LJ Idol Week 21 - The Way Back

[dadi]

Remember that barn my great-aunt Klara helped to raise a hundred years ago?


Right behind it, her eldest son, when he took over the farm, built a small house for his mother to live in.
Such was the use back then, when the old owners signed over the property, after the heir had produced at least one son, and the senior farmers felt their strength and health decline.

That did not mean they would not work on the farm any more, far from it. Aunt Klara got up every morning at 4 to milk the cows and then prepare breakfast for family and farmhands right up to the day before her death in 1978. But the responsibility and organisation of fields, livestock and staff were in the hands of her son since 1964.

Klara’s husband had died in 1960, but since he had never been much involved in the daily work of the farm, it was Klara who decided to slowly let go of the reins, when in that same year my cousin, the younger Alois, was born and two years later, Michael, both two strong, healthy boys.

This also meant that the young family was occupying all the rooms in the main house. Therefore Klara’s son, the older Alois, gathered his friends in a period of less agricultural work and they built a two storey cabin made from solid bricks and wood.

The ground level held a basic bathroom, storage and kitchen, on the top floor there were two more rooms, one for sleeping, one to sit, sew and talk. Not a luxurious accommodation for sure, but sturdy and comfortable enough, fitted with a big bed, a wood stove and a couch.

From my earliest childhood on, I spent a lot of time in that place.

My father worked in Munich, where my sister and I went to school, but every weekend and vacation, we returned to the village, where my grandmother Katharina too had moved after the death of her own husband in 1961.
She lived with her sister in this little house and worked on the farm whenever help was required, such as sewing and mending clothes, cooking and watching the children, including me.

In 1970, my parents bought an old caravan, which they transformed into a very essential home away from home, parked right at the side of Klara’s little house.

My dad, a professional electrician, did all the installations and reparations for the farm in his free time and in change we were allowed to reside free of any rent in our tin box, use Klara’s toilet and water and other facilities like the big wooden oven for baking bread or the semi-industrial washing machine and the capacious bathtub in the washing room between the stable and the kitchen.

My mom and us kids too from an early age helped out wherever we could, collecting potato bugs, weeding, feeding the chickens, bringing the cows out to pasture, and all the other big and little chores that in every moment of the day have to be done on a farm.

That did not mean we were constantly working, far from it. Most of my free time I spent with our cousins, who were like brothers to me, but less so to my 3 years younger sister, who preferred to play with a neighbour girl at dolls, not the rather active and often rough pastimes the boys and I were fond of.

The farm on one side bordered directly on a dense forest, also part of the family’s land.

We did not have to cross any roads to go and play in the wild, and while there were animals that could be dangerous at night, as long as there was light, we were allowed to roam freely and entertain ourselves however we pleased.

Which more often than not meant climbing trees. Alois a bit less, but Michael and I were passionate little monkeys, we always dared each other who would be able to get up higher into the crown of the many oaks, beeches and chestnuts right behind the farm and many others deeper into the woods.
We were limber and light of weight and what an inebriating feeling it was, to reach those leafy heights, sit on creaking branches, shout out breathless cries when you lost and recaught your footing many times.

We had other games, which might or might not have involved nearly incendiating Klara’s precious barn one New Year’s evening with homemade firecrackers and breeding cholera bugs from cow dung with Michael’s birthday gift, a “little biologist” set that included a basic microscope.

But climbing trees was our very favourite sport and even if I was nearly two years younger, I was getting better at it than him during that summer of 1974. More and more often it was me who reached the top earlier, dared to go faster and farther. He was 12 and I was 10, but big and muscular for my age so we were quite evenly matched.

In September, I managed to finally conquer our personal Mount Everest, the enormous chestnut tree on the village’s main square. Our parents did not like us to scramble around there, as the ground below was not soft earth like in the woods but hard asphalt and stones.

But this tree had an ideal combination of branches just shaped like a ladder up to a considerable height and a marvellous view over houses and roads all around from the top and therefore it drew us to it like mice to cheese.

That top though for quite some time, none of the village youngsters had been able to reach, as some branches had broken and the others were spaced very far apart.

We had tried a few approaches but always ended up blocked by a slippery part of the trunk without any protuberance to hold or step on after a certain point.

The last afternoon of the summer holidays, knowing I’d have to return to school and would be able to dedicate much less time to this wonderful activity for the rest of the year, I gave it a last try.

I took my makeshift climbing gear with me - an old jute rope from the stable and a little garden hoe with a broken handle I used as a pick - and swiftly, observed by the cousins and a few other kids, crept up the easy part of the tree.

I didn’t really think about it much when I reached the sleek part of the trunk. I just treated it like the iron climbing bar at school, squeezing it between my thighs, reaching up and pressing my arms around the wood, then heaving my body up a bit, over and over, twice helping myself with the hoe-pick. It really was not that difficult after all.

