What? Yes, she´s here. No, I don´t think so. Why? I don´t think she can do it.”
Petra Sitta, German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG); IPPF Freiburg Her attention was drawn to a piece of paper on the table. She caught a glimpse of the letterhead. It was from the university hospital, and from the layout she instantly recognized what the first page contained: a long, merciless list of diagnoses. Time seemed to freeze. The ticking of the old wall clock grew unbearably loud. She saw dust motes dance in the shaft of sunlight spilling through the half-drawn curtains. A violent pain surged through her chest; she struggled for breath and stared at him in horror. He hastily tried to bury the document beneath other papers. But shock and pain now gave way to anger. “What the hell is this? You can’t be serious! After all these years of our life together, you mean to keep me out of this—when it concerns us both?” Her voice rose almost to a scream. His guilty eyes were heavy with sorrow and pain, yet filled, too, with tenderness. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you long ago. But I thought like a child—as if, by keeping it from you, it wouldn’t be real. I wanted to go on enjoying our beautiful life with you, and not believe that I was truly ill.” She rose abruptly and snatched the letter from his hands. An oncology letter. She knew it before she even read the word. Her worst fears had taken form. How much they had savored life in recent years—carefree, full of travels, finally with time for themselves and all the beautiful things they had once postponed. As long as we stay healthy, they had told each other again and again, as if the mantra could ward off evil spirits. As a child she had rolled her eyes in annoyance when the old aunts wished her above all else “good health” on her birthday. The older she grew, the more she had come to see how precious that wish was. Something she had once taken for granted now stood before her, fragile and slipping away. Now it has come, raced through her mind—the dreaded moment. And yet, absurdly, alongside the terror, another thought intruded: that postcard they once joked about— “If one of us dies, I’ll move to Sylt.” Why, of all things, should that come to her now?
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