Papa

An ode to the speechless power of love

The below writing is probably the most personal I posted here on substack. I thought about putting it behind a paywall, only to protect the privacy of my father. But I decided against it, as I believe you all will handle it with utmost care and respect. In that case, I ask you to not share, to not restack.

It is for those who read me already.
If you want to express your support or feeling touched, share any other of my posts or notes. Support Rebelleheart in the next weeks, which represents in a way the base which allows me to open up like this now. To be. I am grateful for that kind of support. Or just sit and let the words breath in silence.

The text below is from mid may. My dad is still here, yet we live with a sword of damocles, ups and downs, now a light bettering again, shy hope for more time, being home, another treatment, but still- with only one obvious result. Death. We don’t know when and how, but the “guests” who have invaded his body will not leave anymore, that is clear. And though we all know where this is heading to- sooner or later- I am sharply aware that at the same time we can never be prepared for it. Not mentally, not emotionally, not at all.

Photo by Andrew Yurkiv on Unsplash

18th May 2025

I just returned home to Styria after spending a few days in Vienna, visiting a deeply beloved person in hospital.
With a severe infection - three different multiresistant bacteria circulating in his body - and after an emergency surgery in which they not only removed his appendix but also a part of his intestine. It was full of pus.

The last weeks were filled with fear and worry. The doctors in the first hospital had no clue, groping in the dark to find the cause of the recurring fever bouts, the antibiotics not working (he had received them regularly over the past months because of a recurrent bladder infection), his body fighting so much.
He was then transferred to the largest hospital in Austria - where the Medical University of Vienna is located - offering the best diagnostic methods and possibilities in the country.

And I sat there, helpless, an hour and a half away.
Hearing there was no improvement.
Hearing they still didn’t really know.
Hearing that exhausted, almost broken voice.
Then hearing they would operate.
Some hope that they might finally catch the cause.

He still feels terribly bad - as if spat out, eaten up again, and vomited onto the ground. Weak. Tired. Not himself.
I burst into tears regularly, flooded with the immense, overwhelming sense of an approaching, ultimate loss. He is only seventy-three.
And yet, another part of me simply whispered: “We don’t know…”

So I drove there. I needed - desperately needed - to see him. To be with him.
The rest of my family, as well as his life partner, had been visiting regularly - all stressed to the maximum, painting a dark picture, yet hoping.

I didn’t know what to expect. Of course, I knew a little about his condition, but how would I manage? Would I break down in tears there? Strain him even more with my emotions?

When entering the metro, I was reminded of a cold winter day long ago - traveling to a hospital in Berlin to visit Gonzalo, a friend who had become paralysed from the second vertebra downwards.
But this was not Gonzalo. This was one of the closest people in my life - and that frightened me even more.
Without him, I would not exist.
Without him, I would not have been able to walk the unconventional path I walk.

I sat down on a seat, and as the metro started moving, I wondered if it had always been this loud.
Fifteen years ago - the last time I took it - could I already feel the tracks vibrating through my body? Not the champagne-like bubbling feeling, but a hard ratatata, ratatata.
I wondered if the sound of the brakes had always cut so sharply into my ears, if I had smelled the scent of the stranger next to me, if I would have noticed the man with three children through the window - wearing slippers far too small for him.
If I would have recognised the hundreds of doves flying like a symphony between the grey rooftops.
If I would have noticed that at least half of the people were staring at their phones.
Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have.

That Wednesday afternoon, I felt transparent. I am - sensitive.
It is what happens, probably, when you no longer function properly or according to normal standards. When you feel, sense, and be intensely. When you’ve stripped away the armour against life.

Interestingly, I didn’t feel overwhelmed.
It was as if this transparency itself could hold all sensations - yet let them pass through.

When I entered the hospital, I first went into the wrong room, looking straight into the eyes of a stranger sitting on his bed, a snakelike tube emerging from beneath his blanket.
I murmured a quiet sorry, wrong room, and turned.

The nurse I asked didn’t know where to send me - not surprising, since this hospital is a huge monster: twenty-one floors, thousands of people, its own supermarket and pharmacy.
Somehow frightening. It resembles an airport or a big railway station - people hurrying - except the uniforms are different.

After a text message, and a long walk through the omnipresent beige-white–vomit-green “floorwalls,” I found the right room.

