Magda´s
Diary: Epilogue
The verb ´to love´
in the past tense or the
continuous?
It was one of those
beautiful springdays of April. The trees in Bavaria were radiant with yellow,
pink and white blossoms, the leaves were budding out in an endless variety of
green, and young animals were dancing on the fresh blooming pastures. Nature
was jubilating.
Through this feast of
colours a car was driving. Its occupants however did not seem to share nature´s
joy. They were talking, but a laugh or a chuckle entered but seldom in their
conversation.
"Don´t be so hard on
yourself, mother," the lady at the wheel said. "Auntie Magda could
have included us in her life a bit more, too, you know. It´s just as much her
own doing as yours."
The elderly Mrs. Lori
Neumeier-Heller heaved a sigh. Her daughter was right: it was just as much
Magda´s own decision to be by herself so much. And still... "But she was
so lonely... I knew it; it showed the few times we did meet these past couple
of years. I think she missed her work. Don´t forget that she never had anything
but her work. No husband, no
children... So when she had to quit her work, it must have felt like losing her
whole life... And then returning to Germany, having to start all over again in
making friends and settling in..."
"As far as I
recall," Lena Lehmann-Neumeier pointed out dryly, "auntie Magda moved
to another country about every few years. And that was definitely her own
decision. So I suppose she was used to making new friends all the time."
"Why did she do
that: move to another country all the time?" 14-year-old Karin Lehmann
inquired from the backseat.
"I don´t know,
dear," her grandmother answered. "She has been restless ever since
she left Germany for the first time: to go and work for the Flying Doctors in
Australia."
"Yes, I know about
Australia," Karin said rather happily. "She has told me all about it:
celebrating Christmas in a heatwave, with a barbecue! And their pilot Johnno
taking her on a scary stuntflight, and that time they got in a thunderstorm
with their little plane, and when she spent the night at a driller´s camp, she
and sister Kate as the only ladies with some twenty rough and hungry
mineworkers... Especially that last story always made her chuckle. I believe
she really liked Australia."
Her grandmother gave her
a weak smile. "I hope she did. But she has only been there for about six
months. Surely she will have had some happy memories from that time, too. But I
doubt very much whether she really enjoyed it there as much as those few
stories seem to imply. For I still recall how quiet she was when she came
back..." She sighed. "Perhaps all those diaries she kept over the
years might shed some light on what happened there..."
"But she promised
those to me!" Karin protested. "Last Christmas she said I could read
them after she would have died, so that I could learn all about her work and
all those countries she´s been!"
"Of course you can
have them if she promised them to you," her grandmother soothed her with a
rather shaky voice.
There were a few minutes
of somewhat awkward silence, before Lena said to her mother: "Karin
practically adored her. She´s been staying with auntie Magda several times
since she returned to Germany."
In the backseat, Karin
drew up her chin and said defiantly: "I know you think she was a bit odd,
mum. But I think she was very nice. I liked her a lot; she is one of the most
interesting people I have ever met!"
"She was," her
grandmother reflected. "Dedicated, friendly, a heart of gold,
exceptionally bright... When we were children, I always envied her," she
told her granddaughter. "She was so good at school... I wanted to be just
like her, but my ordinary brains were no match for her intelligence. The whole
family was so proud when she went to university, and graduated even there with
extremely good grades."
"I want to become a
doctor, too. Just like auntie Magda," Karin announced proudly. "And
then I´m not going to work in some classy hospital here in Germany. I´m going
to other countries, to help the poorest people in the world. Just like auntie
Magda."
"You do that,"
her mother said with some irony.
But her grandmother was
moved by the girl´s words and smiled at her. "You are starting to sound
like your auntie Magda already."
It had been a few weeks
now since Mrs. Eleonora Neumeier-Heller had woken up one Saturday-night with a
sudden uneasy feeling about her sister. She had dreamt about her, that was for
sure, but all of a sudden she had woken up and somehow she had just known
something was wrong with Magda.
For a while she had tried
to go back to sleep, convincing herself that she could not possibly know what
was happening to a sister who was living hundreds of kilometers away from her.
But the worry refused to leave her, and at 6.30 she had got up to call her
sister. Just to hear that she was allright.
But the phone was not
answered. She had tried every fifteen minutes, with her worries increasing with
every time she called, but there was no answer. By nine o´clock she had grown
so worried, that she talked her husband into driving all the way over to
Grafenau, just to see whether her sister was allright.
