Birth and death: conversation with a midwife and a companion

Susanne Jung

Susanne Jung, 53, is a master gilding master and was, after voluntary death care in a hospice, Undertaker. They are mainly relatives of people who died of an early or sudden death. They want an alternative way of dealing with death.

Monika Ungruh

Monika Ungruhe, 67, has delivered as a midwife to the 1500 children, in the hospital, at home and in the birth house. As she grew older, she began to focus more on the end of life, and is now doing follow-up and bereavement for parents who have lost a child.



ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: An experienced dying companion once said that man dies as he was born.

Monika Ungruhe: I think he lives as he was born.

Susanne Jung: Man comes into the world with a character: stormy or deliberate, tough or sensitive. And many mothers say that this has already shown at birth. Can not you confirm that?

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: I have two sons. One came into the world fist-like, like Superman, and the other was stressed out. One is a striker, the other a sensible one.

Susanne Jung: With this character the children have experienced the trauma of their birth, and I am sure that it is remembered. Later in life, each conflict demands a solution strategy. Can we accept the conflict or are we displacing it? What deal do we have with the suffering? If I learn to accept change in the course of my life, I may be dying too. In that sense, our life is a good death school. But regardless of individual experience, birth and death are essentially similar in nature. The breath plays a big role both times, the pain and the attitude.



Monika Ungruhe: During delivery, it's about how the woman breathes, whether she can let go. How she deals with the feelings. With the first woe is usually the fear. Can I let her? Can I allow fear and pain, or am I trying to escape? But then I brace myself - and when I cramp, I can not let go. It all depends on how I get involved in the process.

Susanne Jung: Even dying is a process if death does not come all of a sudden. You have to deal with the knowledge that you are dying; and with the feelings that death causes: fear, anger, sadness. But also with the thoughts of salvation and peace. The birth and the death are like a gate: here comes the spirit - there he goes.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What similarities do you see?

Susanne Jung: The place is an important topic. Where is born and died? Most people want to die at home, but that can only be around eight percent.



Monika Ungruhe: And the environment is important: How does the family, how do the friends deal with the birth and death of relatives? I grew up in a village where I was born and died at home - and all the neighbors came by. Today we hardly have any more common rituals.

Susanne Jung: It has become a lonely event.

Monika Ungruhe: And we think we always have to work again.

A colleague came to work the day after her father's death, and three days later her circulation collapsed. Maybe we just do not know what is right and important now. Anyone who loses a loved one is also in shock. Psychosomatic illnesses are often the result of relatives. These are signals that the mind is overwhelmed. My mother died when I was 19, and only two days before she was told that she had cancer. It was a shock. In the following years, my brother almost died, I lost a child, my partner and my job. I'm rubbed into depression. Now you deal with dying every day. And I have to say: Never before have I felt so good in life. I am no longer afraid of death, and I have learned to rejoice in the little things. Death is a terrible employer, but a master who teaches humility.

Clarity and Assistance - Susanne Jung and Monika Ungruhe try to give the bereaved a framework for grief and farewell

Monika Ungruhe: I felt better, too, when I started dealing with my losses. Three of my siblings died in infancy. That burdened me for a lifetime. As a midwife I concentrated on mothers who lost their children. It is important to mourn losses.

Susanne Jung: We would have to take much more time for these existential moments. I often see that when I meet the mothers of the mothers who bury their dead children after a miscarriage, that is possible today. In the past, miscarriages were disposed of like garbage.I observe that the grandmothers at the grave often cry even more than the mothers, because they only mourn for the children they lost during pregnancy.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Also deliveries should now be as short and painless as possible. Today every third child is born according to plan by caesarian section.

Monika Ungruhe: I think it's because we're afraid of losing control. Many young women are used to regulating their own lives: education, occupation, partnership, lifestyle. And we all can not stand the uncertainty. The fear of not functioning culminates in the fear of losing control of the excretions. This can happen at birth and dying. I think we have lost confidence in the natural course of things.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: But pain is just scary.

Susanne Jung: Of course we want to avoid pain. But those who have experienced them are maturing. Not because he cures, but because he learns to understand becoming and passing away. And you just can not understand death. Death is too big for our little brain.

Monika Ungruhe: We can not believe how a person whom we love and who just lived should suddenly no longer be there.

