Up ahead it’s getting bright again

My grandma didn’t have an easy life. She lost her home and her first husband. But she was one of the most optimistic and friendly people I have ever met. I learned the most important lesson from her whenever she looked out of the window in the rain.

Everything was lost

The ancients who witnessed World War II are dying out. With them die memories and valuable lessons that we should not forget. But these people are not just historical witnesses. They are human beings.

My maternal grandmother belonged to the war generation. Still very young, with a baby and a few belongings, she once fled from present-day Poland when Russian troops advanced.

Her husband, at the time, the father of her child, had died in the war. On their exodus, my grandmother and the other refugees were repeatedly fired upon by low-altitude aircraft. Hunger, thirst and cold plagued them, and the uncertain future must have brought them many sleepless and desperate nights.

Their carefree childhood and happy youth had been swept away by the war and turned into ruins. All possessions were lost, all roots were cut. There was this young woman who had finally ended up in a small village in northern Germany, and this woman was on her own.

Her little daughter was dependent on her and needed food and a roof over her head.

But little by little life came back

These were hard times, but my grandma didn’t give up. She found a new husband and had four more children, including my mother.

The authorities had assigned a small house to the family. They could buy it with a loan made primarily for refugees from the former German territories in the East.

Gradually my grandmother and grandfather built something new. Grandpa had been a Russian prisoner of war and had returned seriously ill. But in the small house with a big garden, he and my grandmother found something like happiness again.

The children grew up, found work, and had children of their own. Soon grandchildren raved through the house. I was one of them. I always spent all my school holidays with grandma, because I could not imagine anything more pleasant.

She was friendly, warm-hearted, and loving. And in the small village near the North Sea, I could experience incredible adventures that would not have been possible in the big city I lived in.

My grandmother had lost her old life but had built a new one.

As a young boy, I could not imagine what it must have been like to experience war and expulsion. When I thought about it, I was sure that I would have collapsed under such strokes of fate.

Well, my grandmother did not break at her fate. She has survived the bad times and finally left them behind. This experience must have given rise to her boundless optimism, which she eventually passed on to me.

Rainy days and wise words

My grandma died years ago. Still, whenever we remember her in the family and talk about her, somebody comes and asks: “Do you remember what she used to say when it was raining?”

Oh, we all remember that as if it had only been yesterday. It could storm, flash, and thunder, but grandma stood at the window, looked towards the horizon, and used to say: “Up ahead, it’s getting bright again.”

And indeed — if you followed her gaze and looked very carefully, you always thought you saw it. On the horizon, it really seemed to clear up again. Soon the storm would be over, and the sun would shine again.

With this certainty, the storm was suddenly much less threatening. One could simply let it pass with serenity. The rain was always followed by sunshine — even if it sometimes lasted a long time.

This attitude, I understood at some point, must have helped Grandma to get through the horror of war. I’m sure much of her optimism in old age was because things actually got better after the escape.

But I’m just as sure that this trait must have always been in her. Without this view of the world, she wouldn’t have got through all this.

When I go through difficult times today, I remember the words of my grandmother: Up ahead, it’s getting bright again.

I have never read or heard anything wiser in all the years that have passed since then. I have read hundreds of books and heard great speeches.

None of this ever came close to what my grandmother taught me through her example and words:

Rain is followed by the sun. Always.

Read Also:

do you want more of this?

Receive weekly emails, and don’t miss any of my articles.

subscribe here http://bit.ly/ReneJunge