When they had arrived at
Magda´s cottage in the afternoon, they had found Magda´s big striped cat
wailing in the kitchen. Magda herself had been apparently asleep in her bed,
tightly holding on to an old little book.
But she wasn´t just
sleeping. She was dead.
The doctor they had
called in told them she must have passed away during the past night, due to
heartfailure. "It´s the way most people would wish to die," he had
soothed the crying Mrs. Neumeier. "No fear, no pain, no suffering, no
stress... Just passing away when you´re sleeping. Her face is calm and relaxed;
there is even a hint of a smile. She has not suffered. Perhaps that can be a
consolation in your present distress?"
Lena parked the car on
the driveway. The garden around Magda´s cottage was just as festive as the rest
of the landscape they had been driving through today: full with flowers,
radiating in the sunshine.
"A pity she didn´t
have the chance to see her garden like this anymore," Mrs. Neumeier said.
"When she died, things had only just started to bud."
They went up to the house
and entered rather hesitantly. Already now, after but a few weeks, it smelled
pretty dusty inside.
"Okay," Lena
said matter-of-factly, "we have to sort all this out. Things we´d like to
keep ourselves, and things that can go to the Salvation Army. Things can get so
complicated when people don´t leave a will..."
"Perhaps she did
write down something somewhere," Mrs. Neumeier said hopefully.
"And we have to look
for her diaries," Karin insisted.
They looked around in the
living-room. It was modestly furnished, with surprisingly little proof of the
thirty years Dr. Magda Heller had been living and working abroad. There were
just a lot of pictures, standing on every inch of the shelves and side-tables.
Pictures of happy smiling children from all over the world. Mostly in groups,
sometimes alone.
Karin took up a picture
of a brown-haired girl with a mischievous smile. "This is Davita,"
she told her mother and her grandmother. "Davita from the Ukraine. She was
a foundling, and she was deaf. Auntie Magda loved her as if she were her own
daughter. But when she was ten, she got run over by a car, and she was hurt so
badly that there was nothing they could do to save her. She died in auntie
Magda´s arms..."
Mrs. Neumeier swallowed
with difficulty. "Auntie Magda told you that?"
Karin nodded soberly.
"She has told me about several of the children in the pictures. But this
one I remember especially, because she nearly started crying when I asked about
her."
They stood silently for a
moment, while the two grown-ups wondered what other matters of the heart Magda
may have been hiding from them. Strange that she had told a thing like that to
a young grandniece, and not to her nearer relations...
But they pulled
themselves together, and started gathering things up: books and clothes and
everything in boxes. In the bedroom, grandmother took up a small darkgreen book
from the nightstand. She showed it to her granddaughter. "This was the
book your auntie Magda was clutching when she died. She must have been reading
it before she fell asleep that night."
Karin shivered as her
grandmother carefully opened it. "It´s one of her diaries," she
whispered as she saw the first page, filled with her aunties neat handwriting.
And as she noticed a particular word down the page, she added: "The one
about Australia."
The paper was crispy and
old. Grandmother leafed through the book. Several pages had dog´s ears; it
looked like the book had been used intensively. But perhaps all diaries look
like that when they get filled up over time?
"Mother!" they
heard Lena call out from the living-room. "Come and look at this!"
Mrs. Neumeier closed the
diary and gave it to Karin. Then they both went to see what Lena had found.
It was a letter, dated
January 16th, 2025. And it contained Magda´s wishes for after her death.
Mrs. Neumeier looked
through them. It was more or less as she had expected: Magda wanted her
furniture and stuff to be given to the Salvation Army as far as none of her
relatives wanted it. The house had to be sold and its proceeds - together with
the money left in her bankaccount - divided equally among the hospitals and children´s
homes she had been working for since 1990. And last but not least, the letter
ended with a PS addressed to Karin. It stated clearly that - if Karin still
wanted to - she was the one entitled to all her auntie Magda´s diaries, "because you have such a wonderful
interest in other people´s lives and living conditions", it said. "Dear Karin, I do not want to push you
into anything, but I do hope you will find the inspiration to one day continue
the work I had to quit - in one way or another. I think you can do it, as long
as you keep in mind that grief is as natural a part of life as is happiness.
Thank you for all you have done for me.
Love,
your auntie Magda."
Karin stood motionless.
"What have I done for her?" she asked bewildered.
