At the age of 2, I told my mother how I came onto earth. I still can remember today: I was a little ball of brilliant blue light, about 5 cm in diameter. Dawn just came and it was snowing. Below a streetlamp I stopped and looked up, even though I could see 360° around. For a long time, mesmerized, I was watching the snowflakes lighting up and dancing in the shine of the lamp, until they disappeared again in darkness. Then I went to the house of my parents. The window of their room was open. I slipped into their bedroom. There my mother was lying at the side of my father. Both were sleeping. Then I slipped through my mother’s mouth into her body and mine. So I became her child.
My mother told me also, that I had been telling her, that I had had a lot of trouble trying to get her together with my father. Seemingly both had been eating in the same restaurant for years, my mother at noon and my father in the evening.
At three and a half years I was diagnosed with a tumor. Following that, I was treated with chemotherapy. This was a very strenuous time for me. My body was very tired due to the treatment and it felt like lead. When I had to do something, I always first reflected a long time, about how I could execute the task in the shortest possible time, with the least amount of movements. So for example, when climbing stairs I took at least two steps at once. This way I needed more strength to execute the movement, but instead of needing 8 movements for the whole stairs, I only needed 4 movements.
Shortly after my cancer was diagnosed, Andreas died of a pulmonary embolism. At that time he was 33 years old. Andreas was an ‘in-law’ uncle and so was not directly related to me. I only saw him once or twice, but I found that he was nice and funny. Not very long after Andreas’ death, one night I woke up for the first time on the flower meadow. I’m able to remember, how at first I was slightly disoriented. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t in my bed. But then I saw Andreas, who came out of the expanse of the sky as he walked towards me in his white ‘Jesus dress.’ Then I felt that Love was poured over me. He looked beautiful with his three-day beard as usual. He came towards me and smiled at me. I was standing up to welcome him with a hug.
We were walking a bit through the meadow. It was beautiful. Somewhere further back, a sparkling little brook was meandering through the grass. This brook was the border to heaven. On the opposite side of the meadow there was a forest. Walking here was easy for me. I was not the little girl I was on earth: but a woman about his age. I was intelligent, beautiful, and healthy. But I especially liked the way I could communicate with Andreas. I just needed to think a thought and immediately he knew exactly what I meant. He understood every facet of this thought, even including my corresponding feelings. The answer came back in each case without delay. To lie or hide a thought would have been impossible. Then we were sitting face to face in the grass and started to tell each other things or to discuss things.
I can remember that in order to obtain an answer for a question, I just had to ask the question. After that I just had to follow the thread; I had access to all answers. I remember darkly a difficult mathematical task. I not only could get the answer, but I also understood very well and how everything was connected and was calculated. This amazed me. On the other side, there were no simple answers about what was/or should happen in the world. These issues we could discuss. I remember how we discussed certain structures of Power in the Middle East. After some time, he stood up and told me that it was time to go back.
Then I followed this ritual of forgetting, that I usually accepted with sadness, ‘Now you have to forget everything what we discussed here! Only when you come back here again, you are allowed to remember it.’ ‘Yes. But I don’t want this.’ In that situation I was again completely the small child.
‘You are allowed to remember, that you have been here and that you talked to me!’
‘Thank you!’ I said.
I didn’t like going back into my bed. At the flower meadow, everything was like I would have wanted it on earth. My body was light. I could communicate my thoughts without problems. Everything was simple and logical that you couldn’t be mistaken. The Love was so big, that you wanted to feel it for ever and ever. But I had to go back. Upon the question, why I couldn’t stay, he always repeated that there was a plan and that I was important for this plan, even though I actually already knew that.
I still don’t know, what THE PLAN is/or includes. Since Franciscus is pope, I’m even quite sure that THE PLAN is in process. But what my contribution to it should be remains still incomprehensible for me.
Once again on the flower meadow I said, that I would love so-o-o much to stay in heaven, and asked, if there wouldn’t possibly exist a ‘speedier process’ for me? Andreas promised to let me eventually decide myself. Of course, I knew that it was a trick. He would only let me decide when it would be clear that I wanted to remain on earth. But, nevertheless, it comforted me.
