The Light at the End of the World

     

 Near the end of 2018 I lost a good friend- a pen pal and e-mail correspondent- who had lived out her life in Nuremberg, Germany while I (for a large part of my life) have been nearly halfway across the world here in Denver, Colorado. It would probably seem to the world that the two of us had little in common on the surface, but in fact, we did in so many ways! We began our mail correspondence after we were introduced by an international pen pal organization, when we were teenagers. I was sixteen and she was seventeen when we began writing in the first half of 1975- her name was Eva Beran. (In German, both the names Eva and Evelyn are Hebraischer names which means that both are Jewish in origin and have similar meanings.)

      As we wrote to each other through the years even though I had language classes at school she taught me modern German and I learned many words I would’ve never known had it not been for her occasional lessons in her letter along with her news. She received technical school training years before me in secretarial work. I went to Beauty College after graduating from High School for manicuring training at the beginning of 1977. By April I had my diploma and license and was working already, to her amazement. Later, I noticed that she sent letters by typing them at work!

     We had so many common interests. We both were intrigued by and loved animals. I remember receiving a sticker from Germany in one letter which was emblazoned with Ein Herz fuer die Tiere and I knew that she noticed my interest. I collected everything and still do. We exchanged post-cards, stamps, photographs, photos of fashion and fashion models. Magazines were our mode of teaching each other our native tongue. She sent me paperback novels in German which were incredibly helpful for modern usage of German. This was after I told her about my love of writing short stories.

      March 25, 1977 marked a rite of passage for Eva that I was never to approach myself, however. Perhaps I felt a little left behind because she had gotten married and had never mentioned dating. We seemed to share on so many other levels that I accepted it as a matter of course and became pleasantly surprised that she had married at the age of nineteen to Hans-Jurgen. She sent a photograph of them with both sets of parents standing behind them on the church steps.

     When I moved out to California three and half years later, I found that writing to pen-pals had become almost a sideline to my new life of autonomy. However, we did write but she was amazed that I had left home and started a new life for myself in California. My letters, which were sent clear up to the time of my going back home to Denver, were filled with wonder about all my possibilities. As for herself, she worked for a bookshop chain at that time and I think she thoroughly enjoyed it. She also wanted to know all about my life in California. 

     After 1999 our communication switched over to e-mails and we stayed connected our new way quite frequently. I started to research castles on the internet by then so my interest in them increased and we started sending photos electronically, back and forth. Some of them were castles she had never seen because they were in Austria. From her I learned about the Romantic Road in Germany which stretches for many miles and is filled with lots of castles- the kind of which people think are a fantasy but are completely authentic!

     When I went on my grand tour of European castles at the very end of August in summer of 2001 I made plans to meet up with her and Hans-Jurgen in Rothenburg and I looked as forward to that meeting as I did in seeing the castles. This wasn’t my first meeting with a pen-pal in Europe but this was definitely profound because by that time I knew that Eva was struggling with a condition which was congenital. In Germany it is referred to medically as CVID and is an autoimmune blood disorder- a gamma globulin deficiency. Even though it can be genetically passed down it is very rare and can show up at any time, internally. I remember at one point the doctors wanted to remove her spleen.

     When we met on Sunday morning (September 9^th, 2001) in the town hall square of Rothenburg, I actually met her husband and new puppy, Sina, first and then Eva. We walked and talked as we strolled through the amazing medieval streets of Rothenburg. This is a walled town of Germany which was preserved and never allowed to be modernized so when you walk through its streets it is literally like stepping back into history. We stopped to eat in a restaurant and talked some more about my tour. Hans Jurgen took a photo of us together. It was almost surreal and I sensed that even Eva and Hans-Jurgen felt that this was a rare moment in our lives. It was only two days later, when I and my tour group arrived in Salzburg, Austria in the early evening. We all turned on our T.V.s before we met at dinner in our hotel and saw the Twin Towers of New York obliterated in smoke and ash. We were all confused about what we’d seen and it was all we talked about at dinner. Our tour guide found a newspaper with a huge photo of the Twin Towers half down and another with Bin Laden’s face on the front page.

     

Eva and Hans-Jurgen reached out the next day by e-mail and later they also drove to Munich to my hotel to see me. My mother actually called them to find out if I was alright and they talked to her at length, I believe. My entire tour group were supposed to fly out, originally, from Munich on Sept 14^th but all our flights were bumped and my flight out wasn’t until a week later when everybody had left by then. Because I was alone, Eva and Hans-Jurgen immediately offered for me to come to be with them in Nuremberg. I was excited at the prospect of getting to see the castle there which is the largest castle citadel in Germany so I, of course, accepted and did make a day trip to be with them there. We sat down to snacks in their home and I was able to sit and talk about 9/11 with them and learned more than I did with my tour group. The German papers were filled with information.

    

We toured the castle grounds high above the city, Albrecht Durer’s house and the Octoberfest was already underway in the center of the city and in front of the Cathedral. In this same plaza they have the longest running Christkindlesmarkt every year and it is the most world famous one of its kind. All of this definitely made up for missing Hohensalzburg Castle back on Wednesday the 12th but I had fun hanging around Mozart’s Geburtshaus that day while whistling his greatest hits. The Salzburgeans were quite amused.

     While I was alone in Munich I took a day trip out by light rail to Nymphenburg Palace on my own and had a blast spending the entire day exploring the vastness of this veritable palace and the Versailles-like grounds on my own. I discovered a building there which was made to look like a crumbling medieval church (Magdaleninklause) and it looked so authentic it fooled me until I looked it up on the internet. Munich’s subway is fantastic- it’s clean and really fast, not too expensive and easy to navigate. I never had to look at a map although they were everywhere. I had all the photos from my trip processed there and had an album full by the time I got home. My time in Munich and with my friends in Nuremberg is among my fondest travel memories.

     When I received the e-mail from Hans Jurgen about Eva’s passing on the 28^th of October last year- the same day that an American tourist from Louisiana stopped a thief trying to steal the Magna Carta at Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire, England- I was devastated. To me her life was a testament to God’s good will toward all of us. She had passed only two days before that day on the 26^th which was a little over a month past her birthday. I thought of the birthday card I had sent her by regular mail and realized that it was possible that she never saw it.

    

Eva's gravesite

I’ve realized so many things since her passing. One is that we never know when or if we will see the people we care about ever again when we say bye. We really don’t know how long we have in this world. A second realization is that we need for people to know how we feel about them. Closure is not closing the door- it is appreciation for a person or persons being their genuine selves and loving, respecting and accepting it. A third realization is that no matter how long a time we think we have for all the aspects of our life it probably won’t be sufficient. That old saying, “Life is short,” is truer than we think or believe. There really isn’t enough time for everything so you’re going to have to prioritize and make sure that what you’re doing is what you want to do with your time. What are the things about life that are most important to you? What should you let go?

     If you ask yourself these things each day you’ll eventually see your answers start to change. Our mortal lives are finite but eternity will go on. There is really a light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is our life and our friends and family who go before us are at the end of it- just waiting for us to arrive. They pray for us everyday and make petitions to God on our behalf because they invested themselves in us when they walked this world. These people are a part of the light at the end of the world. I am the light of the world…John 8:12

God save us all !

The Castle Lady