Her mother pulled her
close and put her arm around her daughter. "You loved her," she
simply said. "You loved her, you loved coming here, you talked with her,
you listened to her... I think grandmother might be right there: she might have
been quite lonely."
"And you two are
rather alike," grandmother added. "I´ve noticed it, too. You don´t
look like her at all; you look much more like your father. But the way you are,
your character, reminds me of my sister when she was younger. I suppose auntie
Magda must have noticed that, too. That´s probably why you two got along so
well."
Karin nodded. "Yes.
Perhaps."
They continued their
sorting out in silence. It felt strange, to be going through someone else´s
stuff and deciding to keep it or throw it out. It felt like one couldn´t throw
away anything without asking Magda. But they couldn´t ask her anymore.
Karin found a whole
cupboard full with diaries. She was leafing through them, reading a few lines
here and a short passage there. None of them however was as used and worn as
the one on her time in Australia. And the cupboard looked like it hadn´t been
opened for ages.
She looked up when she
heard her grandmother sniffing at the table. Lena came up to her mother, too,
and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "What is it, mother?"
"Oh my God,"
Mrs. Neumeier mumbled. "Poor, poor Magda... Why didn´t she tell us?!"
"Tell us what?"
Karin asked hesitantly. She came up to the table. Her grandmother had been
looking through auntie Magda´s purse, and had found an old yellowish letter in
an envelope that nearly fell apart of its aging. There was no address or stamp
on it; obviously the letter had never been sent. Karin picked up the picture
lying next to it. It was an old one: the colours had faded a little, and the
corners were worn. It showed a young man with dark hair, age around 25-30. He
was dressed in a rather old-fashioned peach-coloured shirt and grey pants, and
he held out his hands as though he was wondering about something the
photographer did or said. He was standing on a sloping green pasture, and in
the background a white house with a red roof could be seen among the trees.
"Who is that
man?" Karin enquired.
Grandmother looked at the
picture. "I think it´s your auntie Magda´s lost love..." she said
toneless.
"Her what?!"
Karin asked astonished.
"I thought she had
been single all her life!" Lena uttered dumbfounded.
Mrs. Neumeier brushed
away a trickling tear. "That´s what we all thought... But apparently she
had fallen in love with a colleague or so when she was working in Australia.
And he died... Oh, poor, poor Magda... No wonder she was so quiet when she came
back..."
Karin looked at the man
in the picture. "He looks nice," she said timidly. "What´s his
name? Does she tell about him in that letter?"
"His name is
David," her grandmother answered sniffing. "And the letter is
actually a love-letter to him But she must have written it several years after
he died." She looked at the wrinkled, stained paper in her hand. The
letter was not dated, but its paper was so old and worn that Magda must have
kept it in her purse for a very long time.
Her eyes went over the
words again. Together with her daughter´s and her granddaughter´s.
"Dear David,
I´ve been
wanting to write this letter to you for quite some time, even though I know
perfectly well that it is of no use. For I won´t be able to send it to you. But
I have decided to write it anyway. Who knows: maybe you are still around in
spirit, looking right over my shoulder as I sit here writing to you...
David, I
have a confession to make. As a matter of fact: several ones. But I´ll start
with one: I love you. Ich liebe dich. I have always loved you. I believe I have
loved you from the very first sight I got from you: that picture at the base,
where you are holding up a big fish you had caught. Do you remember that one?
But I was
afraid. You were always so friendly and kind to me; I didn´t dare to challenge
that by telling you how I felt about you. In your country, I did not know how
far I could go in coming out to you, without risking to lose your friendship.
Sometimes it seemed like you had some special feelings towards me, too, but I
was never sure. Everything was so new to me, so strange... Even the people.
Friendly, curious, but I always felt they considered me the stranger in town.
And that was how I felt: the stranger. There were so many things I didn´t
understand. You were my guide to Australia, to Coopers Crossing, and to the
work there, never rejecting me or shrugging when I didn´t understand. I may
have made lots of acquaintances, but you were my only friend. The only one who
at times made me feel at home. And I can not thank you enough for that. I don´t
know how I would have survived working for the RFDS without you.
