The Centenary

On November 30th, 2024 my grandmother would have turned one hundred years old. Like many years before, I happened to be in Germany on the day of her birthday and though she was not with us in body, she was there in spirit (she always is). 

Johanna Elisabeth Fröhlich, née Bersch, is known in our family as "Oma Hanna". 

Oma Hanna lived to see 92 years, one week and one day. Incidentally the year she died circumstances dictated that I couldn't be with her on her birthday. Instead I had plotted a secret plan with my parents to visit the following week. I arrived in Germany on the late afternoon on December 7th, 2016 and I was going to surprise Oma Hanna at her care home after lunchtime on the 8th. 

The phone rang in my parents' living room just as I was tying my shoe laces in preparation for getting the bus with my mother. An hour later my mother, my cousin and I were standing next to Oma Hanna's ancient lifeless body bidding our final good byes. Her heart had stopped beating as she was putting out plates for lunch in the communal dining room.

Her final words: "I'll lay the table".

She didn't know I was on my way to see her. I like to think that she does now.

We all loved Oma Hanna dearly. She was the centre of the family and, just like my two cousins, I loved spending time with her. Sometimes the three of us got sleepovers together but we also each had countless one-on-ones with our Oma. 

One of my earliest conscious memories of full conversations with her were made looking at the stars out of my open bedroom window. I can still feel the cool winter air on my face (airing your bedroom before going to sleep is a common practice in Germany to this day).

"Yes, darling, pick any one of them and that's Roland."

Roland was my biological father's name and he had died when I was two years and ten months old.  I was told then that he had gone to heaven and the idea left me with many questions.

How is this possible? 

Where exactly in heaven?

Can I see him?

Even long after I had accepted my new father into our lives I occasionally needed confirmation that Roland really *was* up there. 

Just like my mother, Oma Hanna was a patient woman and no matter how often or how long I wanted to talk about this, my curiosity was always met with utmost patience. 

Now when I look at the stars, I pick one for her, too.

My other favourite memory of being at Oma Hanna's house is her bookshelf. In the far left hand corner behind the slidy glass pane, there was a very special book. It was "old" then, passed down to her father and then to her. It's a naturopathy book published in 1894 and written in an old German font that my granny could read fluently. 

I was only allowed to look at the book under her supervision. My wish to take it out from behind the glass was not granted every time. It took quite a bit of manoeuvring given its snug fit and the crowded shelf. Even so, Oma Hanna did occasionally make the effort to get it out on the kitchen table.

I remember sitting on her lap or on the chair next to her trying to read the old font, too. The book was delicate, its spine threadbare and the most precious part of it was hidden in the back. There, glued in the back sleeve, was a papercut to illustrate our human anatomy. Getting to see the paper man in the back of the book (depicted without genitals of course- those didn't exist until later in history) was the highlight of these rare occasions. It was like opening shutters to enter deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the body. You could open him up to see underneath the skin, then the muscles and then (my favourite) the ribcage. You could fold the lungs open, both of them, to find the heart. The heart itself opens, too and you can find the chambers inside of it. When you fold back the entire heart you can see behind it to find the vena cava and the aorta. Of course the liver is there, too. You can find it when the lungs are fully folded back and within it there's a gall bladder. The liver is the only part of this 128 year old papercut that has been meticulously and almost invisibly repaired with the tiniest bit of cellotape and I am not sure who the culprit was who tore the liver off its little hinge. The complete integrity of those paper intestines is as miraculous as finding the tiny heart fully intact. Each time I allow myself the luxury to look inside, I am struck with the detail and I wonder what it must have been like to assemble this treasure. Were there some machines to help with this back then? The book is relatively common and it was in print for a few editions. I have no way of knowing how many of them were made though (enough to keep it from being a collector's item). 

When Oma Hanna moved into the care home she delegated the book to me and my mum brought it to our local bookbinder. This must have been sometime around 2012 and by then this was the only bookbinder still trading in the area. By the time he restored my century old, threadbare family heirloom Herr Schenk must have been in his 70s. He had taken over the shop from his father and the story goes that he didn't want to close it until his apprentice had turned 65 so that he could retire. There would have been no employment for a skilled bookbinder anywhere even in the wider area.

