take farewell
Things she had long forgotten. With clammy fingers, she strokes it. The placemat made of linen, decorated with hemstitches, neatly placed on a fold, a hanger dark red umhäkelt, the fruit knife case made of raffia. Marlene Brenner* Knocks the heart up to the neck. Memories rise at the sight of these objects, made at school nearly 50 years ago and then given to the mother. Never used, but treasured like a precious treasure.
She flinches like a child when she did something forbidden. Stealthily spinning in front of the mirror dresser on Mother's high heels or rummaging around in her laundry drawers, looking for mysterious things from the adult world. Tears are running down her face again and again, the mother has died of heart failure two days earlier. Uh, unexpected.
Saying goodbye means sorting emotions
Marlene asked for a "lead" from her brother. She wanted to be alone with the thoughts of the mother, alone in this intimate place. One day, clean up, clear out and remember in the rooms where the soap in the bathroom and the silk stockings over the back of the chair still breathed mother life. Having the mother for herself - what a paradox after she lay in the coffin. Because it was the last time. Every feeling, every conscious experience. Farewell. From the mother, the childhood. There would have been much left to say.
The half-empty cup of mint tea was on the kitchen table, the open TV newspaper was next to it. As if the deceased just went to the bathroom. "Look," she might say, "as always." Watching TV, going to bed, making tea, going back to bed, sleeping peacefully, leaving the daughter to tidy up.
I have never been so physically and mentally close to my mother.
"I've never been so physically and mentally close to my mother," says the 57-year-old, "just as she was when she was gone." It was not a scary feeling, but a warm one. Surprisingly familiar even, Marlene had rarely experienced such moments with her mother. Because in contrast to the ailing, well-cared for brother, she had always been easy to care for, "all-terrain". The father died early, because the mother was happy that the daughter made her way through school, study and work independently and independently. And yet Marlene liked to have "taken care of once," as she said as a child. She even swallowed pebbles to get sick and finally pay attention.
Almost reverently she sorted the clothes of the deceased mother. Silence, yet she felt as if she was being accompanied by her mother. She opened cupboard around cupboard and went through things. Hiking boots and cardigan whose smell she knew. Mother tracks. She pulled out drawer by drawer until she was startled. Crafting things from school, her letters and postcards. She was not prepared for that. Everything Marlene had ever given or sent to her mother came to light. The mother has carefully collected her, her reports and reports, everything that she had ever published as a journalist.
* Name changed by the editor
Shaking, Marlene took out the papers in her own handwriting, with her words and sentences. She swallowed. Each snippet documents, wrapped in ribbons in stacks, sorted by year. It was like a shop window that unexpectedly throws back its own reflection. She could have filled several applications with it. She is suddenly crying.
Those who return to their parents' home to clean up, go through their childhood and youth in fast motion and reorganize their feelings and relationship with their parents. The daughters with little girl feelings, anger and fears, with all the joys and disappointments of that time. "Emptying the house of the deceased worsens the experience of mourning and makes all its sides visible," writes French psychoanalyst Lydia Flem in her book "How I Emptyed My Parent's House." "Like a chemical analysis, this task brings to light every tiny particle of our affections, our inner conflicts, our disappointments."
Why had the mother saved everything?
"Why did not the mother pick it up?" Marlene wondered. A real daughter shrine. Without the mother having lost even a single word about it. She never praised her daughter, told her she was proud of her. How well you would have done that! "I always thought the mother does not care what I do." She had been a life partner silent partner in the daughter life. Even pictures of Marlene's family lay in mother's drawers, which she had secretly mated during visits. Why did not she just ask for it? The daughter can hardly figure it out."This kind of spiritual pre-drifting," says Marlene Brenner, "these misunderstandings and speechlessness are actually what caused the strongest pain." Why did not mother and daughter trust each other?
Basic trust is a basic need between parents and children, as excessive as love. But after the death of the parents is often nothing other than the insight that this need, although sufficient, but possibly could never be ideally fulfilled. It took a while for Marlene to forgive herself and her mother for the lack of trust. But even if no more old bills are settled and the peace with the mother can not be done on a direct way, clearing is a first step on the way to reconciliation.
Saying goodbye: clearing out is a first step towards inner reconciliation
Unlike Marlene Brenner is Marie Sauter*, 44, a poetess, moved in with her older brothers to clean up their parents' house. Less with the intention of saying goodbye than being driven by the fear of missing out on something or even being over-bred by the brothers. As a late-born and only daughter, she felt she had gotten no more than a few crumbs and the hard crust of maternal love.
For father's rooms, the men were responsible, Marie chose the rooms of the mother. A last proof of love. He found it difficult, she would have liked to be with both of them, would like to flip through the father's diary again, even if it was insignificant and later landed in the waste paper container. But as always, she felt obliged to her mother, depressed and tired of life, as she had been. Even if accompanied by the feeling of discomfort, the mother is not enough and not enough to get from her.