The other
confession I have to make, is that I have betrayed you. It started when you
announced that you wanted to leave the town and the Service and that you wanted
to do something else with your life. I was angry. I thought you acted as though
you had no consideration at all as to how I would feel upon your leaving. But
now I see that perhaps you really didn´t know how I felt about you, so how
could I blame you? I should have said something then, but I was angry and
upset, and did not want to talk to you. Something I deeply regret. For the next
day, you had hardly left when you found yourself called upon to assist a man in
an emergency. He was saved. But you were the one who died.
I was in
a shock when I heard the news. I could not possibly imagine that the man I
truly loved so dearly, had fallen off a cliff and died. I attended the funeral,
I laid the most beautiful flowers on your grave... but somehow I felt it was
all my fault. If only I had told you about my feelings, wouldn´t things have
gone differently? Would you have decided to leave Coopers Crossing then? I know
how you felt about several things that had changed around the base; the person
of Guy in particular. But perhaps we could have gone somewhere together...
The weeks
following were a nightmare. Everything and everyone reminded me of you.
Wherever I went, it was only memories of you that came flooding to me. Things
you said. Things you did. The way you looked at me. The way you smiled. The way
you laughed. The way you frowned. That delicious sparkle in your eyes. Night
after night I spent watching the stars, like we did that evening at the pub,
when I had gone outside in a sudden wave of homesickness, and you came after
me. You pointed out the Southern Cross to me, remember? I have learned to find
it on my own.
But it was
too much. I could not stay. But what excuse could I find to leave, so soon
after my arrival? I did not want to tell them about my feelings. I thought that
was none of their business. But I could not think of a plausible reason I could
give to leave. So in the end, in the wretched state I was in, I simply said
that it was for personal reasons. Geoff automatically assumed it was
homesickness, but Jackie started prodding. And when she suggested that I was
leaving because I had fallen in love with Guy, even though I knew it could
never develop into a relationship, I panicked. It came too close to the truth.
And in a desparate move to avoid her finding out the real truth, I sort of
admitted that she was right...
It felt
miserable. Like I was betraying you, and afterwards I have cried for hours. Not
out of grief, but out of shame...
Can you
forgive me, David? Please? You were always so understanding! You do understand
that I wanted to keep my feelings for you to myself, don´t you? Perhaps I
should not have done that. Perhaps I even should have told them the truth,
about missing you so much that it hurt physically. But I could not. Those
feelings were too dear to me to be able to share them with anyone. I hope so
that you understand...
I
returned to Germany, where my family found me very quiet. But I could not tell
them either. Apart from your father, no one knows what I feel for you. But it´s
still there. I have never married, David. Perhaps I never will. A couple of
times have men been more than interested in me, but I just couldn´t. When they
talked to me, or wanted to accompany me, or danced with me, or smiled at me, I
could only think of you. I still treasure you in my heart, David. I still love
you. I have never stopped doing so. I feel like a widow. A widow who is not
being recognized as one. I long for you, every night. And sometimes, when I´m
on one of my lonely strawls, I talk to you, as if you were with me. And deep
down inside, I keep hoping for the impossible: that one day the doorbell will
ring and I go and open the door, and there are you, smiling at me...
Lieber
David, I believe the writing of this letter has been beneficial. I have had to
stop several times, because it´s so hard to write with tears streaming down my
cheek. But somehow, I believe you have seen what I wrote. I feel calmer now.
Thank you for all you have done for me, and for all you have given me. And
whether or not I will one day find another man I can love, you will always
remain in my heart. I shall treasure our memories together, and I will never,
ever stop loving you.
Yours,
truly and faithfully for ever,
Magda
Vergessen heißt: halt immer an
dich denken
Vergessen heißt: es tut noch
immer Weh
I kann mein Herz ganz wiss nie
einem Anderen schenken
So lang´ i Nacht für Nacht nur
deine Augen seh
Forgetting means: still thinking
of you
Forgetting means: it still hurts
I will never be able to give my
heart to someone else
As long as I - night after night
- see nothing but your eyes"
The air was filled with
astonished compassion. Poor auntie Magda...
"Karin," Lena
asked slowly, "did auntie Magda ever mention this David to you?"
Karin shook her head.
"Not that I recall." She had tears in her voice.
Her mother bit her lip.
"She must have been even lonelier than anyone ever realized. The man she
head over heels fell in love with falls off a cliff and dies... The girl she
more or less regarded as her daughter is run over by a car and dies... And she
never even mentioned those tragedies!"
Karin looked up. "Do
you think...? This girl Davita was a foundling after all. So perhaps, if they
didn´t know her name... Do you think it was auntie Magda who named her Davita?
