Nr.89 ended with: “Then a colleague of Mieke talked to her about his wife who was having such a hard time and had come to the point of wanting to commit suicide, in fact, one day while he was at work she left a note for her husband and walked to the canal……………!” (See richardandmarina.net).
Marianne (not real name) walked slowly while all kinds of thoughts and memories raced through her head. Her father’s death when she was 9, her mother trying to raise five children by herself, then re-marrying. The painful relationship with her stepfather, the terrible times of depression, getting a job as a teacher, but not able to handle a class with 30 mentally handicapped children ages 6-12. Getting married, many things going wrong, having a serious nervous breakdown, it was all too much, why continue, life wasn’t worth living, she had no energy left, her life was in ruins, there was only despair. Her only thought was now, how do I end this, I want to die.
Close to the canal a small piece of newspaper blew over the ground and she picked it up. The first words (by accident?) were “Is there life after death?” All at once fear set in, the fear of dying. Was it because of her Catholic upbringing, or the lessons in religion she herself had given to her students about God’s existence? Whatever, it kept her from jumping into the canal. How long she sat there thinking she can’t remember, but she got up and started walking, halfway home meeting her husband who had found her suicide note and came looking for her. That night in bed fear overwhelmed her and she cried out to God. The next morning there were two Jehovah Witnesses standing at the door, who caused even more confusion. She decided to go along with her husband to a meeting in a hall in town where a film was going to be shown and someone would talk about the Bible. The film was about a pilot who crashed his plane because he did not follow his instruments, but his own feelings, what a lesson! Then a man got up and began to speak about revolution. Her husband whispered, “We’re in the wrong place here, this guy is a communist………..!”