If you like, listen while reading:
There is this one song by the Böhse Onkelz that plays at many funerals: “Nur die Besten sterben jung” — “Only the best die young.” When you are standing at a grave and cannot comprehend why someone is gone far too soon, that sentence is a bandage for the soul. Yet for the living, for the boys of tomorrow, it does not serve as a compass. For the living, we need another song by the same band: “Der Himmel kann warten” — “Heaven can wait.”
When I think today, on All Saints’ Day, about why the guys in the “hole” and the teenagers out on the plazas touch me so deeply, I inevitably end up thinking of my uncle.
He was a cool DJ. A true life of the party, someone who could walk into a room and immediately light it up. He had a heart of gold through and through.
As long as the music was playing, he had an open ear, a pat on the shoulder, and the shirt off his back for everyone. He gave so much to everyone around him. Yet how much a person like that — someone who always keeps the fire burning for everyone else — eventually needs for himself wasn’t written down anywhere. And his so-called “friends”? As long as the party was going, they were all there. When the music stopped and it grew dark, not one of them was left in sight.
Back then, the two of us barely had any contact. Not because he didn’t care — he reached out to me, again and again. But I wasn’t ready yet. I was afraid. Afraid of his reputation, of the stories, of the swamp that surrounded him. I kept my distance because I wanted to protect myself — and only much later did I understand that behind that swamp there was no malice, only pain. Because behind the suffering you can see from the outside, there is very often much more quiet suffering underneath.
By the time I was finally ready to understand that, it was too late. His early death left a gap in our family that never completely closed again. I saw with my grandmother what it does to a mother when she has to bury her own child. There is nothing cool about that. There is nothing romantic about that. All that remains is a silence that hurts — and the conversations you can never have again.
My uncle was a role model for me twice — once through his life, and once through his death.
Through his warmth and his outstretched hand, he showed me that behind a loud reputation and deep scars often beats the biggest heart. And through his story, I learned for my own life to simply leave the glass standing sometimes, to watch my boundaries — and to look closely at who is still sitting at the table when the party is over.
Perhaps that is the most important thing we can pass on to the young ones today: do not waste your heart on people who only stay as long as you function and keep the mood up. Even those who light up the room for everyone else have to take good care of themselves. And they have to stay — if only for the real ones who might still be afraid today or aren’t quite ready yet, but who would take their hand tomorrow.
The best do not have to die young. The boys of tomorrow do not need any more sad legends in the cemetery. They need the survivors. They need the people with big hearts who look after themselves, pull the brake in time, and say: Not yet. I am still needed down here. Heaven can wait.
By René Jochum - LLM Translated. In loving memory of my uncle. License: CC-BY-4.0.