"EMIGRATING AFTER FIFTY" UNCENSORED MEMOIRS (ePub)

Every one of us has only one life. We all wish to live it the best, the most beautiful way possible. We wish to leave a trace of us behind. We fight, we struggle, we make mistakes. Sometimes we can fix them and sometimes it is no longer possible. Many of us desire a calm life, without turmoil, without even a sense of responsibility for the things we have done. Let the whole world crash and burn as long as it is not on our backyard...The author of the memories described in this book is certainly not to be considered a passive person. Her goal in life was to take action. Aiding her fellow man represented a challenge she intended to meet since she first realized that nursing was her calling. Writing down her memories begins in June 2011, when she and her husband come to Munich to join their daughter, who has been trying to put her life in order for the last couple of weeks. All three of them are aware that they have come here to stay. In Poland they left behind decades' worth of life, effort, and work that bore no fruit. Maria, taking up the job of a caregiver in nursing home, at the same time starts writing down memories going back over a dozen years. It is a form of saying goodbye to the world of her past. For the fact that it was to be the end of her life in Poland dawned on her already back when she had to sell their wedding bands so as to afford the journey to Germany, as it did when she had to sell the beds of her patients from the Family Nursing Home, some of them for scrap. Sorrow permeates this book. Yet, it also constitutes an attempt to seek out causes, even within oneself. There is no shortage of harrowing descriptions of events that make one's skin crawl. The reader is glued to the page, because he or she wants to know what happens next. These memories draw you in, since a real life emerges from them. Some of the events read so strange as to seem unreal, particularly those borderline metaphysical in nature. Yet these events took place and had an impact on the life of the author and her family. It is a burden difficult to carry. Being rejected by her parents and sister left a painful mark on the already forty year old woman, who, being trusting and credulous, held on to an idealistic view of the future. Her husband and daughter offered their steadfast support for all these years. They too believed in the idea of a family nursing home.