A Long Goodbye

First off, sorry for the long absence pals, things have quite hectic and more than a little sad around Inglis HQ. I took a time out from pretty much everything to do with the every day to spend time with one of my best friends at the end of his life. If you follow me on Twitter (still cannot bring myself to acknowledge ‘X’) then you will be familiar with the Neighbour of Legend.

Born at the start of WWII, he was one of five (four sons and a daughter), born to a Czech mother and a German father. They were traditional Bavarian Catholics. When war broke out, his father, an engineer, was conscripted to work on railways, and his mother and the children were consigned to a series of internment camps, eventually ending up outside Stettin, in Friesland. Contrary to popular belief, in Continental Europe, the war did not end on VE Day (or VJ Day for that matter). When the family were finally released from forced labour, The Neighbour was 15. His father, upon his release from his forced labour, began to scour southern Germany for his family, not knowing how very far away they were. First he travelled on the railways, then, from Hertwigswalde in what is now Southern Poland, he set out on foot, checking noticeboards and making enquiries. He trudged to Breslau, then Frankfurt, following the River Oder, then finally to Stettin and the camp, where he was united with his family. The journey had taken him 19 months.

I asked The Neighbour what happened that day and he said he didn’t really remember. I asked if his parents ever talked about it, and about all those years of separation, and he said, No.

As a young man, he was an apprentice pharmacist, then went to work for Bayer, but owing to his talent as an artist, was shunted into the new post-war invention of mass market advertising. He met and married his wife Doris in the company, and they decided to leave Bayer and its tainted associations behind. They moved to Nuremberg and bought a hotel, The Elk, founded in 1342, which is still a thriving business today. There they raised 2 daughters before he and Doris retired.

I first met The Neighbour 20 years ago, when Doris was still alive. She had, unfortunately, contracted hepatitis through a tainted blood transfusion post-war and this, although under control, lead to a cancer than eventually caused her death. As a widower, The Neighbour found he had a lot to learn (Doris had always been the chef at The Elk), but ever capable and self-reliant he branched out into cooking, more art, and made new friends, becoming the life and soul of the village they had chosen to retire to. We have a generation of children who have grown up messing around in the beautiful swimming pool he built for Doris, laying all the mosaic tiles himself. He was a superb and generous host and raconteur, with a fine sense of humour. His famous New Year parties were highly-organised chaos. A tall man, he loved tall dogs, and owned, amongst others, dalmatians - Julius and Alexander - a Pyrenean Mountain Dog called Bella and latterly a foxhound called Falco (he didn’t get the pop star reference). His energy and youthfulness belied his years.

He was, let’s just say, not without his eccentricities. He and I once went to a fish market for a day out and to have lunch at one of the stalls. All very nice. After lunch he said he had to collect something a lady was keeping on ice for him. It was a massive live eel, about a metre long. Even looking at it, dulled by ice, was enough. It was duly double bagged in more ice and we packed it tightly into a cold bag on the back seat of his car for the ride home. It was hot and there was traffic. And this sodding eel woke up and began to writhe in the bag behind me, eventually causing the bag to fall into the footwell. More writhing. I had to endure an hour of that before we got home. At least there was smoked eel for the next fortnight. There are many more stories in the same vein.

About 6 years ago, I persuaded him to ditch his flip phone in favour of a smart phone. He said it wasn’t for him. I was due an upgrade and I said Look, let’s just get the same phone and then any problems, I can probably help you out. He took to it like a duck to water, and with the advent of whatsapp, the pictures, links and videos were a daily feature. The realisation that he could call the Black Forest family or internationally for FREE was a revelation. Even if we were not eating together, we spoke almost every Sunday without fail. During Covid, we formed a ‘bubble’ of two households. We set out to ‘eat the world’ as there was obviously no travel. On Wednesdays I cooked something different, and on Sundays we had a traditional Bavarian Sunday meal, and watched documentaries. He was a great fan of David Attenborough. We would also listen to Letter from America with Alastair Cooke, or an Edward R. Murrow broadcast.

Last year he needed a shoulder replacement and asked me to take him to the hospital and bring him home. He was adamant that it would be a same day affair. I did not argue. He was dismayed when they made him stay in overnight and I came to say goodbye to him, with him wearing his hospital gown. He actively despised the indignity.

In November, another neighbour messaged me to say that The Neighbour had fallen badly, tripping over Falco’s now empty basket. We had had him put down in the September at almost 15 as an act of kindness, but the basket remained. A lengthy hospital stay and rehabilitation ensued. I found myself ordering Speedos and a swimming hat for his pool therapy. His good humour never failed in all those months. But something was wrong. He wasn’t getting better. The doctors thought perhaps a stroke. An MRI showed that it was not a stroke, but an inoperable brain tumour. His daughters came to be with him, and the hospice staff were beyond wonderful. He had a radio playing his favourite stations, all little pictures and mementos from home. He went out for lunch when he could manage it, with friends or alone, or a walk to the shops. Yet increasingly, he would talk about something that happened that morning and something that happened decades ago in the same sentence.

The decline continued and soon there was no more going out, no more going home to check on things. Life had become a series of rooms: his room, the dayroom, and the garden ‘room’ of the hospice. Our visits turned into shifts as he became less verbal and ultimately unable to feed himself. As we combed his hair and beard (which he enjoyed greatly), I thought of his anger and frustration the previous year at being confined to a hospital for one night. Such emotions had dissipated and all that remained was the patient. He still spoke to me (when he spoke) in English and responded to my voice, and would speak to his daughters in German, although they said he made no sense. His meals came with a little paper menu and I was reading it to him one day as we readied the teaspoon once again and he said, ‘Poor. Old. Boy.’ The last, affectionate, words he said to Falco when we were at the vet for the final time.

The tumour was shutting down his central nervous system in the cruellest possible way, stealing him in the night, with each day a new indignity. He died peacefully on the 30th of July. The cremation the following Monday was private. We were 9, and a lot of tears. Another wonderful and very Zen neighbour spoke briefly but movingly about The Neighbour and his legacy, saying that as his house was called ‘Crickets’ when any of us hear a cricket sing, we will always think of him and know he is with us. Cue more silent hot bawling. He finished by thanking The Neighbour for a decade of wonderful friendship.

We filed into the car park into the summer sunshine and suddenly things felt brighter. We went back to his house and sat around the table by the pool and it was almost like old times, except the central player on the stage was missing.

This picture was taken last year, and it is how I will remember him. Our house is uphill from his, and the village is dark at night to prevent light pollution so a torch was necessary. Every Sunday evening, he would wish me goodbye at the door, light spilling out into the darkness, and he would say in the style of Edward R. Murrow, ‘Good night, and good luck’. It was my privilege and honour to be able to wish him the same one last time.