The Best Thing That Happened in My Life - and the Worst

I will tell you about something special that happened more than 50 years ago, and that has meant a lot - perhaps most negatively - to me and some other people in my life. The reason I am thinking about this now is something I experienced this morning. As a pensioner and an old man, I am often out for a walk in the neighborhood, especially when the weather is good. Sometimes I take the trip up in the forest and walk a bit inwards between the pine trees to a disused farm where I think it is pleasant to walk in peace and quiet. When I walk there, I no longer hear the sound of the traffic on the highway, and it is rare that there are other hikers there in the morning on weekdays. For a man like me, who prefers to go on trips where there are not many people, this trip is ideal.

This morning I did something I have not done before. I went into the large, dilapidated building that stands beyond the farmhouse, the barn on the disused garden. I stood under the ledge just inside the barn door and looked around me, examining the walls and the roof, which I saw were in poor condition. Probably leaks going on there; nature was about to take back what man had built, well used and then gradually leave. I turned and was about to go out again when I stopped. I felt a glance at me. I was absolutely sure - someone up there under the roof was looking at me, and it was not a friendly or good look either! I lifted my gaze and looked across the ridges, all the way to my eyes stopped by a shadow, a large bird that sat motionless and looked down at me. My eye had waited for the darkness, and I could see two round eyes of the big owl looking down at me without blinking.

I turned around and was about to go out again. Then I heard a dark sound from the barn owl. It was as if she was warning me of something, and I felt involuntary chills down my spine.

As I walked back down the path from the disused farm, I was suddenly in my mind over fifty years back in time.

I met her abroad many years ago. We were both young, around 20. We came from two different countries and had signed up for a language course in a city in southern Europe. What happened there was the start of a cohabitation that would have unforeseeable consequences for the two of us, as well as for people close to us.

It was the first day of the language course. We stood outside the auditorium waiting for them to let us in. We were a group from many different countries in and outside Europe who were to come in and get the first introduction to the language course. I stood a little away from the front doors of the auditorium, waiting for those closest to the entrance to start entering.

I noticed that someone was looking at me. I quickly tried to scan the faces around me, but when I looked I saw no one looking at me. I turned my face back and looked towards the front doors, and then I suddenly caught sight of her. She stood looking at me, and when I saw her she first looked away from me. But then she was back and met my gaze. That was when it happened. I felt I had to get her.

My wife and I were in love from the first moment. We - two complete strangers in voluntary 'exile' abroad - we met, we found each other and we went into a bubble together, she and I. We played love and manipulated each other to believe that this that we had found, this that we had together now - it was the big thing, the biggest and best thing in life.

We did not go into that auditorium. Instead, we walked out of the building, over to the main gate and out. We walked hand in hand further down to the river where we stopped under some large trees with huge wooden crowns that hung down and made us almost invisible to the eyes of the rest of the world. We were two young people in love in the first phase of the life we ​​were to share with each other for several years, a life together that would give us so much suffering and evil that we had never asked for. So why was it like that? Why did we not just get far away from each other there and then, after the first meeting, while there was still time?

We were two young people in love in the first phase of the life we ​​were to share with each other for several years. We were standing under the heavy foliage, pouring around each other, and suddenly I heard the owl the first time, the sound of the owl that more than fifty years later would remind me of this event.

The owl that sat in the big tree, it was the warning of accidents that were to come, what was going to happen in our lives, ruined lives with a lot of suffering and evil that we had never asked for.

And why was it like that? Why did we not just get far away from each other there and then, after the first meeting, while there was still time?

Why did we go into it in the city, an endless series of days of manipulations, with irritation and anger, gaslighting and all that belongs to a disturbed mind?

Why was it like that, and we gave the life of a daughter who made it a wasteful life in intoxication and addiction?