ACCESS TO THE REPORT ON HOW MY SISTER met her end

After searching for a long time in this medieval old town, where almost everything was a court building and seemed centuries old, we finally found the agreed address after endless attempts, driving and getting lost.

Standing there in front of a closed gate, shut tight with a screen full of metal slats, but no names, no numbers, everything anonymous, we despaired, just as we had despaired before of the actions of this judicial apparatus in Kafkaesque crimes, absurd, incomprehensible, unknown, annoying, devoid of humanity.

However, our contact at the courthouse was hopeful: friendly, ordinary people who helpfully showed us the way and informed our contact that we were late.

Now, after much searching, we were standing at the door.

The dead entrance was not right. So we made telephone contact.  This  made the building seem inhabited.

A fat, surly man behind the counter listened sternly and dismissively to our story until suddenly a door opened and a friendly, modest woman introduced herself to us. She was the one we were looking for, who had been waiting for us to show up: her name was Petra, the rock. She shyly led us to her office, where she provided the necessary information about the missing persons: my sister and her husband. She explained the possibilities for viewing the records in detail and in a subdued manner.

Did I want to read what had happened and possibly see photos of the dead? Given the circumstances in which this happened, I did not want to. Why would I want to add to my misery with horrors about the dead?  Familiar and trusted dead, having said goodbye in bad circumstances, disappeared in self-determination.

I sat down and read the text presented to me: a meticulous account of what had been established.

I could process the reading. I couldn't process photos of gruesome images, so I left it at that.

My beautiful sister and her husband had ended their lives; that was their wish. I didn't learn much from that description, an orderly, well-considered farewell! What does it matter if it happened with a dark hood over your head, after inhaling helium twice, or if you were laid out neatly by your relatives? The first gave you chills, the second had a human touch and loving care.

Since that strange man had been deported to Russia as a young man, a cruel offence, their lives also ended on a sad note. You decide as you miss. Both rejected by their children, he hard as steel, my sister always peculiar and short-tempered, but very sweet lately.

I remembered our last Sunday together. She prepared a beautiful table, her farewell meal. Everything was the best, but he still had to almost force her to bake egg cake. Always consciously giving orders and getting the most out of everything. That was his life!

I was left with many questions.

What had gone wrong with both of them? Even after reading and rereading the meticulous notes, I could find nothing that lifted the veil over their souls.

Their children were absent from their lives, unable to stomach the abuse of a strange tyrannical man, so it was tit for tat until the end. She had it in her. But fate runs its course as it wills and can.

You either conform or you reject it. They had conformed.

I thanked the silent victim counsellor and was glad to be outside again, among cars and trees and sun and people. I wanted to live!

I think loneliness and rejection sealed their fate. Human beings are social creatures.

Here, then, are extreme examples of self-realisation at the expense of humanity.

A month has now passed. The tragedy weighs heavily on me and I cannot bring myself to accept it.

Questions, questions, why?