Spending the evening at the St. Josefs-Hospital
We did not bring a cake, since we could not find one that would hold 93 candles. My last living aunt spent her birthday on the 5th floor of the St. Josefs-Hospital. My wife and I brought her two bananas – she loves them.
As we enter her room she is lying on her bed asleep. We stand silently in front of her and wait. She opens her eyes and we try to make eye contact. But no words cross her lips. Her eye lids fall shut again and we silently make our way out of her room onto the corridor. “We will probably never see her again here on earth,” I remark to my wife. We take the lift and leave the hospital compound.
In my mother’s family there were ten siblings. When Aunt Tina dies a generation will come to an end.
Right from the beginning she supported us working as missionary doctors and it goes without saying that Diospi Suyana has her full support.
Driving through Wiesbaden we pass house number 93 on the Rheinstraße. It was here that I spent the first two decades of my life growing up in a bakery. My parents have been resting on the cemetery outside the city for quite a while now. I had a happy childhood and felt loved and protected.
That night we packed our suitcases and when the sun rises we will be at the airport waiting at a gate. Farewell and departure. A hint of wistfulness. But it is always like that. Jesus Christ speaks of a world without sadness, tears and pain. That is the final solution in God’s presence or, put a different way, our redemption. /KDJ
