“My dearest was a gamer in front of the gentleman,” begins Kassandra Schmidt, clutching a game console controller. "When new games came out, he took extra vacation to be able to play with his boys in peace, that was his freedom, he could really switch off from me and the child." He would be really happy if he knew that his daughter wants nothing more than a new console, says the young woman with the short blonde haircut. She was 35 when her husband died last year. We have changed your name and that of the other participants in the mourning group of the Sternenzelt project.
When the daughter tries to wake her father one morning, he lies dead in bed when she was five years old. At the end of the funeral service, the mother made the switch-off noises from various Playstations. "Game over, unfortunately the game is over," says the widow by candlelight and wild apple tea in the mourning group of the star tent. When the daughter found out that her father was going to be burned, she collapsed. “That's when I noticed that she urgently needed support.” There was no one in the daycare with whom the child could share grief and fears, the mother works full-time. After six weeks both found the starry tent.
The offer of Protestant family education in Bad Soden, for which FAZ readers can donate this year, is aimed primarily at grieving children and young people, but widowed mothers and fathers also exchange ideas here every other week in two groups under professional guidance .
Get in touch with grief
"It is very important that the parents also come into contact with their grief," says Claudia Vormann, who runs the star tent and, as a trained grief counselor and certified psychologist, looks after the children aged five to twelve, while the mothers are one floor up sit around a table and try to put your current state of mind into words with the help of Emotional Monster cards.
Elke Dobkowitz, a member of the Sternenzelt team, asked her to bring an item that reminds of the deceased. For Wiltrud Hansen it is a fine knife with a corkscrew and an elegant ballpoint pen. "My husband was a beautiful spirit, also in the things of daily use," says the teacher. She often had no sense or simply had no time for it, which she now regrets very much. Her husband had a fatal accident while on vacation a year ago. She has two children in puberty and feels completely overwhelmed. "I can't even do beautiful things anymore, I need a permanent secretary and don't have enough time for the children."
When a person dies, many things have to be taken care of.
Hansen has also increased her working hours.
But she managed to go on vacation with the children, of all places in Austria, the country where her husband died.
At school she doesn't show anything.
“I have to perform and I can live perfectly in parallel worlds.” The students shouldn't know what happened, she wants to spare them having to worry about it.