Since Thursday Nadine wasn’t approachable anymore. The signs became worse on Friday: her smell changed, her feet an hands felt cold, parts of her skin turned dark, her eyes became hollow, her mouth hang agape. Tina, Katharina and Silke came over for the evening and we all shared the intuition that this couldn’t last very much longer.

When our guests left, I lay down into Nadine’s bed and took her into my arms. At that time, she was breathing short and flat and was moaning occassionally. At 1 a.m. her soft moaning became constant and I tried to comfort her with words and by caressing her cheek. At 2 a.m. the moaning stopped and her breathing became increasingly silent and slow, at 2.30 it stopped forever. I washed, oiled and dressed her and put her to rest. Now, I’m listening to the soundtrack of this blog and wait for Annika and my mother to arrive.

After a long ordeal my brave darling finally passed away. And no, I’m still no believer, but maybe there’s something like heaven and the girl of my dreams is waiting there for me:

My beloved Nadine,

not long ago, you told me that the years we shared were the best ones of your life. More than just a few of your close friends confirmed that too. And I discoverd the little scribbling shown in the picture above on the last page of one of you’re notebooks. It must have been written sometime in hospital and speaks for itself .

I can’t tell you how proud and honored I am to be the one who turned your life bright. Because this is exactly what you deserve. From the very beginning I knew what an incredibly good-hearted person you are: tender, harmonic, considerate, trusting, humble, loving, honest, caring, …

Our relationship was never spectacluar but is carried by a deep sense of belonging and mutual understanding. We never disagree about what to do or where to go – which is mostly due to your open-mindedness and adaptability. You are the best companion I could have hoped for. I want to thank you not only for what you mean to me, but also for what you are in general: Thank you for being you!

I will love you forever,

Jens

P.S.: “Dont’ run away Emily” refers to a song by Torres which already appeared in one oft the first post on this blog. I guess Nadine wrote it down in fear of being left alone. But this will never happen….

Dearest Nadine,

I think the first birthday I spent with you was your 25th, when you were my relatively new friend and housemate in Lawrence. I recall that we clicked instantly and I soon came to feel you were like the younger sister I never had. We were emotionally intimate, we joked around a lot, and even engaged in the low-stakes minor squabbling that characterizes so many sibling relationships. I always looked forward to your company at the end of the day, when we would cook, chat, and share good food and cheap wine with our grad school friends. Many of those friends were from Germany, and your efforts to teach me about your homeland’s culture — and particularly your patience in helping me with a difficult language — have shaped my life ever since.

After grad school, we went our separate ways, but nonetheless managed to see each other with remarkable frequency over the next two decades. I’ve lost count of the number of times you and Annika welcomed me in Tübingen, that picture-perfect university town. Similarly, I must have slept on your and Jens’s couch in Stuttgart at least half a dozen times. You visited me in Hamburg and came to Vermont at the end of a particularly cold winter; I remember we tried to go for a walk in the field outside my house and ended up scurrying back after five minutes, defeated by a brutally cold northwesterly blowing straight down from the Arctic. You visited Kieko and me in Munich in the winter of 2013 and in Lons-le-Saunier in the summer of 2015, where we went for a long paddle down the L’Ain (probably a little too long).

You have had happier birthdays than this one, and I’m glad to have shared some of them with you. I’m sure you neither want nor expect me to be lachrymose; you’d rather I try to make you laugh, which was never difficult and always rewarding, especially when you’d laugh so hard that you couldn’t exhale anymore. I think that’s one of the reasons we clicked: your easy and joyous laughter and my compulsive need to be the joker and the clown were a perfect match. I hope the memory of those moments still makes you smile. Those times with you have been some of the most joyful of my life. I never had a little sister, but through your friendship, I know what it must feel like to have one.

Peace, laughter, and love.

Frank