Once on top, I looked around proudly and launched a triumphant cry.

Which promptly resulted in my mother shouting back and telling me in no uncertain terms to get myself back down fast, as we were leaving to return to Munich right now.

Grumbling about my conquest having been ruined by this parental intervention, I scrambled down and ran to the already waiting car, not paying much attention to the other kids. My sister later said, that she had seen me give some stupid, victorious sign towards them, but I have no memory of that.

What I do remember very well is coming home from school the next afternoon and finding my mother very pale and in tears. She had just received a phone call from my aunt, about my cousin Michael having had a very serious accident and now being brought to Munich to have surgery on his head. She was getting ready to take the bus to the hospital - Michael’s family did not own a car, just tractors and mopeds, they would be able to arrive only in the evening by train, after having milked the cows.

I wanted to come too, obviously, but those were not times where children could just go and visit hospitals, in particular intensive care, and so my mother left me and my sister with the neighbours, until my father came home from work.

He prepared a makeshift dinner, then sent us to our room, but I was unable to sleep.

Very late in the evening I heard voices and raced down the stairs to finally know more.

My mother had brought Michael’s mother with her, to sleep at our place, so she could go to the hospital again the next day.

The news was not good. Michael had to have his head opened because the injury he had suffered had made his brain swell up nearly double in size.

And, as I came to know only now, the reason for all of this was, that immediately after returning home from school, he had gone to climb that big chestnut tree, as he did not want to have to listen to his brother and friends make fun of him for being best by a girl, younger than him, at climbing.

Apparently he had made it nearly to the top, then slipped, and fallen down, unrestrained, with his head on the stone floor. The ambulance that had been called immediately brought him first to a nearby hospital, but after the first X-rays the doctors there did not lose any time, not having the equipment nor skills for brain surgery and had him flown by helicopter to the university clinic in my town.

The emergency surgery they performed there had been only partly successful, as bone fragments were still embedded in the brain tissue and everything was so swollen, the surgeons were afraid to cause permanent damage if they cut them out. So he was heavily sedated and a lot of effort was spent trying to decrease the swelling - with the instruments available in 1974 - keeping the top of his head open for now.

My horror and desperation was beyond imagination.

Nobody ever put the blame on me, at least to my face, but I was perfectly able to do so myself.

I was utterly certain that it was only because of my own recklessness, that Michael had climbed this tree, without sufficient preparation,  thinking only of his humiliation.

Now, I can see how stupid my thoughts were, but children do not do reason, they always go for the most spectacular and horrid option available and always see themselves at the center of any event, no matter if terrible or good.

I do not remember many details of the following days. I still had to go to school, but the teachers had been told that a close family member was very ill, so they mostly left me to my own devices, which meant I was scribbling and sketching unintelligible bits and pieces in my exercise books, staring into the void, running up and down the schoolyard most of the time.

Every evening, there was different news - one day Michael seemed to wake up and be about to talk, but a few hours later, he took a terrible turn for the worse, so much that my mother and my aunt raced to the hospital in the middle of the night because they had been told he was about to die. When they arrived, he was in surgery again, and apparently now they had found the last flake of bone and finally the swelling of the brain started to decrease.

It still seemed to last forever until they slowly began to take Michael off the machines that had been breathing for him, feeding him and supplying all the other vital functions too. His body now had to work on its own again, hesitatingly at first, but it did.

Alas, his mind was not on the same plane.

His eyes were open, but without any sign that he perceived anything around him.

He did not react to noise, touch or smell, nor movement of any kind.

We were getting more desperate every day.

By now, I had been allowed to visit him for a few minutes at a time, and I will always remember seeing him in his bed, pallid and inanimate, full of scars and bandages, still with tubes going in and out, the only sound the irregular beeping of a monitor at his head.

I took his hand in mine, pressed it, but did not feel any reaction at all. The fingers were supple, neither warm nor cold, more like a rubber glove filled with water than a human limb.

I wanted to run and hide and cry, instead I stood up and listened to the adults talking about the boy who was like a brother to me.

The doctors were not very hopeful. They feared that the long hours of swelling had pressed too strongly on vital areas which would not recover any more. Leaving Michael at best permanently comatose, at worst dead very soon. Or the other way around.

There was nothing they could do for him any more in this hospital, so after nearly a month, he was brought by ambulance back to the small clinic near his home.

At first, he was still fed through a nasogastric tube, but very slowly, his swallowing reflex returned and so, while my aunt had to work at the farm, my grandmother and her sister sat with Michael hour after hour, continuing to give him spoon after spoon of nourishing purees and mash they prepared at home and carried there by bus every day.

They washed him and massaged him and applied lotion to his nearly motionless and seemingly empty physical shell.