I suspect though that Herrr Schenk really kept his shop open for the love of the craft given that he stayed open even after his apprentice had left and he only finally closed the doors for good in 2023 after 70 years of this iconic family business. Now the only bookbinders left in Germany are in the big cities like Berlin and Munich and the citizens of my hometown can no longer bring their cherished treasures (among the most common restorations were old children's books) to Herr Schenk for restoration. 

Just moments ago, folding open that pretty 19th century eunuch, I felt a wave of deep gratitude that Herr Schenk devoted his life to binding and restoring books, that my mother had the foresight to get it rebound for me before bringing it to Belfast and for Oma Hanna's insistence on its minimal handling and utmost caution during all the years of safekeeping. 

I have talked about the book before. Platen's Neue Heilkunde (Platen's New Method of Healing). There's no index in it of any kind but I have slipped a bookmark in the chapter about childbirth. In it Platen describes childbirth as overly medicalised. It's interesting that even then he needs to remind us that movement, fresh air and time in nature, a simple wholesome nutrition and avoiding the temptation to over indulge are the hallmarks of health not just in birth, but in life in general. 

The Platen book had been bought when Oma Hanna's grandmother had lost the ability to move her legs seemingly out of the blue. None of the doctors knew what to do and so her husband diligently performed the hydrotherapy applications outlined in the book. It took her months to recover but she did. Nobody knew why and how this had happened but since then the book had become a source of reference for Oma Hanna and the two generations before her.

The emphasis for Platen and by extension for my grandmother was to take responsibility for your own health; Doctors, though potentially useful at times, were to be avoided for most ailments. They were good for broken bones and for when, despite resorting to simple healing methods and rest, you couldn't manage on your own. Basically Oma Hanna recognised them as the gatekeepers to pharmaceuticals which, for the most part, were unnecessary.

Of course this all occurred against a certain backdrop in history. There was no choice but to resort back to basics. Flemming had yet to discover penicillin and Infections in your body, if not handled swiftly and with skill, could ultimately become overwhelming and kill you.

Merck and Bayer had started to commercialise pain relief medicine, and its more widespread availability undoubtedly reduced a lot of suffering.

Despite this, people distrusted the new pharmaceuticals that were starting to appear on the market. Just like Oma Hanna, many people suspected snake-oil-type fake remedies knowing that many of them were produced from crude oil waste products that anyone interested in maintaining health over dulling symptoms wouldn't dream of ingesting.

I know that many people think of those times with a sense of trepidation. Imagine not having access to this or that aspect of modern life. Modern medicine is often raised on a pedestal and celebrated as only good. Personally, I see it as a mixed bag. There's plenty to celebrate in modern medicine for sure. I think more and more integrate surgeries, blood transfusions, penicillin and our ability to numb severe pain have changed our lives for the better.

There's another side of that coin, too.

Overuse of antibiotics will eventually render them useless and reaching for the prescription drug as a first approach will eventually make us estranged form our own bodies and leave us reliant on others to feel comfortable in it. 

As a midwife, and now as a pregnancy massage therapist, yoga teacher and birth educator, I meet so many women and everyone is different. In general women tell me that they are keen to avoid painkillers in pregnancy and I love this as a conversation starter. If we think that a substance might be harmful in pregnancy, then I often wonder if this is our instinct kicking in?

Could it be that those substances are less benign than we think outside of pregnancy, too? Every single neatly packaged pharmaceutical comes with an insert and when you look at them, you'll see side effects listed. As a society we have become very complacent about the other side of the coin of a convenient quick fix. 

The question of how we can find our way back to a more self-directed approach to health is forever on my mind and I strongly believe that pregnancy and birth is such a pivotal time in a family's timeline. How a baby is born is important and it can set the tone for parents on how much they rely on their own judgement when it comes to their children's health and wellbeing or whether they default to always relying on others. Amidst crumbling health services, knowing how to stay healthy and how to move through most ailments without outside input is becoming more and more important. 

Pharmaceuticals have their place if you could avoid needing them by addressing your ailments yourself would you do it? 

Do you have an Oma Hanna in your family? 

Send me an email to [email protected] and let me know your favourite home remidies.