Now she needed this small, haggard women's life beyond death. Marie had the feeling that she had to protect her mother against too intimate and corporeal attacks from outside. In the smell of the deceased's bedroom, with the hand-ironed sheets in the closet, folded and stacked, she felt secure. Educated, she was familiar. "Jesus, my joy," she took out the old, scratched record and put it on. Bach's organ music, for Marie, the pastor's daughter, the epitome of childhood. So melancholy, so morally infused. Then she cleared out and packed the items in crates that said "throw away," "pass," or "pick up."
Saying goodbye is mourning work
Mourning work with ulterior motives. Because secretly she was looking for an explanation for mother's depression, which had also sneaked into her life. Had the mother mourned an unhappy love she once hinted at? Marie sought, behaved, and found nowhere a letter, no diary. She was disappointed, referred back to her own speculations. Why did not the mother at least explain herself in death? She should have known that she owed that trust to her daughter.
Or did not Marie deserve it? Because she had not taken enough care of her? The folder in which the mother documented her illness: Was she lonely and left alone? It's hard to break away from the bad conscience and self-blame, says Marie. She had always wanted to do her mother right, cared, although there were times when she needed the mother needed. When her marriage went awry and she was pregnant on her own. No one there to help her, she was angry about that.
Say goodbye means learning new things about the deceased
My mother lives on inside me.
When the apartment was dissolved, she felt she had to go get what she had not gotten before. Objects - representative of trust and affection. So she invited the Biedermeier sofa on which she slept as a child and her mother's desk. "But I noticed pretty quickly, it's not in there." Not unconditional love, not caring or trust. Instead, the furniture transported tradition, discipline and morality. Such an inheritance can also suffocate.
It is banal things that Marie approaches over the course of time to her mother and even reconciles with her step by step. A note with her handwriting - is there something more personal? - who fell out of her books when Marie sold them at the flea market. A travel story of the mother. And the sudden realization that the mother wanted to write. But she had to back off, first the war, then a pastor's wife with four children. She had no choice, the late-born daughter felt her dissatisfaction. Marie suspects that she, the author, writes now instead of her mother, but also for her mother. "My mother lives on in me - beautiful, but sometimes alarming."
Marie has stored her letters, photos, slides, vases, dishes and silver from her childhood in a cellar. In boxes she has not reopened so far, "because I'm afraid of being flooded".Because it is the everyday things that suddenly weigh heavily because they ask you the question: What were the parents the children and what the children the parents - or not? Respect, love, understanding, striving for it?
My parents are missing me that way.
An apartment is quickly dissolved, the process of separation between parents and children may take. "My parents are missing me like that." Sonja Thaler*, 52, a teacher who cleaned up her parents' home nine years ago with the feeling "Life must go on", is still mourning today. Her son is out of the house, the job rubs her off, how well could she need this "home" now. But there is no mother to mother, cook chicken soup and pack one with a hot water bottle. Instead, abandonment. A feeling to learn to live with. Because part of the security and the foundation on which one bases his life, take the parents to the grave.
The house, the mother's apartment clearing out points a way back in the past, but also in the future. "Now there is no one left to look at the grave," says Marlene Brenner. The early death of the father was also very painful. "But then I just started life, the future was full of promises." And now? Clear and limited, one's own life lies before you.
The questions that Marlene never asked her mother because she had no answer for that, she now answers herself. The mother has done her duty. Gratitude meant for her to make sure that the daughter wore a warm winter coat. Trust that she trusted her to cope with school or lovesickness alone. Also a form of maternal love. Especially in the postwar period, when the external living conditions were hard and the need to deal with emotions did not even arise.
"I think my mother did not even know the word psychology," says Marlene Brenner, "and certainly not what damage a soul can take."
Say goodbye: legacies are memories of the next generation
Now it's Marlene's turn, even daughters have daughters. What about the trust between her and her daughter? What will she say to the stuff the mother leaves her? Which memories unpack? You can also think of that in the deceased's apartment.
Marlene has given away much of her mother's things to the Red Cross. Only the photos are sacred to her. There are no more than a handful, their parents were war refugees, photos a luxury. That's why today they have a place of honor in their home. Silver framed to warm the soul. The mother looks as if she wants to remember and shout: "Hello, here I am." That's nice, but it would not be necessary, says Marlene Brenner. "Since I cleared out my apartment, my mother no longer sits in my bones as before, but in my heart."
Book tips: Lydia Flem: "How I vacated my parents' house", 128 pp., 16.80 euros, Schirmer Count Sylvia Frey Werlen: "The Window of Souls: The Dying of the Parents and the Chance to Meet Them Anew", 191 p. , 17 Euro, carp Angelika Overath: "Near Days - novel in one night", 160 pp., 16 Euro, Wallstein-Verlag Ingrid Strobl: "I would like to have asked you a lot more", 268 p., 9,90 Euro, fisherman