Every weekend and during the autumn vacation, I went to see him at least once a day and sat with him, talking to his silent, relaxed face.

I cannot remember what I said, I only know I still felt the weight of his misfortune on my soul and would have done anything to make him come back to life.

In most stories about people coming back from a long period of unconsciousness, there is a dramatic moment, perfectly defined and remembered by all, where they open their eyes, grasp somebody’s hand, emit a sound, all of a sudden.

Michael’s return was not like that at all.

It was at first just a feeling that crept up on us, a subtle change.

We openly talked about it only much later, because at the time, we were afraid that we were just deluding ourselves. Still, I remember one Sunday evening, when we drove back to Munich and I hesitatingly commented to my mother, “I can feel Michael more than last week,” expecting her to tell me to shut up and stop it with my lies.

Instead, she nodded and confirmed that she too had perceived something different, even if his body was as unmoving and reactionless as before. There just seemed to be...a different quality in the air around him.

And when I came back next Friday afternoon, his mother and my grandmother talked about it too.

“He swallowed faster over the last few days,” Franziska said. “And he drank a lot more, sucking on the straw in his cup.”

I went to his bed and as always, touched his hand with mine, to greet him. Motionless as before, but ..less rubbery, maybe. A bit more alive?

Saturday morning, my mother was present at the weekly talk with his doctor. He too said that Michael was getting more stable, his values were improving. There had always been brain activity measured on the EEG, but it had been very shallow at first. Now every week there was a slight increase, more variety, peaks that might mean an activity of the mind. His reflexes were getting stronger too.

At this point, the hospital told the family that they would release the boy, there was nothing more they could do for him. Everything else would be up to his own young, strong body's healing power, and the assistance he received at home.

And so, Michael returned. His room at the back of the farm was equipped with a hospital bed and every single relative came together in the effort of caring for him.

A physiotherapist arrived every day for an hour, to keep the boy’s muscles from wasting away. He taught his mother and grandmother how to put increasing weight on his arms and legs to strengthen him a bit more every day. In time, they all could feel more and more resistance from him during these manipulations.

Me, I continued to talk.

Christmas had arrived and with it, 3 weeks of vacations, which I spent sitting at Michael’s bedside, reading from the Superman and Batman comics we both had always loved so much. Over and over, the same stories, then I started to invent my own, rambling on for hours.

The others talked to him too, but not as obsessively, because obviously they were not secretly convinced that it was their fault alone that this boy was suffering such a fate.

Between Christmas and the New Year, all of us at one time or the other heard Michael produce strange, gurgling sounds. The first time, my aunt called his doctor, who arrived late at night, only to reassure us that these were just feeble attempts to clear his throat, a good sign because it meant he was becoming more aware.

The physician showed us how to suction the boy’s airways free of mucus and the rasping stopped, only to be substituted by a very soft “nghhh, nghhh” from time to time.

Again, we were told not to worry, this was only the autonomous nervous system “warming up”, rediscovering muscles and vocal chords among other things.

Michael’s eyes had been open for hours at a time for many weeks, but without an expression, without any spark of life.

Again, there was no clear moment where we could have said “it is different now!” but somehow, when we looked at him, we felt him looking back at us more and more.

His hands started to get stronger and returned pressure some times. Not coordinated, at first, more in short, reflexive bursts, but on the first day of 1975, while I was telling him a story about Superman saving a kitten from a tree, I felt his fingernails scratch my hand, quite strongly too.

Surprised, I laughed. I knew Michael hated it when his heroes did “soft” things, he wanted them always rakish, a bit violent, strong. I grasped his hand, still cramped, and promised him I’d not make Clark Kent do childish stuff any more, and felt the fingers relax.

When I told my mother and grandmother later what had happened, they nodded and smiled. They had noticed some reactions to unpleasant things like cold water or overly sweet food too.

The next afternoon, my great aunt Lena - yes, her of the morse code - arrived, as she often did over the holidays. She had a pleasant voice and now spent every day some time softly singing at Michael’s bed. Old and modern songs, often just vocalises, simple melodies, pleasant and calm.

And it was with her, that the boy emitted his first intentional sound. She was repeating a low combination of vocals over and over again, when she heard something like a cough, then a fairly clear “O” and “A”, twice. After this, more and more often he tried and was able to pronounce first sounds, then attempts at actual words.

Often these were random, apparent nonsense, but sometimes we understood -  things like “Dut”, meaning “Durst”, thirst. Or “budin”, for his favourite chocolate pudding which had appeared on his menu only infrequently until now..

By now, the holidays were over and I was back to seeing him only on the weekends, which meant that I was able to appreciate more than his immediate family the progress he had made from one week to the next.

One Friday, I found him able to raise his hand on his own to greet me. The next week, his face was different - he tried to smile, lopsided but a smile it was! There were more words too, difficult to understand yet, but getting better all the time.