After this David?"
Her grandmother nodded.
"That is quite possible, dear. But the girl died, too..."
Karin shivered. "It
must have made her almost scared of loving anyone. For as soon as she loved
them, they died..."
Her grandmother took a
deep breath. "From what I gather from this letter, together with her
holding on to the Australian diary in which she must have written a lot about
this David when she loved him so much..."
"And that is the
only one that looks like it is being used a lot," Karin added.
Her grandmother nodded in
agreement. "I think we may safely conclude that Magda continued to love
this David till her dying day. I think she just never stopped loving him, like
she writes in this letter."
Karin´s lip trembled.
"Let´s hope they´re
together now, then," her mother said quietly.
Karin couldn´t hold back
her tears anymore. She threw herself into her mother´s arms and cried
violently. "Poor auntie Magda... I feel so sorry for her...!"
But they all felt like
crying. That a close relative of theirs had gone through so much grief, and never
had they suspected anything about her pain and distress...! Never had she given
them the slightest possibility of comforting her; never had she let them enter
her life for real, to understand her and support her when she´d needed it...
Magda had chosen to carry the burden of the grief over losing her most beloved
ones all by herself. Alone. She had closed both David and Davita in her heart,
for no one to touch. Her very own precious love, and her very own deep sorrow.
They all wished now that they could have done something to comfort her or help
her. But Magda herself had shut out everyone when it came to her dearest
feelings. She had chosen to cherish those dear memories alone. That had been
her private business, and there was nothing they could do about it. Not
anymore.
"Your auntie Magda
was a very special person, Karin," her mother said quietly. "I wish I
had taken the opportunity to get to know her better when there was still
time..."
"We can," Mrs.
Neumeier said gravely. "This letter sheds quite some light on her already,
and I think the diaries she left to Karin will give us an even better insight
in who she really was. So I hope, Karin, that when you have read them, you will
give us the chance to get to know my sister, too."
Karin nodded. "Sure."
The next evening, when
they were at home again, Karin took out the darkgreen diary on her auntie
Magda´s time in Australia. It felt worn, almost alive in her hands. She
shivered at the thought of her greataunt clutching this book when she died.
Perhaps she had been reading in it every night... Perhaps it was a way of
summoning happy dreams about this David in her sleep? Dreams in which they
lived their lives together, happily ever after...
Karin swallowed and
cuddled up in her bed. Ever since her grandmother had found that letter she had
been thinking of this David. He looked so nice in the picture. And this was the
book in which she could probably read all about him!
Hesitantly she opened her
greataunt´s Australian diary. She leafed through the pages, though it did feel
a bit like intruding upon auntie Magda´s most intimate privacy. She noticed the
name David lots and lots of times. And here, with big letters, an I LOVE YOU!!!
She sighed. A shame that
her auntie never had had the chance of sharing her life with him. Surely they
would have been very happy together...
But she had better start
at the beginning. So she went back to the first page, and - warm and snuggled
up under her blanket - she started reading Magda´s report on her time with the
Royal Flying Doctor Service in Australia:
Mon 21/9
Well... farewell Garmisch.
Farewell Munich.
Farewell Bavaria.
Farewell Germany.
Farewell Europe.
It feels a little pinchy around my heart. I will miss it
a little. But I am too excited about all the new things that are
awaiting me to be pining. I understand that it wasn´t easy to say goodbye,
especially for Mom. It might be a year before we meet again; perhaps even
longer. But right now, I allow myself to be a little selfish. I want to look
forward to this new life of mine, full of expectation!
Still, first I´ll have to spend two days in the plane,
with a night in between to spend at a hotel in Bangkok. And if things go the
way they should, I´ll be in Sydney by tomorrow evening!
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Stories about Magda´s life after her leaving the RFDS
Back
to the last episode of Magda´s Diary:
171-173
What
could (and should) have happened instead:
Back to the index to Magda´s Diary
♦
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Note:
The song Magda is referring to is Vergessen
heißt: halt immer an dich denken, written by Jean Frankfurter and Irma
Holder, and sung by the Bavarian folkmusicsinger Patrick Lindner. It is
included in his cd Eine handvoll
Herzlichkeit, 1990.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The
home of this story is www.konarciq.net
Downloading
and printing of this story for private use only.
For
all other forms of publication and distribution is the clearly stated, written
permission of the author required.