I met her a couple of weeks ago. She is the kind of woman everyone should meet at least one time in their life.
Olga is the woman who might not exist anymore if not by a stroke of luck or damnation- the woman who stays strong on her feet, grounded no matter what life brings her.
She made herself into a teacher when the odds were none. Olga, the orphan who had to create her own life, step by step, moment by moment, second by second just because there was no template, no support system to push her a little higher.
But this nothingness is not always negative or destructive, if the soul growing inside is left to unfold and become the force of life it was meant to be. I have always been of the opinion that the life you are living is the life you can imagine.
Olga and Herbert, the aristocrat who has a predestined path, parents who know exactly what their son was supposed to do, who to marry and love. But Herbert loved Olga. Olga loved Herbert.
Through the story Olga is the pillar, things happen around her, she is steady. Herbert leaves, his parents disapprove of Olga who does not qualify for them. Herbert leaves again, Olga is waiting compassionately, dedicated to her own life and activities.
"I am going to blow up Bismarck. It all started with him. You think it was good, but it was wrong. Perhaps people will think about it if he's blown up. But perhaps no one will pay any attention if all that's left of him is a heap of debris and rubble. " (...)
Political and social events are changing the world. Olga is there. Herbert comes back from an expedition to the Arctic, he had become the man who is going there where nobody ever did, to see, to know, the man who is running away from the burden of being brought into the world in a beautiful cage. Olga does not fight, does not beg. She is there writing letters even if no answer is coming back. For 2 years. Until she realised and processed event she was most afraid of - Herbert is not coming back, he is dead. Probably frozen, lost in the Artic. Olga remains to take care of their son, of whom Herbert and the world did not find out, not as a mother but as a caretaker. Being a single mother in those days was considered the highest sin a woman could commit.
Olga lost her hearing.
The second part of the story is concentrated on observing Olga. The son of the family where she had spent her life as a housekeeper, had been listening to her stories all his life.
He wanted to know more, even more so after her death. The strange circumstances were bearing questions nobody asked. He found the letters from Olga to Herbert being sold by an Antiquariat in a town close to Oslo. Olga's words, trans-passing physical barriers and the law of time, letters to nowhere, to nobody, close the story.
Writing to the Unknown became her way of talking to Herbert. She is first angry, sad and confused about his disappearance, him leaving her open, with the promise that he will be back, but then she understands, accepts it. She dies of illness after she has detonated a bomb- to blow up the statue of Bismark-the one who stared the ordeal in Germany. She did that also because her son joined SS, he was working for them.
And here it is, the reason and the motivation behind it.
"You didn't think I had it in me to steal dynamite and blow up monuments? You think what I'm doing is mad? You're happy that I am doing something mad and that you're no longer alone? I don't know when I'll do it. But ever since I've known that I will do it, i feel good. And I feel closer to you. "
This is how old aged Olga met Herbert again.
The time spent with Mateo and Rufus was intense. A steep ride, a steel falling.
They were going to die in few hours and we had to make the most of it.
Death in the future is the theme of their...lives. Our lives.
In that Future there will be an App, developed by a company having the disgraceful job to inform people about their death. By the end of that day.
There will be also an app called Last Friend, used by those dyingto chat in case the is nobody else to talk to.
The app is OK but even there a certain type of people are trying to profit an get some Last Sex from the dyeing bodies.
The process of dying- also called Life- when you know the date and time is pretty intense.
What are you going to do on that day? What did Mateo and Rufus do? They met on the Last Friend app and decided to spend the Last day together.
They had to process fast- trust and mistrust, acceptance and rage, mistakes and desire to have done it better, goodbyes and I am sorry's, death of parents, illness of parents, friends who all of a sudden disappear as fake friends do, acceptance of their lives and what they managed to do (Mateo and Rufus being both pretty young when the notification of death reaches them) up to that point.
Some of us have years to do that and still do not manage, clinging to the mistakes, the pain inflicted by the pain of others, unable to get out of the confusion and the illusion of being stuck.
Some of us have no time left.
What are you doing today to live?
It might be the last one.
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