The Hansi Stories

Hansi was my little brother, the youngest of the three I have. He will always be my little brother.

Hansi left us very suddenly, the first of our eight siblings to go beyond the veil.

“Where is he now? What is he seeing?” I wonder.

My grandchildren have heard many stories about him, and whenever we go to visit them their favorite bedtime stories have been the Hansi stories. “Oma, tell us another Hansi story,” they beg. When I tell them I have no more, they want the old ones retold.

“Tell us about the time Hansi laughed because the moon was naked, or the time he wanted fried eggs at a funeral, or the time he saw old Tuk Tuk. Tell us again!” So I tell them again.

On our most recent visit I told them that Hansi had died and their eyes got big and sad. But I said that the stories I tell will keep him alive in their hearts and minds because they will always remember him.

So I tell them the stories again. And I'm thinking, "Now that Hansi is gone, I need to write these stories down."

Hansi's story begins like this:

When Hansi  was born our mother was going through a hard time. Most likely she had post traumatic stress syndrome, although at the time there were no words to express what she was experiencing. Many other women had lost husbands and children -- her family was intact. But she had lived through four years of refugee existence, fleeing Ukraine with a toddler and an infant and birthing two more children en route -- one while her husband was gone (conscripted into the German army just months before the war ended) and the other just after they arrived in Paraguay. Now the family lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the Paraguayan Chaco and she found herself pregnant again. 

A fifth child. It was too much . . .  .

Doesn’t she look happy and so proud of her healthy baby? 

Of himself, and of the three sisters who came after him, Hansi is known to have said, "We were unwanted but never unloved."

That was our Hansi. Always deriving something positive from a difficult situation.