When I entered, my dad’s life partner was still there. She is one of a kind - not really my kind, as she talks at the speed of a machine gun (ratatatatatatatata) and has a bit of a “know-it-all” air. Sometimes I think, is she even breathing? How is that possible?
But I get along with her.

When my eyes fell on my dad’s face, I was… shocked.
The on-and-off infections had been happening for almost a year, so I had already seen him unwell before.
I should mention that he only has one kidney left - so an infection with multiresistant bacteria is far more dangerous than for someone who has two.
But this?

It’s hard to explain what it’s like to sense life force being diminished - a body fighting to survive, a face in exhaustion, a brilliant mind absent because every bit of energy is needed for this fight.
Life and death sharing the same room.

After a really bad joke from my dad’s partner before she left - which he explained was her strange way of coping with enormous stress and fear of losing him - I sat on his bed and held his hand.
There wasn’t much to say; it was too exhausting for him.

But he returned to her idea - that I could massage him, as he had strong tensions in his upper back and neck, unsurprising after lying in bed for two weeks, enduring fever, loss of appetite, and this extreme but necessary surgery.

I am not a professional masseuse. I don’t follow a set protocol.
But I am educated and practiced in touch - in listening with my hands and body, without any intention to fix or control.
It may sound strange, but what I am really good at is… nothing.

So he raised himself a little, sat on the bed.
I placed myself behind him and told him he could simply lean against me.
I rested my hands on his shoulders - letting them be there, moving only when an impulse came, pausing again.
My mind blank.
His breath.
My breath.
The muscles, skin, textures, air, the room, the white sheets.
Tenderness for what is - simply is - without words.

He asked when I would go back.
He asked when I would return.
And whispered, “It does me good when you are here. So good. I would be very happy if you returned soon.”

This was the moment when tears came to my eyes. I was deeply, deeply touched - because, in that instant, I (or it) was fully recognised by someone so dear to me, someone whose sharp intellect had never truly been able to understand what I was “doing” all those years.
Suddenly, he recognised (my) being - through a mind reduced to its barest cognitive functions, as the body needed every resource to cope with illness.

A strength - suddenly grasped - that is literally silent.
A presence that allows the moment completely, whatever it holds or does not hold.
Unconditional love.
A preverbal source.
We all have it. We are born with it.

Stripped down to our pure existence - within fear and insecurity, weakness and not-knowing - we met not as personas, not through any roles.
No masks.
We met and touched from the core of our essential being.
It is one.

It’s not something I - or anyone - can do.
You cannot reach it.
It is the vast space that is always there.
Beyond time.
It is being. Presence. Love.

And in most people’s lives - in our fast-paced, intellect-centered Western society, focused on functioning, doing, and striving for more and more - it goes unheard.
Instead: harder, better.
Many facets and perspectives are threatening.
Sometimes it feels as though we live in a conformity-driven, almost idiotic fever dream.

In this ruthless, feeling-is-not-welcome atmosphere we move in - often without questioning - this ancient force, this deepest undercurrent, often remains unnoticed.

Until we are confronted with the immediate and the existential:
with illness and death,
with depths that cut us open.

It is often in that overwhelm - when the mind spins helplessly or finally breaks - that this, which has no name, rises.
Like a mother: tender, soft, all-encompassing.

This is not a one-time experience, and it is surely not mine alone.
Yet whether this sudden opening of the heart happens or not cannot be forced. It happens in its own time, its own pace. Or not.

Even the Pope, before dying, said clearly that true connection, true prayer, true love do not happen in churches.
They happen in the midst of messy life - in hospitals, in care homes, when the end draws near - where life and death belong equally.
Where we shake and hope and tremble.
Where all borders dissolve, diminished by fear, to allow us to step into the unknown - to come into being.

With the chance to fall - suddenly - into peace.
Into love, without name, without role, without colour, without expectation, without exception.

Into absolute presence.

And maybe the first step into that ever-existing vastness is meeting oneself - truly, exactly as we are in this moment.
Feeling, meeting, expressing, hearing, validating one’s own fear, insecurity, pain.
Listening to the hurt one inside, the angry one, the worried one, the desperate one.

Let us be sweet and soft with ourselves - and with others.
Sometimes, when all shatters - when functioning properly or doing relentlessly are impossible - at the bottom of all that is, in surrender, we find a surprising gift.