I will never say something that could wound, when it might be the last thing I ever get to say to that person.
This piece belongs to a series of 100 posts written in memory of Thom's grandmother, published on her Facebook.
An uncle of mine has been ill these past few days, but happily he has recovered very fast indeed, and today, thinking of him, I found myself remembering the last time we were together — what I said and what I did.
It was around the seventh-day rite for grandma. He was repainting a shop shelf for bác Xoan, and knowing how much he loves coffee I made a cup of instant for everyone who was sitting there talking. He drank his cup while he painted, and I told him: two cups between us is far too few.
I remember the look in his eyes very clearly — a happy one — and I am so grateful for that moment.
It brought back at once a video of Benjamin Zander’s that I watched a long time ago and that keeps coming back into my thoughts.
The power of what we say can change a great many things completely.
I learnt this from a woman, one of the few survivors of Auschwitz (the concentration camp in Poland, built by Nazi Germany)
She was sent to Auschwitz when she was only 15,
together with her 8-year-old brother; the two of them had lost both their father and their mother.
She told me,
“While we were on the train to Auschwitz I looked down and saw that my little brother’s shoes were gone.
I scolded him: ‘How can you be so stupid — you cannot even keep hold of your own things?’”
That is how an older sister speaks to her little brother.
But sadly, those were also the last words she was ever able to say to him, because the boy did not survive.
When she came out of Auschwitz, she made a vow.
She told me: “I walked out of Auschwitz,
and I swore that I would never say something that could wound, when it might be the last thing I ever get to say to that person.”
https://youtu.be/r9LCwI5iErE?si=zgLlcQiXIOgrrHkn
Those two weeks in their house were the loveliest thing I had in Athens.
The only thing I want to do with them: read together.
She told me that only that English video really worked, and that she has been able to go back to work.