42, ‘the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything’. She hated it when people would refer to this book. Because it was just fiction to all of them. No one would really understand that her life had actually revolved around that number. 42. The age her mother had died. In her thirties a part of her was kind of ‘waiting’, almost expecting, to get cancer. Just like her mother and her sister had gotten cancer in their thirties. But nothing happened. She got lucky. Her thirties were a failure though. She hadn´t achieved what she wanted the most. She hadn´t started a family. She had never gotten the children she had hoped to pass on the endless love she had experienced as a child. Her apartment was mostly silent. By th time she turned 40, she was depressed for exactly a year. By the time she turned 42, life was better again before she realized that a part of her did not only think to get cancer anytime soon but also believed she would never turn 43. In her mind, life somehow ended with 42. She couldn´t really tell anyone. She knew it was silly. And her friends were mostly busy with their children or overwhelmed by stress at work. And what should she have said: I can not imagine to turn 43. She knew how insane that did sound. Almost as crazy as teling people she was in her perimenopause at the beginning of your fourties. Being haunted by serious depression at the end of every cycle. A kind of depression that she had never experienced before. Absolutely independent of her emotional state of mind. She would almost start crying during her happiest moment of the week, aerobic class. She would cry cycling home and all evening even though she had just fallen in love. It was like her body betrayed her. What happened to her had nothing to do with her but there was no escape. She had developed a chronic migraine which took some of the things away from her she loved the most, sometimes for weeks. No sunlight, better no light at all, no music, no radio. Instead silence. Almost everything that usually gave her happiness tortured her. She could hardly sleep, not at night, and for sure not during daytime. She couldn´t even close her eyes because the aura would drive her crazy. It was just moving too fast. The last epidsode ended a couple of days before her 43. birthday and she could finally visit her father and asked him something she had realized a while ago. Last year, or maybe the one before, she knew all of a sudden why her mother had died the first night in the hospice. Just some hours after she had arrived there. And she was right. It was weird for her that it took her psyche over 20 years to bring something up she must have known all along. But the question remained: Why hadn´t she said good bye?

They were sitting outside on the terrace again. It was a warm night, one of those were you never got cold and didn´t have to go inside. Just like every summer in this region. He was talking about her as always when he was drunk. And only when he was drunk. Crying, sobbing. His pain was so endless, so all-consuming, it was so thick, you could almost touch it. It was all he was. He would tell her the same stories over and over again. About how much he loved her mother. There was no process, no healing, no hope. There was only despair. Because he didn´t want to be here anymore. He had wanted to kill himself after she had died. It was his wish. It was the only thing he wanted these days. But she had made him promise not to. She had asked him to stick around and take care of his girls and their grandchild that was on the way. He had promised and so he stayed. But not because he wanted to stick around. He didn´t stay for his children or grandchild. Loyalty was the only reason he stayed. He couldn´t bring himself to break his promise. He would have done everything for his wife, the love of his life, his life. And he would keep on doing everything he could for her even after she had passed away. And so he did the only thing he was able to do. Drink whenever he was not working. Sticking around. Spending all summer with his daughter on the terrace telling her that he was only here because her mother had asked him to stay.

She was a chatty one. The kind of teenager that would walk home from school with her best friend just to call her again after warming up some lunch. They would be on the phone for hours watching the same talk show and laughing about the silly guests. They would laugh tears. Life was simple back then. But more so, life was truly beautiful. Over the weekends she would go to the little airport nearby and fly gliders. They were a bunch of crazy teenagers, all learning how to fly, having the time of their lives together. Flying during daytime and later driving to one of the many lakes skinny dipping and drinking cheap booze until the sun would finally set at the end of these seemingly endless summer days. By the time she turned 17, she got the license and she could finally fly alone after having practiced for three summers. Going up and up all by herself. The trees and houses getting smaller and smaller, the world growing more and more silent. It was magical. Not just because she could actually fly but because she was blessed with the greatest gift of all: peace of mind. A gift taken away from her before the next summer arrived, never to return again.

She woke up in the middle of the night. About the same time her father had woken her up 25 years ago. “Wake up,” he had said, “your mama just died.” It still feels like yesterday and in the same moment like a lifetime ago. She should have seen it coming. Everyone did only she couldn´t. It was impossible to imagine. Simply impossible. She knew on a certain level that the day was coming closer. But she kept on thinking ‘Only tomorrow! Only one more day’. She diddn´t realize that she had the same thought every day over months now. She didn´t realize that there was no tomorrow.

When she opened the blinds the next morning the sky was bright blue as if it was just another beautiful day in spring. As if the world would keep on turning. But it did not, not for her. She felt like being in a vaccum. Her body felt different. Everything felt different. Or better she didn´t feel anything at all. The silence hit her and to this day she can´t stand it. Silence means nothing but emptiness to her. They went to the hospice. She would have gone there anway because it was the day after she last saw her, it was only ‘tomorrow’. So, naturally, in her mind her mum would have still been alive.

They had said good bye before her father brought her to the hospice, yes, but it was not a real good bye it was a ‘see you tomorow’, in her mind anyway. Her sister had cried and she was wondering why, thinking ‘We’ll see her tomorrow again’. But she had died the very first night. People go to a hospice when it is ‘about time’ to spend their last days and nights there. People don´t pass away the very first night. This is not the way it was supposed to be. She saw her, her body, skinny, pale, tortured by the disease. But she couldn´t comprehend that she was gone. Not that moment, not the next day, not after the funeral, not over the next months. The constant silence in the house reflected her emptiness, that gigantic part inside of her that had died along with her mother. Every once in a while this surreal feeling of ‘it´s impossible, she can´t have gone’ catches up with her and she thinks time and again ‘I can´t believe I am spending my life without you. It can´t be, we never even said good bye!’

She had fled to paradise. But nothing had changed. The emptiness had persisted. Only now, it felt more excruciating because it was a stark contrast to the beautiful world outside.
Back home, over the last weeks, the cloud cover had kept on expanding, steadily, relentlessly. It was not only above, it was all around, seemingly endless, heavy on her shoulders, suffocating.
Once the emptiness had completely taken over, it wouldn´t leave just like that. It never did. It was persistent, to the point of despair, no matter what she tried. Sadness is one thing but even the worst kind of sadness, being heart-broken, is somehow endurable with good friends and a couple of drinks around. But the absence of any feeling, any feeling at all, is nothing but agony.
But reading his short stories touched something deep inside of her. She felt like walking down the street, sunshine on her face, finally being able to breathe again. All of a sudden, the thick layer of clouds around her had vanished and lightness had replaced the nagging emptiness.
She could relate again, feeling all of it. Mainly melancholy though. What a sweet feeling! Something had moved her deep inside, making her feel alive. It was the imagination of him thinking about a woman he had met years ago, in summer, en la piscina del pueblo. She herself had the time of her life as a kid hanging out all summer in the public swimming pool until her hair turned green from all the chlorine. It feels like a lifetime away. Not only because it is ages ago but because it was before the emptiness had come into her life. Imagining to be this guy had connected her again, not only to the outside world but to her own feelings that had been buried somewhere deep inside.