Mein Liebling Majda
Happy Birthday! Today Jan. 30, 2022 is your 73th Birthday. It's the first time in our 47 years together that I no longer can celebrate your birthday with you. I will toast you with a glass of red wine, sitting on your favorite spot with the grand view out of our window into the garden and beyond.
You're gone and I miss you terribly. It's been a very hard year living without you - much harder than I ever imagined it could be. I hope that wherever you are, you're doing well and having fun - if there is such a thing once our life ends. I wish you could come back and visit occasionally.
Since you departed on March 12, 2021, I've managed to muddle through life by working myself to exhaustion in the garden, on science and writing. It got my mind occupied and work done. When will it ever get better? There really was nothing else to do since the pandemic changed life for the worse. You know how it was during your last years and it still isn't much better. My only diversion were two trips to Switzerland, which were fun for the Honorary Doctorate at the University of Lausanne and seeing my sister Marlis and her family and grand kids. You know them well and would have enjoyed all very much. They miss you too. I know you wanted to live long enough to come with me to celebrate that honor and I'm very sad you couldn't. It would have been wonderful, but I felt you were there.
Remember, a couple of weeks before you left for good I asked you which of the many hiking trips we took in the Swiss Alps was your favorite one. You answered without a moment of hesitation "Forno Hut" and we both burst out laughing. It was a 2-day trip with my sister Rosie, her husband Ernst and their 10-year old son Claudio. We hiked from Maloja up to the Forno Glacier and from there a 500 m steep uphill climb to the Swiss Alpine hut - the Forno Hut. By the time we reached Forno Hut, where we were spending the night, we all desperately needed to relief ourselves. The Forno Hut only had an outhouse built over a 500m cliff down to the Forno glacier. The hut was made of wood planks and corrugated metal roof, a flimsy door, and inside a 2 feet wide board with a perfectly round hole the size just small enough not to let you fall through to the glacier below.
Rosie was the first to go and when she emerged, she laughed so hard she bent over holding her belly. We all just laughed with her not even knowing what it was about. Between laughter she said, "I can't tell, you've got to see it for yourself." So, I went next. I looked down the hole where a blast of cold air from the glacier hit my face. How was this going to work? No choice. I did my thing as fast as possible to not freeze up. And when I came out of the outhouse, I laughed just as hard as Rosie did. Ernst and Claudio followed, each one emerged the same way with laughter and shaking their heads but none would verbalize the experience - it was just out of this world and decent language was difficult come by to describe the experience.
Majda, you were next. You had laughed along but you had been very apprehensive from the beginning saying you can't use that outhouse hanging over a cliff. You always had this fear of heights and struggled year after year to control that fear in the mountains. But there really was no way out for you - the outhouse was it. And so you went in. You took a long time and I began to fear about you having an anxiety attack. I was about to come in when you came out shell-shocked but your pants still in order. All four of us laughed and applauded and the other mountain climber sitting around in the late afternoon sun began to clap and laugh too. And then you joined in relieved. You had overcome the anxiety attack. It was over. Ever since then that Forno Hut trip has made us laugh. And by the end it became your favorite trip.
As you were lying in bed still smiling with the memory, I said: "Majda, I'll take you there."
You looked at me and replied: "G, I can't walk anymore."
"I know, Liebling, but I will take you there and let you fly!" Then it dawned on you what I intended to do and you said: "G, you're not strong enough anymore to go there. If you can't, why not the Val Rosegg up to the Morteratsch glacier; it's a much easier hike and beautiful. And there is that great Restaurant at the end of the Val Rosegg with wonderful deserts!" I agreed it was a good second option.
Well Majda, you were right for other reasons. Forno Hut is no longer accessible the way it was over the Forno Glacier because that glacier had melted away all the hundreds of meters of ice gone and with it the steep uphill destabilized and collapsed, no longer passable. Even the outhouse is gone replaced by a normal in-house toilet. Last summer the alps remained snowed because of high snowfall I couldn't take you there. Claudio, who has become a mountaineer and guide went to check out the alternate route, which is much longer and he told me it was not likely I could do both ways. So, this coming summer we'll take you on the Val Rosegg-Morteratsch glacier tour and stay overnight at that Swiss Alpine hut. I know you remember that trip we took, it was a long 9 km walk through the valley to the foot of the glacier and from there uphill. I'm sure much of the glacier is gone, but Claudio said there is still part there in the upper reaches by the hut. You will be happy to hear that your longtime friend and collaborator Boualem Khouider will join me on that trip with you along with Ernst and Claudio.
We will make sure to eat desert at that Restaurant in your memory.
Love you forever
G
