Living a Nightmare

THE GET-AWAY - MARKUS

Back home, I went into therapy to deal with the loss of a loved one, my loved one, Jane. It was a hard time, but it definitely helped, because only a year later, in 1971, I was on the verge of recovery and decided to start over again. I took up a gardening because it reminded me of Jane's love of nature and flowers and I felt it was a way of being close to her again. Soon gardening became my passion and I finally understood why Jane had loved it so much. Caring for nature and its surroundings gave me a purpose. Making sure that the flowers and trees were healthy and were looking beautiful reminded me of the way I look after Jane and made sure that she was happy and healthy.

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Although I was able to move on with my life and even began to be happy again, I could not help but wonder sometimes what had happened to Jane or if she was even alive.

Cruel as it may sound, I hoped that she was in heaven, looking down on me and being proud of the man I had become, instead of imagining that she had run off with some other fellow and was living a happy life somewhere on earth, not caring one bit about me. But I knew my Jane and my Jane would never be so cruel. And anyway, the love we had for each other was a love that no other man could ever have broken. Our love was unbreakable and even when she was gone my heart still belonged to her.

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I was a gardener for 23 years and retired at 65. But I never stopped gardening. I decided to continue gardening as a hobby. Being retired, I had nothing to do anyway and I still really enjoyed being out in nature.

In 2011, I had to move into an old-people's home because my legs were not the strongest anymore and I was not able to get up the stairs very well. So I decided that it would be easier to live somewhere where I had people around me who could help me if I needed it. And where better to get such help than in an old-people's home?

I liked the room I was given and I made sure to make it seem homely. But to be honest I did not really need many things and I never really had visitors, because I had no relatives, or at least none that I knew of, and I also had no friends in Germany to be honest.

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But little did I know that all that was going to change on one peculiar day when three young people from Wales turned up on my doorstep. Well, what happens then, you already know.