![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My aunt, whom it was I had gone to visit a few weeks ago, died this last week. She was 89. Two months ago, she had a stroke which left her partially paralyzed, bedridden, and no longer wanting to live. I am relieved for her sake that she did not end up slowly withering away for months or years in a nursing home bed. When she was in better health, she was an energetic, upbeat, and busy person.
So now, she is gone. Perhaps she is no more, perhaps she's in another realm, perhaps she is slumbering, waiting to be reborn, or perhaps her spirit has diffused and rejoined the great energy-spirit-magic-whatever of the universe. Or perhaps something else.
My aunt, whom I shall call K here, like the rest of that side of my family, came from the eastern part of Germany called Schlesien (Silesia). It is now (and was during various times in history) a part of Poland. She, like her father, was a dentist by trade. After WW2, most of the family fled west to avoid being under Soviet rule. But since K was a dentist, which was considered a valuable skill by the Soviet military, she was made to stay behind and work for them. After a while, she managed to leave too (I don't recall the story about how she got away), and rejoined the rest of my relatives in West Germany.
While I was a child living in Germany, I got to visit K fairly often. She travelled a lot, and we often went on trips together... within Germany, and to Spain, Bulgaria, Austria... Even when just visiting her at her home, she told me stories, and showed me photos and movies of her trips to even more faraway exotic places, like Indonesia and Africa. K was retired by the time I knew her, but she was always into various hobbies which kept her busy. She collected minerals and gemstones; she was into photography and developed her own photos... Later on, she became interested in painting, and was quite a good artist. She was the one who sparked my interest in cloth-painting. And maybe she sparked my interest in foreign languages, cultures, and places, too.
Here is one of K's photographs and some of her paintings...
( Read more... )
So now, she is gone. Perhaps she is no more, perhaps she's in another realm, perhaps she is slumbering, waiting to be reborn, or perhaps her spirit has diffused and rejoined the great energy-spirit-magic-whatever of the universe. Or perhaps something else.
My aunt, whom I shall call K here, like the rest of that side of my family, came from the eastern part of Germany called Schlesien (Silesia). It is now (and was during various times in history) a part of Poland. She, like her father, was a dentist by trade. After WW2, most of the family fled west to avoid being under Soviet rule. But since K was a dentist, which was considered a valuable skill by the Soviet military, she was made to stay behind and work for them. After a while, she managed to leave too (I don't recall the story about how she got away), and rejoined the rest of my relatives in West Germany.
While I was a child living in Germany, I got to visit K fairly often. She travelled a lot, and we often went on trips together... within Germany, and to Spain, Bulgaria, Austria... Even when just visiting her at her home, she told me stories, and showed me photos and movies of her trips to even more faraway exotic places, like Indonesia and Africa. K was retired by the time I knew her, but she was always into various hobbies which kept her busy. She collected minerals and gemstones; she was into photography and developed her own photos... Later on, she became interested in painting, and was quite a good artist. She was the one who sparked my interest in cloth-painting. And maybe she sparked my interest in foreign languages, cultures, and places, too.
Here is one of K's photographs and some of her paintings...
( Read more... )