About my grandma - Dörte Müller (read e book txt) 📗

My grandma Anna was born in 1914. She was a farmer`s daughter and had to help with the harvest. She had to guard the cows as well. Sometimes she and her friends would take a ride on a cow and she told me that this was very funny. She had an older brother and a younger sister. They lived in a small village near Einbeck and led a happy life.

My grandma was taken care of by her grandparents because the parents had to work very hard on the fields.

When she was sixteen she fell in love with her best friend`s brother. His name was August. He was the hairdresser of the village and so she went to get a haircut very often.

They became a couple and got married. Soon my aunt Renate was born and then my dad. My grandpa hated being a hairdresser and he always wanted to do something else with his life. But then Hitler came to power and World War II was soon to begin.

My grandpa became a soldier and had to leave home like all the other young men in the village. My grandma waited for mail but sometimes there would be no letter for months.

Finally my grandma got the news that her husband got shot into the leg. He was allowed to come home so that the wounded leg could be taken care of in a hospital. My grandma was so happy because she thought that he would be better soon.

She visited him several times in the hospital and took the kids to see their father.

But when they came to see him a few days later he was dead. There were complications and he had died unexpectedly. My grandmother was devastated and she needed all her strength to raise her two children in times of war. My dad was six years old at that time.

But somehow they managed. All the family stuck together and everybody helped working on the fields and taking care of the children.

The war ended and somehow life went back to normal. The kids got a proper education, got married and had kids on their own. My grandma never married again. She wore two wedding rings on her finger and took care of me when I was little. I always remember her sitting in her big armchair under her husband`s portrait telling me stories about the old times.

On her 75 th birthday I gave her a book to write the stories down. And that was what she did. I still have the book and read it every once in a while.

On a warm spring day, aged 91, she died peacefully in her bed, surrounded by her children.  

Text: Dörte Müller
Images: Dörte Müller
Publication Date: 09-09-2016

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