Save the memories

Today is World Cancer Day and I would like to use it as an opportunity to tell you about a project that is very close to my heart.

 

Many of you already know that I have terminal cancer. I got the diagnosis cholangiocarcinoma as a young mother of an one year old baby. There is nothing that can be done, but we will try to prolong your life as best we can. As the mom of a son who just started walking, you don't want to hear such words. I was shocked, angry, felt helpless and deprived of my future. I want to see my child grow up, be there for his school enrollment, get to know his first love. Help him through the hard times that are sure to come. Treat his bloody knees, celebrate his wedding. I want to make a good person out of him, a decent man. I will most likely not experience any of this, I will not be allowed to do it. I won't be able to tell him about myself, share my experiences and stories from my childhood in Czechoslovakia with him. There will be questions only I can answer. But I won't be there to do it. Will he miss it, miss a part of his identity? And what can I do to alleviate his loss, his pain.

 

Did you know that the first thing you forget about a person is their voice? Hopefully, my son will remember a lot of me later. He will have a lot of photos and the diary and the emails I write to him. But the memory of my voice will fade quickly.

 

That's why I feel very lucky to have found Das Familienhörbuch, the family audio book project. The project was launched by Judith Grümmer in 2017 in cooperation with the University Hospital in Bonn and offers young palliative patients with small children the opportunity to tell their life story in the form of an audio book. Loving, sometimes unspoken memories, documented with your own voice. In this way, the audio book can accompany and support the grief work of children and their families over the long term and through many phases of life.

I already told my story. For my son, for my family. In three days, lovingly and professionally guided by the founder of the project, Ms. Grümmer.

 

The production of the audio book is free for the terminally ill parents and is financed through donations. And I would like a large number of ill young parents to have this opportunity. But it takes money. And that's why I would like to ask you for a donation. No matter how much, every euro helps. Thank you! And thank you for reading my story :-).