Susanne Jung: But if we say goodbye to these people, we can understand something. As a rule, the funeral is arranged in the hospital - and next you will be given an urn. We lose our dead on the way.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: How should a farewell happen?

Susanne Jung: You have to prepare people well and tell them what to expect. To a woman whose husband has just died, one could say: Mrs. Müller, your husband is now in the coffin, his mouth is a bit open, you know that when he fell asleep in the afternoon, but it is and remains yours Man, do you want to watch? - Since the woman is sure to say after 65 years of marriage: Yes, like. And then you go with her to the coffin, very carefully. At first she is startled, but then she relaxes. Because: That's her husband. And then she takes his hand. This feeling will take her: now he is no longer there - but I have accompanied him.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: And then?

Susanne Jung: After a death one experiences how a spirit leaves a body. When a person dies, a spirit is born. But you certainly think that's too spiritual.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: No, why?

Monika Ungruhe: Well, in our professions one often has the feeling that one has to justify oneself, because people think: here the normals, there the spiritual ones. But those who have to do with birth and death can not ignore it.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Do you believe in an after?

Susanne Jung: What does believe here? I have no doubt. I know that. I watch it - all the time.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Really?

Susanne Jung: I just had a young man, his friends said goodbye to him three times, they lifted the sheet three times and took a look at him. The first time he looked like he was sleeping. He was still there. He was still there the second time. Before he came to the crematorium, we took the last look at him. He was gone.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: How did you know that?

Susanne Jung: You can feel that.

Monika Ungruhe: Many think then: I'm going crazy! We try to calm people, because they are normal phenomena. And at birth it is like this: I have hardly experienced a mother who would not have felt her newborn as a miracle.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: In the past, men did not accompany their wives to deliver. For some it is difficult to cope with, some are happy to have been there. Do you consider this accompaniment important?

Monika Ungruhe: Every couple should decide for themselves whether the man should be there - or wants to. For this we have birth preparation courses today. As far as birth is concerned, we have learned a lot in recent decades: there are gentle births, birth homes, home births. And many women today know that having a natural birth with the assistance of a midwife and a familiar person is good.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Something else happened to me during the birth: I felt like I was dying. And the crazy thing was: I did not care.

Monika Ungruhe: That often happens. I used to see Turkish women giving birth, they were saying prayers - they were the same people who are spoken when someone dies. For me it sounded like lamentations. In some cultures, until today, there is the mourning of mourners who come to the dead. We, on the other hand, do not know lamentations anymore. But it is healthy, you have even investigated.

Engaged, but not deadly serious: Susanne Jung (center) and Monika Ungruhe (right) with Nataly Bleuel, who moderated the conversation

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: We are rather embarrassed by moaning and howling. Our mothers were even proud if they did not scream during the delivery.

Monika Ungruhe: And we midwives tried again from the seventies to teach them to "sound". The mourners are basically also midwives - for the soul of the dead.And also for the version of the bereaved. Because the lamentation has a certain rhythm. If you get frustrated, your neighbor will tease you and get you back to the rhythm. We prefer to use sedatives.

Susanne Jung: Man needs a framework so that he can regain his composure. The others can give it to him. If he stands at the thresholds, to life or death, then he gets frantic. And with him often the whole community. It takes a rite that holds like a frame. Or at least the midwife or the undertaker, who stay clear in this shock.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: Does our sympathy go away?

Susanne Jung: And how! That goes into the little gestures. The widow used to wear black for a year to remind the community that someone should be treated with leniency. I recently had a widower who was completely taken aback when his Arab neighbors rang his doorbell at lunchtime and brought him food.

Monika Ungruhe: A baptism was also there to introduce the new born into the community.

We deprive society of an important function, we deprive her of her assistance. Germany is particularly hard hit by the Second World War, there were too many dead, and this was the blame. The inability to mourn all that has made the natural handling of death impossible. The people who come to me because they seek a different way of dealing with death are mostly of the younger generation. At the same time we all have to become more open and fearless? Yes. Death affects everyone, connecting people as a community. If we isolate him, a sense of community is lost. When we no longer experience fellowship, we isolate ourselves. We need another culture of dying again. That would not change our greatest wish for death: that it may come only when we are tired of life. Death almost always comes at the wrong time. We should consider this in good time. And start with life.

My Babies were Born at Home. Here's the Story. (March 2024).



Birth, conflict, birth, death, conversation