But not everything went well. In February, he caught a cold, which developed fast into raging pneumonia and he had to go back to the hospital for more than a week, not only blocking his improvement but even throwing him back - his muscles became weaker and less controllable again, his voice disappeared, due to having a tube in his airways for several days.

But Michael survived this too and then there was spring. His father built a comfortable reclining seat for him in a sheltered part of the garden, where he could see people and animals and absorb the precious rays of the sun.

I brought him little stones and pieces of wood and he kept them in his hands, grasping and moving, raising them and putting them back down. Each week, I also bought a new comic book with money I begged from anybody who'd listen, and sat down at his side, putting ithe magazine on his lap, reading the words for him. He was getting better at talking but could not distinguish even single written letters yet.

His speech therapist came over one afternoon during the Easter holidays, just when we were getting started with a new Superman adventure. She watched for a while and then suggested that I’d read one word, point at it with my finger and make him repeat it.

It was very clear that Michael did not like this, he wanted to hear the whole story, not small pieces and was able to protest rather loudly by now. But the therapist insisted, and so for an hour, he had to work hard at repeating every single word, sometimes twice or more if it was not understandable enough. By the time the woman left, my cousin was exhausted and quite angry too. We had barely reached page 4 and to appease him, I read through until the end of the story, by which time he had fallen asleep.

But this was the beginning of a real breakthrough. Possibly because he got so upset by the idea that he might be forced again to wait for his beloved stories to unfold, he now asked me to point to each word while I read and tried to pronounce them together with me. At first, it was garbled and unclear, but when the two weeks of vacation were over, he was not only able to hold the booklets on his own, he also managed to read a lot of the shorter words.

He still needed somebody to turn the pages for him, as he was not yet able to coordinate his fingers enough.

Soon though, there was an even more important step. One morning I arrived and found him standing up, leaning heavily on the walker he had not even tried to use until now. His legs trembled miserably, but he stood, and I know I was not ashamed of my tears. If we hadn’t been German children, we might even have hugged, as it is, I slapped him on the back so hard that I nearly sent him tumbling to the floor. Which made us crack up loudly with laughter, causing his mother to come running because she thought he was shouting for help.

Things went fast from then on. After many months of apathy and listlessness, Michael discovered the will to live and get better again. He worked on his arms and legs until he nearly fainted from effort and pain, he spent hours reading and rereading his comic books first, then some of the easier material his teacher at school continued to leave for him.

And finally, he tried to write again, with disastrous results at the beginning, as his fingers cramped over the pen and refused to follow his intentions
.

But that too got slowly better, and with it many other small but important gestures, which in our daily lives we all too often do not even notice, such as buttoning a shirt, closing a zipper or unpacking a piece of chewing gum.

When the summer holidays arrived, he already was able to take part in some of our usual pastimes again, such as swimming in a small lake, walking around in the forest searching for mushrooms and berries and simply lazing around in the sun.

Different from us other children though, he also had to dedicate a part of the day to work. He had lost a year of school but was adamant that he’d not lose more and for that, he had to recover quite a lot of knowledge his injury seemed to have erased from his head together with any memory of how it had happened at all.

He did not remember any mathematics of the months before his accident, nor whatsoever other knowledge he had acquired during that time and so had to sweat over his books every morning and late afternoon to catch up. I could not help him with that, as, being two years younger, I had not yet reached the level he was trying to retrieve. His older brother had to work on the farm and in any case was not a very brilliant student himself.

So, my father sat down with Michael for the questions regarding mathematics, physics and chemistry. Aunt Lena, who was visiting again, caught up on history, literature and home economy with him and a neighbour, who had just come back from a year as an exchange student in America, crammed English grammar and vocabulary into his head.

He had been a fairly decent student before the accident and had never needed to work very hard for better than average votes. Now, things were more difficult but with the relentless effort he applied to everything, often late into the night, there was really no doubt that he’d be able to make a full return into a normal student’s life very soon.

Before the start of the new school year in September, we celebrated his 13th birthday and what a feast it was. It was also just two days before the anniversary of his fall, and all of us were very aware not only of the enormous luck, but also the giant struggle involved in Michael’s recovery, with his whole family fighting together, day after day, at his side.

That birthday party was the last time we felt really close. In autumn, we still spent time together on weekends, but less every month. From now on, our roads would take separate directions more and more.

He probably felt the need for new friends, who had not seen him helpless like a child.

And I was entering an age where my city school friends suddenly seemed a lot more interesting and sophisticated than my cousins on the farm, so without any obvious break or quarrel, we simply moved to different interests, companions and likes.

But even now, after more than 45 years, the whole family always celebrates his birthday together, like a ritual of gratitude for his second chance, his way back into life.