Luise (Steurenthaler) Mechau (1926 - 2023)

Whenever we would have meat fondue at her home for Christmas she would warn us about the fire when lighting it up or when modifying the flame stating: "bass uff ... s'Fier ... s'diiflet" - "pass auf ... das Feuer .. es teufelt".

On Tuesday, March 7th, she fell after getting up from the toilet and couldn't get up anymore. Unfortunately that must have been after that day's daily call to my mum at 9am, so she only missed the one on the next day. My parents got suspicious and found her on the 8th in the early afternoon, so she lay on her tiled hallway floor for over 24h. Her head was blocking the door, so they even had to break-in by breaking the lock on another door. She was complaining about back pain, so parents sent her to the hospital. There she was diagnosed with COVID, the reason I only visited her 1.5 times in the last years. Grrrr.

She stood for a few days in hospital, doing pretty ok, as I heard. So she was supposed to be sent home the next Monday. When they learned after her arrival, that she wasn't able to get up or walk at all, they sent her back to the hospital the same day.

Then the search for a nursery home began, which took another week, in which I visited her almost every day. On the 20th, she was supposed to go to Villingen 33 km from us and 16 more from my parents. On the same day, it turned out, that she won't have a space there. On March 22th, she was finally able to leave the hospital, since she had a vacant bed in a nursery home in Lenzkirch (19 km from parents, 13 from me). There she is now, staying in bed most of the day, except when one of the pushier nurses forces her to stay in the wheel chair for eating or something. She doesn't like it, because then her back hurts. Her sight seems to have gotten worse, I have to introduce myself all the time. Hearing is also difficult, one has to almost yell at her. She keeps asking me to take over parents farm, once they are gone, and to pray for her that she can die soon. But we sometimes also laugh and she keeps telling stories from the old days, which I keep recording.