In 1961, our mother, Johanna married our father, Edward, or Ed for short. Our mother grew up in Nazi, Germany, in what was later to become East Germany in a small town known as Burg bei Magdeburg. Our father grew up in Dearborn, Michigan. He was the first to go to college in his family, putting himself through by staffing the lines at the Ford Motor Company, where he would come home every day covered in some black soot and chemicals. The entire family worked at Ford, including our grandmother, Nina, who was a secretary. I still have the stapler to prove it, with the label marker label, “Property of the Ford Motor Company,” taped on it. Our Father later joined the Navy, which paid for his way through med school. He did this all at the University of Michigan.
Our mother, well she also ended up going on to med school, but in Germany. She was born in 1932 during the rise of the Nazi regime and being in East Germany, the Nazis were replaced by the Soviets.
In the early 1930s, the business our grandfather owned, and their home were taken from them. Though they were allowed to remain living in the attic of the home they once owned. Later under the Soviets, the remainder of the house became dorms for Soviet soldiers. The stories are long and unnerving, replacing one terrible totalitarian regime for another. However, fortunately for her and the family, during the early-fifties, being a time where Germans could still move between the east and the west, our mother made her way to university in West Berlin and then onto Göttingen. At the same time, her parents and three remaining siblings left everything behind, split into groups of two, and escaped to the west for a new life. As an interesting side note, I had a distant aunt, who was studying at the university in West Berlin, while her mother and family were back in Magdeburg. My aunt would leave every Friday
for the weekend, returning to West Berlin on Sunday. One weekend, she had a significantly heavy workload and decided to stay on campus. That was the weekend of August 13, 1961, when the Berlin Wall was erected. She stayed in the west, eventually getting married and settling down in Munich.
Our mother’s generation in Germany is known as the forgotten generation. They grew up during the war and once it was over, the Germans wanted to move on, while the scares and terror of their children were swept under the rug. In the late fifties, under this umbrella, our mother took hold of an internship available in the United States, as she wanted something totally different. The US was desperate for more doctors (I guess it is true, some things never change). She came here and was sent to Detroit. One of her brothers was already living in the United States, he gave a gift, a book about Winnie the Pooh. You might wonder why; well, our mother went to high school in East Germany, they did not learn English, they learned Russian. Thus, it was more of a learning tool than a gift. The whole thing is a bit weird to me, this doctor comes from Germany, knows no English, and boom she is treating people. Fortunately, as far as I know, she didn’t kill anyone.
Our parents met at the hospital where she was interning and he was doing his residency. And sure, they hit it off. They had a courtship and eventually got married. From what I can tell, it was a true friendship/partnership. After our father passed, our mother’s parents, Oma and Opa, stepped in. For the first three years they would come and live with us for three months in the US and throughout my childhood and teenage years, I spent most of my summers with them in Germany. I can remember a few times when my grandmother would discuss my father, she would talk about him and eventually her face would grow incredibly sad, she would look in the distance and say something about how wonderful he was or how great our parents were together. It was clear they loved him and loved who he was with their daughter.
Our parents had three children, our mother stopped working, though she always intended to go back once her youngest, that is me, was in kindergarten. Once our father completed his residency, he had to
join the Navy, first stationed in Pensacola, then Naples, Italy and eventually in Philadelphia. Philadelphia had a massive Navy Yard at the time.
Here then is the part I would never have known, but we asked our mother and she shared. In 1971, he was diagnosed with some kind of nerve ending cancer. The doctors cut it out, it was benign, as apparently is normally the case for this type of cancer. They investigated and assured my mother and father that it was gone, no need to worry. And for the next year, there was no sign of cancer. Then about one year later, they had a dinner party at the house, everything was normal, fine, good, they had a nice evening with friends. In the middle of the night, Ed woke up in severe pain, he was taken to the emergency room, where they found a fracture in his lower ribs. Our Mother, thought, this is the cancer, it is back, but the doctors said no, he had been doing a lot of yard work and this can happen. Over the next couple of months, the healing was not happening and, soon enough, they found more cancer, but
at this point, it had spread.
The cancer was not responsive to Chemo, but it was to radiation. Our mother said she knew that he was not going to make it. However, our father was optimistic, and the doctors thought they would be
successful. Here is where I am in shock…. I always thought, if you were more aware of the chance of dying sooner than later, you would have time to get things in order. Our parents had months to plan, our father had been out of the Navy for a couple of years and had started his own private practice they bought a house, they had various insurance policies. They were doing all the “normal” things that young couples with young children were doing at the time. As is the case with many couples, one person runs the finances, it is just easier. That was our father. At this point, our mother believed he would not make it, while he and the doctors were on a positive path forward. Our mother wanted to ask him, where things were, get some information, realizing he may pass and she will not know where anything is. However, given his optimism, she did not want to give him any reason to doubt. And so, she did not ask.
He died and she was left with her children, the fear of the unknown, the knowledge that she was unprepared to handle his business, the mortgage, deal with the finances. In her own words, she was in a fog for the next two years and still to this day feels as if she was lucky. Friends jumped in and helped, she remembered the name of the guy from whom our father purchased the life insurance, and her parents’ support was invaluable.
I do not want to sound cold about the deceased, but once I learned the history, I thought, “jeez our father was kind of selfish.” I get it, you have cancer, you are determined to beat it, but you also have a wife with three young children, and you were managing the finances. You should have had the talk, whether you believed you would pass or not. I am not saying he is a bad person; no one intends to leave an uncertain mess behind. And as I stated, our mother had a lot of support, but I know others in similar circumstances and the support is not there. It’s always easier to prepare when things are good than to wait until they are falling apart.