Only a couple of hours before her final passing – what a mystery! Am caught in this, as if it had been this year. (Christiane Weissman, born Strunk, died on August 26, 2022).
And what is a year.
Feeling so blessed to have been the last of her close ones to be with my mom. Support her in walking to the bathroom. Buy her the last ice-cream. Touch her, listen to…
At that day and time we did not know when…
but we felt that…
Driving home to Bonn on one of the hottest days in 2022, just as it had been last weekend, was… somehow wrong. The only hotel with rooms was some kilometers from her place,which was unfamiliar to her and to us – weird situation! – and I remember a long walk under the brutally burning sun to the station and then, from the station to the hotel.
I had my friend with me, my breath – and everything went fine, smoothly, even the inevitable retardations of the trains did not bother me. There was water to drink,and I read Shantideva. Beloved.
And so it was also right to leave her. She had always said, with her children around she could not be herself. She would not be able to leave them.

The very „best“ person, a woman from the close hospice (we would talk soon, whether my mom should not be transferred to that place), impressed me deeply. I had asked her whether she had time to see me in that house of care. She appeared as relaxed as one can be, as gentle, as present. Totally herself and a professional, who makes the other one not feeling needy. We talked beautifully, she was very open about this place and that it was not adequate for the needs of our mother. Such natural authority. Then she went to my mother, knocking at the door, getting in in a way that an almost blind person appreciates. – And then…she offered to her just … friendship. Nothing about her weakness, no changement of the tone of her voice. Dhe talked from woman to woman, from mother to mother. I could hear her, because the door remained open (it was so hot).
My mother‘s voice sounded powerful, serene, full of self-trust, they chatted about family and children, deep small-talk, first-class.
Not long after that talk I had my last contact with my mother, during which the above pic was made. (She consented). She said „Thank you, Monika“. And: „ You have done it well.“
After which, I smiled, and also said: „Thank YOU, Mutti, you show me how to die“.
No tears. The encounter was beyond the world, this means, beyond tears. There is only NOW.

The lens was changed.