in a three-generation nuclear family that didn’t function badly. My mother earned the money, my grandma took care of the house and the grandchild. Our rental apartments changed at longer intervals. The heirlooms, especially furniture that my great-grandfather had brought back from his travels, always had a prominent place. My mother put an orange sofa set and decorated it with psychedelic paper flowers. I practiced the guitar in the squeak of the zebra finches, read or brought friends with me.
My grandma died when I was 15. After I moved out, my mother had lodgers, students at the university of applied sciences. Before moving into Ed’s apartment, I already helped my mother reduce her possessions. The antique furniture and souvenirs found their way into the households of our uncle and aunt, and our Hamburg apartment has been home to “the Arab wall” and “the Arab sofa” ever since.
I drive until my eyes burn with fatigue, park the VW bus at a rest area and sleep a few hours. It goes on at dawn. It’s not yet clear whether Ed will even let me in. He resisted my mother’s departure with defiance and disruptive actions. I use the lever of my legal power of attorney against his will.
My mother’s roots fit in a portable flower pot. Her sociability, which threatened to wither away at Ed’s side, her ability to adapt and her openness to the people around her: these are renewable tendrils.
The fields sold off
While the VW bus is dragging its way up the slopes of the Rhön motorway, I decline the chain of my lonely decisions: I kidnap them from their place of birth, the fields of the rural branch, the graves, the remaining friends, from the native dialect. And of Ed, of course, who still believes that only he can take care of her.
On the other hand: the houses are gone, the fields sold as building land. The graves have long been cleared. Ed turned off any help I’d arranged for my mother. I live with my family in Hamburg. There is no other way!
I asked my mother many times, on the phone, during my visits during the many months in the hospital. She referred to those who supposedly knew everything: “Let’s see what the doctors say.” Finally, she asked me to decide for her. And here I am, the blue point on the sat nav, approaching inexorably. I pull out of the autobahn, have breakfast that only comes to my mind after nights like this at McDonald’s. Text Ed: I’ll be there in 20 minutes.
Ed opens. He made coffee, offers me a seat at the table. Like before when I came to visit with the children. I feel sorry for him now. He gives me the guest key and leaves the apartment.
It’s Friday morning, on Monday I have to work in Hamburg. The room in the home should be left swept clean, as they say.
At noon two young men come from the clearing out. A social enterprise, but they don’t want donations in kind. You drive this stuff to the scrap, for a fee, of course.
Standing in front of the wardrobe, I try to make a reasonable selection, comfortable and wheelchair accessible. I’m stuffing the clothes into the bags faster than I can possibly revise my decisions.
The clearer has children. I give him everything he wants: the memory game, the picture books, the xylophone. I’m happy if he takes all of this with him instead of throwing it in the trash bag.
What I stuff the bus down to the last crack: albums, letters, self-made and painted things. My grandfather’s books are on a shelf: Hunt for J. M., Reconstruction through advertising, Logs from the afterlife. And my books. Everything from there comes along.
Back in Hamburg, I set up a room in the home that immediately looks like your home. I quickly get some furniture from the rest ramp at Ikea, from the social department store. I place photos and pictures, hang all the walls with them. One of Ed is also there. And so the room is immediately yours.
When my mother and I arrive in Altona on the ICE 14 days later, I am nervous. Push her in the wheelchair into the room in the “Hamburger Hafen” station. The sunlight plays in the leaves in front of the window and in the light curtains. The familiar hodgepodge looks towards us, a tug touts up from the Elbe. I see relief and joy on her face.
Hollywood If you feel like your family is complicated over the holidays, consider this: US actor Jack Nicholson learned on the phone at 37 that his sister was really his mother. She was only 16 years old when little Jack saw the light of day. In order to save her “honor” and a career as a dancer, the grandma posed as the actual mother. In 1974 a Time Magazine reporter found out the truth – and rang Nicholson’s doorbell.
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