The many twists and turns to our lives

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

Of course it is a cliche to say the world is a small place. But when you experience it first-hand it really does surprise you. Also, the power that words can have, can be sensational, even the power of one word.

Last week, in a German class I attend, we were reading a book set in Vienna in the 1930s. Our conversation wandered somewhat off the topic and we were discussing a place along the River Rhine near Cologne. Someone mentioned Walberberg. 

It is a small village between Bonn and Cologne. But is has significance for me. In the summers of 1972 and 1973 I spent weekends there while I was attending language school in Cologne. Back then the Dominicans had a large priory in Walberberg, which was the house of studies for the German Dominicans.

So at our class last week I said that I had links with Walberberg. The teacher said that her late mother knew one of the young priests back in the 1960s in Walberberg. Naturally, I was interested and asked her the man’s name. It turned out to my amazement that I knew him. The teacher went on to tell me that she still has a photograph at home of the priest with her late mother.

She and I were intrigued by the coincidence spanning two countries and 50 years.

The following day I found the email address of the priest in question. I emailed him the details of what happened in our German class. The next day an email pops up in my inbox from him.

Fr David well remembers my German teacher. Not only that, he has a photograph in his room of her half-sister and him on their first day in their primary school in 1949 in Cologne.

He went on to tell me of how he witnessed a tragic accident where my German teacher’s father’s first wife was engulfed in a fire while cooking at a stove and subsequently died. 

Remember, this would have been in Germany some short few years after the war, when the city of Cologne had been razed to the ground. The people would have been living under extremely difficult conditions. The famous Cologne cathedral, though badly damaged, was one of the few buildings still standing in the city at the end of the war.

Fr David wrote explaining how he became friendly with the man’s second wife, who was the mother of my German teacher. And in her old age he regularly visited her in her nursing home when he was home on holidays.

Here we are in the last days of 2020 in Ireland and after a period of approximately 50 years, the histories of two people living in different countries are brought together by one word.

I’m always thinking of how our lives are intertwined with other people.

I passed on Fr David’s email address to my German teacher.

I can imagine David and my German teacher have so much to talk about. And isn’t that wonderful that they can chat, laugh and maybe even cry about their lives and what they have done since those post-war days in Cologne.

Life itself writes the best of stories.

Happy and peaceful Christmas to all readers of this column.