In the beginning those encounters happened quite often, but the older I got, the rarer they happened. Following one meeting when I was about eight years old, I told my mother that I met Andreas, and that unfortunately I was not allowed to stay in heaven as I still had a task to fulfill. I realized that she was slightly shocked, but at the time I didn’t understand why. She suggested I should ask him next time, of what my task consisted. I explained to her, that I was not allowed to do that. She asked, ‘Why are you not allowed to do it?’ I also didn’t know this either, and so I decided to ask him this question. I was still about 8 years old, when I saw Andreas for the last time:
As usual I woke up on the flower meadow, with perfect light and total love. Following the ritual of forgetting, I asked Andreas, what my task on earth was. He looked at me very, very sadly: ‘You know that you shouldn’t ask this question! Now we can never again meet here.’ I started to be desperate. I would never again be allowed to come to this beautiful place? Because of a stupid question that I even didn’t want to ask? That could not be! I decided to stay there. I just had to jump to the other side of the brook! I took a run up and jumped. I didn’t succeed to get to the other side. I jumped against a kind of plasma or rubber wall. It was soft and flexible, was glowing in a golden orange color, and hurled me back. Andreas tried to catch me.
I spent a long time wishing to be allowed again on the flower meadow. On the flower meadow where everything is so easy, where I know everything, where there is so much beauty, and where love is so much bigger than on earth. I felt this whole earthly life was like a pure plague and harassment. Everything was so exhausting. Every movement was stringy like an old chewing gum, and every thought was dirty and small. Even the idea of explaining a single one of my thoughts to a real person, made me shiver! Firstly, I wouldn’t find the words, and if I finally had found the words, the other person would only understand what they wanted to understand. Then there were those endless explanations that what I actually was meant was totally different than what they interpreted that they heard. Words of lead. Hidden in archives that is organizing them constantly anew. Listeners in cardboard boxes who cannot discern the echo of their own voice from the voice of someone else: That’s the world. It is a futile struggle. I hardly had to say something important, so I kept silent for most of the time.
One night, I then decided that things couldn’t go on like this. I simply could not be on the flower meadow, and just wishing to still being there, didn’t make it any better. No, it even made everything worse. After this decision I felt much better!
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When I was 17, I was invited by a teacher, to join a group traveling to Africa. I had always been fascinated by Africa, I absolutely wanted to go. But my parents didn’t want to let me go; or at least not let me go alone.
‘No, you cannot come along!’
‘Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be good for you!’
‘No we cannot let both of you go alone to Africa!’
So it happened that the whole family went to Africa. In Africa there was a bus we boarded with 27 Swiss and 8 Africans, to get to our vacation place. I knew exactly, what my place should be in the bus, the one directly behind the front passenger seat! I would have fought with claws and teeth to get this seat, but it was left to me. I couldn’t understand it and nobody objected.
A short time after departure I felt a strange connection to the African sitting on the seat before me. I felt an unbelievable desire to put my hand on his back. I had the feeling, that there was something wrong with his lung. I had a certainty that if I would place my hand on it, it would get better. Surreptitiously, I placed my hand on the back rest of his seat. After a while I even dared to touch him. Everybody would think it would just be accidental. He himself wouldn’t even notice at all. Immediately I was pervaded by a feeling of absolute peace. Now what was to come could happen.
Night came fast. I looked up, through the front windshield I saw a dark car rushing towards us on our side of the street. The wheels of the car were sprinkling sparks. Like a dolphin jumping out of the water I was lifted over the seat in front of me. In slow motion, I experienced how the right side door of our bus opened. In a perfect roll, my body was floating precisely through the gap left in the door for the wheels. Then I somersaulted three times, in complete harmony with time and the earth and in complete quietness, and onto the pebbles of the border of the street. Next to me the trunks, which we had strapped on the roof of the bus, were rolling silently.
In the end, I found myself curled up somewhere in the total void. I was in total silence and total darkness. I only felt my body. ‘So that’s it when you are dead?’ ‘H-m-m-m… I still can think!’ ‘Will I also be able to move? Do I want that?’ I remained as I was. After a certain time in the total void, I came to the conclusion that it was worth it to at least to try to move. Finally, the void was not very inspiring. I tried to move.
At that moment I heard a child’s scream behind me. I got up and ran back to the bus. My God, what a mess! Here somebody was hanging over the steering wheel, there somebody was pulled out of the car, here somebody was yelling, there somebody with a thousand glass fragments in his face from the windshield, in the car was my whole family. What was I supposed to do? How could I help? I was later told that I had been asking umpteen times, ‘what I should do’ until somebody told me I should take care of the African who had been sitting in front of me. He was sitting on the street breathing heavily. I sat myself behind him, so that he could lean on me like in a deck chair. They said that he broke some ribs. I tried to stabilize him at best in this painless position. He was speaking French. Even though I didn’t understand much French, we still managed to tell each other some things. His name was Elage and he was a tailor.
