…and your ol pal Quasi is feeling very sad and guilty because I couldn’t just hop on a plane and go to the funeral.
My uncle Willi and Aunt Magdalene took me in when my then-single mother was too sick to take care of me herself. In short , I got put on a train and sent to Zeitz, Germany (which was at that time, Communist-occupied by the Russians) and I spent three years (from 5-8) with them.
By living with them, I learned how to be poor and how to be happy with being poor. Many an evening was spent by me and my younger uncles outside the Russian camp waiting for loaves of bread handed to us by the Russian cooks. I remember tasting my first Coca-Cola there. It was drunk at room temp, and boy I had never tasted anything so delicious in my life. We’d steal sugar beets off the backs of farm trucks and robbed farmers’ hens for eggs. My Oma (grandmother) worked at cleaning a bakery and would bring us pastries (Apfel- and Quark-Taschen) that the shop wouldn’t have sold that day. For meat, pork was a delicacy. The ear, the tail, and the feet were all we could afford, but to us it was a meal fit for royalty.
While there I was also inducted into a youth organization called The Young Pioneers were I learned the merits(?) of Communism and attained my love for drumming. (Later in life, I enlisted in the USAF and before they gave me my SECRET clearance, they called me aside and grilled me on my membership in that youth group. I remember being astounded as to how they found out about it.:D)
So that’s a snippet of my life with my family in East Germany. So now you’re certainly asking yourself, “So why didn’t you go, Quasi you DUMMKOPF?”
Two reasons: Duty and lack of funds. I will address the duty part first… We currently have two people from our very small RT department on vacation and our hospital is full. It would have placed an incredible hardship on the rest of my staff to cover for me this week, although they would have gladly done so.
Lack of funds: I checked with a couple of airlines who told me that bereavement fares are a thing of the past since 9/11, and the cheapest ticket I could get would be about 1100 bucks. When I asked about standby, I kindly got told that I was certainly welcome to try, but during tourist season it was nigh to impossible to get a seat.
So I spoke with my uncle Bernd, who is the executor of Willi’s estate and he told me that he understood and reminded me that none of them could make it to my mother’s funeral either. He also said Willi would have understood and for me not to beat myself up over it.
Before he died, I spoke with my uncle several times on the telephone (One has to rent a phone in the hospital where he was), and we reminisced about the times I told you about above. The next time I tried to call, they had moved him to intensive care on a ventilator, and of course he couldn’t speak with a tube down his trachea and unconscious from the meds he was getting.
None of this helps my feelings of sadness at his passing and the guilt that I am not there to pay my final respects. It’s just one more reason for me to move back home, so that I can be there at times like these. Bernd is sending a wreath on behalf of me my SO and son, but it seems so little for such a great thing that was done for a young boy during such hard times.
If anyone wants to call me out in the pit over this, that’s fine. I’m sure you couldn’t say anything to me that I haven’t already said to myself over and over.
Thanks for reading this, if you did.
Schlaf’ jetzt mein Onkel. Du hast es verdient und ich habe Dich sehr lieb. Dies ist Dein letzter Gruß aus Amerika.
Quasimodem
