Memories of my Sister Katharina-
 
                             by  Beate Balke
..........................
When I think back on our childhood, I see my sister, fiery and alive, at the same time highly sensitive and very enthusiastic.  Often, on her way back from school, she found sick birds and  was bringing them home and tried to nurse them back to health, my father would help her often with it. She loved to be out in free nature. Early she had her own little garden in our family garden, where she grew plants. Her personality was already fully there in her childhood. In house and garden there were over the years birds, snakes, gineapigs, mice and other animals. A blackbird with a broken wing lived for years in her room. For some months, part of her room had a straw bedding to give to two bantams a home. Over many years a  raven  named arco lived there, a boy had taken him out of his nest and cut the wing feathers. He roamed free in the room, was very smart and spirited, ripped apart books and newspapers. In the room was a chinacabinet with a rock collection, which Katharina began. She collected animal bones and feathers.
In the fall she collected  mushrooms with enthusiam in the forest which we ate.
Artistically she was very talented. She loved to draw horses, again and again. It was her long hoped wish to own her own horse or pony. After a few years she managed to buy a pregnant pony, soon there were two ponies. This became a project with the neighborhood kids, they maintained the ponies independently, even financially.
When we reached adolescence, a new era started in our family, it was the 70's. As family friends,
musicians, puppeteers, commune mebers, came. Feasts were celebrated and much singing and music. We had art exhibitions together.
When Katharina was 16 years old, she went to Vermont USA. She was in love, and was a part of the Bread&Puppet theater group. At this time of her life, she sang very much. When she came back to Germany, we sang, not only from the "Sacred Harp" but very beautiful songs from Yugoslavia. "Sto mi e milo" and "Niska banja". She sang alto, I soprano, songs with much soul and great beauty.
After a few years she came back, she met Alfons her future husband. Ben was born. I was doing my final examen to qualify for university, after that I helped at the farm, Katharina was in late pregnancy.
When the rental contract for the farm expired, the young family was looking in Germany for a farm. Katharina was longing at the same time for the beautiful Vermont. They decided to emigrate to Canada.
At the end 1993, beginning 1994 Katharina was ill with cancer for the first time. Our aunt Sigrid died in the summer of 1994, Katharina survived. The illness opened total new sides in Katharina's being. Ever very sensitive, it opened up the spiritual dimension within her.
As Sisters we came closer for the first time because of this. As a child I experienced Katharina rather distant, this was now over. In these years I had a dream; Katharina and I flew over Germany, in the Cologne area, to find a place to incarnate. Over the cologne autobahn bridge, near our parents house, we decided to come down. I don't know if I ever shared this dream with Katharina. One other time I dreamt our mother and my sisters all to be tibetan lamas. Mom said once, we or she had lived in Tibet before. Katharina was the lama with the ginkoleaf, I was the lama with the humor. When my father and I designed the death notice and he the idea with the ginkoleafs had, I remembered the dream. The last time when Katharina was in Germany, she ask me to call her frequently. To write letters, she had too little time. The  lower telephone rates in the meantime, made this possible. We should have done this much earlier, but we understand this now.
When in 1998 I had the impulse to visit her , Alfons and Ben in Canada, I had the feeling: now or never. I had learned to take my impulses serious and to follow them, and not to delay everything.
I am very thankful for the very beautiful time, which Katharina,Alfons,Ben Christoph and I were
allowed to experience in Canada, and for the friendly and heartfelt meetings with the circle of friends. We sang much together, and Katharina and I understood, there was not enough joy and happiness in her life. In the last days we had a sweat lodge,- for Cristoph and me the first one. In the middle of the night, after the lodge, Katharina and I start singing yugoslavian folks songs in two voices . I was  really yearning and asked myself, can we still do it. We were as sure as 20 years earlier, when we practiced together. This was the moment, which from the whole trip, touched me the deepest, and I ask myself, will we ever experience this together again.
The next day, our last day, we five went for a walk in the wood, and I saw stars reflecting in the forest floor.
End of January, beginning of February 1999 Katharina told me during a telephone conversation, she was ill again. I had the feeling, it would not end well this time and was fearing a catastrophe for the summer. My Sufi teacher, which I confided to at Easter, said; "the death is a great teacher" and "the deaths brings unexpected gifts", I was glad he did not give me any reason to illusions.
The content of what he said, I understood  much later. In early summer, I stumbled two days in a row, on my way to work, over a dead mole. I ask myself, why two? When our grandfather, 13 days after Katharina, went over to the other world, everything was clear.
It was for us all a very hard year, the most for Ben and Alfons and close friends  nearby, which so engaged, accompanied Katharina the last weeks and months, as for our parents and siblings.
When I phoned with Katharina in the summer, she told me;"everything is clear now" (at the psychical level)- I leave it at that.
On the day of the eclipse of the sun, August 11, I had the feeling, from my nightseajouney, the depression, which I had since the beginning of the year, to emerge again. I ask for a spiritual name as a symbol for the new, which I felt, just being born within me. Autum o'Kane gave me the name Aostra- Resurrection, Easter. I was thinking, the name would be fitting for Katharina too. What on the one side looks like a fiasco, is on the other maybe a triumph. We should be careful in our valuation.
I am thankful for the gentle death, which Katharina was granted, as for the beautiful last day, which is a symbol.
When our grandfather shortly later likewise said good bye, I thought, he does not want so much attention for him self, and at the same time, we as relatives could say good bye to two very much loved humans. The life of my sister, not half as long as that of my grandfather, was for sure not less fulfilled and mature. In both cases something became round, ready for a new cycle. The beautiful and magnificent colored autumn here at the North Blackforrest seems to confirm this, and it was a great comfort for me. Autumn, the harvest. And fruit is at the same time always the seed for something new.
Matter dies- the Soul is immortal.
                                                                                              Aostra- Beatrice Balke