Eventually I wondered, how I could support an adult man for so long without getting tired in keeping this quite uncomfortable position. After an eternity he was loaded into a car. I went with him. Although, I didn’t know him or the driver. The many potholes were very painful for him. When we finally arrived at the hospital, he was put on a stretcher and wheeled away.
I spent the night on a bench outside the surgery theater. My parents and my sisters had also been taken to this hospital. My little brother was in another hospital. In time it turned out, that my sister Kathrin and I had been the only two people walking away unharmed by the accident. My mother had broken both knees, my father broke his pelvis, my little brother suffered a heavy shock and the little sister broke both underarms. Five of the seven people sitting in the on-coming car died in the accident.
The next day, the three most hurt Swiss people were transported back to Switzerland by air rescue: My mother, my sister, as well as another tourist, with a dislocated hip. Afterwards, the remaining travelers were taken to the hotel.
I wanted to say good-bye to Elage. But being alone, I could not find him. Nobody wanted to help me. Ten days later we traveled back to Switzerland. I had a strong desire to visit Elage in hospital on the way back. But it was simply impossible. I had no money. Nobody should drive even one more meter on African streets unless strictly necessary. We flew back to Switzerland. Back in our old life, this had changed considerably. My mother was now in hospital. She had to undergo several operations, to be able to walk again someday. I was taking her place. I had to send my little brother to school, my father discussed problems with me, which he normally would have discussed with mother.
Two weeks later, I woke up in a white chalked-up African hospital room. Far up, in the high room, there were two small windows through which dawn came and immersed the room in blue light. The whole room was vibrating with total love. Elage was welcoming me cordially. He was healthy! I sat with him at the little table and had to laugh for a start. It was like a prison that I could not get out of. The windows were too high up and the doors locked. Then we were talking as if we had not seen each other for centuries. We laughed, giggled, and reflected about the world. We solved all problems that exist and ever existed or ever will exist. Then he got up.
‘You now have to forget all matters that we discussed here. But you are allowed to memorize the encounter with me and about your feelings.’
‘I know.’
‘Furthermore I have two tasks for you. Will you accept them?’
‘Yes.’
‘….and I want that you tell the tour guide, that the accident was not his fault.’
Then we hugged again lovingly. Oh, that love was indescribable.
‘So and now I must go.’ He became light and left. I got back into normal sleep. When I woke it was already half past ten. The family was sitting together around the breakfast table.
‘Good morning. I just talked to Elage. He died this morning about four o’clock.’ Giggles, whispering. I ate my egg and the Sunday croissant. I wasn’t mad at them. If you haven’t experienced it by yourself, you will not believe it. At eleven o clock the telephone was ringing. My father came back out of the office with a white face and sat at the table again, ‘Elage died this morning around 4 o’clock in hospital due to a pulmonary embolism.’ Our tour guide from Africa just called.
A few days later I remembered one of the tasks. I had to tell the tour guide, that the accident was not his fault? Only now I realized what I brought onto myself. With my 17 years, it was completely unimaginable for me that somebody may feel guilty for such a random accident. I was scared the tour guide would laugh at me, when giving him the message. I thought, ‘Maybe he will even be annoyed, as he might think I would think that the accident was his fault???’ Eventually I brought myself to do it. I was quite embarrassed while facing my teacher/tour guide. I said, ‘You know…hmm… I have with… Elage. Do you still remember? He charged me to tell you, that the accident was not your fault.’ My teacher flung his arms around my neck crying. I was definitely not prepared at that! Clumsily I patted his shoulder.
At age 27, I had just met my present husband. I suddenly felt a stabbing pain in my underbelly. It could not be the appendix as I already had sacrificed it. It had to be a tubal pregnancy! Andreas! If I had to get surgery I clearly felt, that I would be dying. Dying! Now, that I just met my husband? My future had finally arrived and now this! The pain was so intense, that I almost fainted. I desperately started to talk to the child that it would kill both of us if it continued to grow and that the best would be to leave my tube. About a half hour later the pain disappeared as suddenly as it came. After that I had menstrual cramps for several weeks.