In Memoriam Ulrich Milde - 1948 - 2017
Once again, I'm finding myself staring at a blank page, desperately looking to put the unspeakable into words. It is now almost one month since it happened. One month since my phone calls home to Speyer went unanswered. One month since my world collapsed. Every day since then has felt surreal, and I still find myself waking up in the morning unable to grasp the enormity of what happened, hoping that it was just a dream, a nightmare. However, it is bitter reality. Ulrich Milde, my dad, Uli to his friends, passed away in the evening hours of November 8th, 2017, a date that I will always remember. He simply fell asleep in the late afternoon, at a time when he felt content and happy for the first time since my mom passed away back at the end of June 2017.
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| The sense of humour my dad and I shared was always a bit "special" ;) |
Looking back at the little over 30 years I spent together with both of them, it is only now becoming apparent just how big of an influence my dad had on me while growing up. Sure, it was from my mom that I learned discipline, ambition, and a determination to keep on going no matter what happens, but it was my dad, the ever-occupied tinkerer, the confessed science fiction fan, who bestowed my imagination with its wings, and sparked my own curiosity and creativity. And it was him who, from an early age onward, sparked my interest in computers, and everything we now call IT. And he didn't do so in the days of the Dotcom boom. Indeed, those seeds were planted much earlier, in the 1980s in Northern Germany.
To be fair, the early day of my dad's life did not betray the interesting, adventurous career that he would take. Born on November 3rd 1948 into a grim post-war Germany, he spent his first years in the small town of Bergedorf, which, although technically a part of Hamburg, had a bit of a rivalry going with its larger neighbour, and was effectively an independent place. Indeed, in later years, my dad would often insist upon being from Bergedorf himself. His early life was, apart from regular trips to the island of Sylt, largely uneventful. Following an uninspiring education (somewhat of a family tradition), he did an metal working apprenticeship at the local ironworks. His mandatory military service was a bit more interesting already, especially given my dad's leftist leanings, leftist enough to have his own copy of Mao's little red book to be precise. I still have that at home, but back to the topic at hand. Perhaps owing to his political leanings, following basic training, my dad was sent to a medical unit, and trained as a paramedic. His Bundeswehr time had it all, idiotic drill sergeants (I mean how thick do you have to be to put your foot in front of a machine gun muzzle on a firing range? My dad didn't get in trouble for that one, to be fair), or parties in sickbay which more often than not included lots of "herbs" that were very fashionable at the time. His most memorable experience though was summer manoeuvre back in the early 1970s. My dad was one of the few members of his unit who already had a drivers license when he joined, so he was assigned to be an ambulance driver. As such, he had to remain at the field first aid station in case anyone suffered serious injuries during the exercise and had to be transported to hospital. So, while the rest of his unit was chased around the training area, he stayed back, having nothing to do. Did I mention that it was summer, and a hot and dry one at that? I'm pretty sure that my dad was the only soldier who returned from that exercise not only with a great tan, but also thoroughly relaxed.
Following his time in the army, my dad switched careers, and began his decades long involvement in IT. Somehow, he managed to land a job as an IBM punch card machine operator at Iduna, one of Germany's major insurance companies at the time. He soon turned out to be a natural in this role, and ended up introducing a number of new procedures that cut processing and reaction times by up to 75% in some cases. He quickly earned a reputation as an expert within his department, and ended up with a take-home pay of 2400 Deutschmarks per month, which was quite a sizeable amount of money in those days. Like most young affluent professionals, he invested that money in his car, and his beloved VW Beetle soon sported a better stereo system than most households at the time.
Then 1974 came around, which would turn out to be a fateful year. In February of that year, in his favourite pub in Bergedorf, my dad met a young woman from Austria. To say that there was an immediate connection would have been the understatement of the century. Still, my dad was unsure, as he was also involved with another young woman at the time, and a few days later, he looked for a sign as to whom to pursue. No sooner had he finished his prayer than the doorbell at his parent's apartment rang. It was the very same young Austrian he had met at the pub. Her mother had thrown her out after yet another heated argument between the two. After a bit of discussion, that young woman ended up spending the next six weeks on the couch. Then, after her 18th birthday, the two of them moved into their first apartment, and would end up living together for the next forty years. And in case anyone is still unsure just what the hell I'm writing about, that young woman was my mother.
The first few years were par for the course for a young couple. There were a lot of parties, lots of travelling, and the occasional spat with the neighbours. I still vividly remember their tales about the "loudspeaker war". In one of their first apartments, the neighbour below them tended to play cheesy 1950s music at very high volumes at the most inappropriate times. One day, my parents had enough. My dad has always been an audiophile and had set up quite an impressive stereo system in their apartment. They took the speakers, and laid them on the floor, membranes facing downward. Then they turned up the music up to 11. Jethro Tull. Locomotive Breath. They never had issues with loud music from downstairs again. I ended up taking over that tactic from my parents by the way, although I recommend using Tchaikovski's 1812 Overture instead, preferably a recording with actual artillery pieces. The effect with todays bass-heavy speakers is impressive.
On September 9th, 1977, this whole madness was put onto a permanent foundation. My parents were married in a civil ceremony at the registrar's office in Bergedorf. Even my maternal grandmother, initially not pleased at all with the relationship between the two, had come around. Everything seemed to be looking up, especially as my mother managed to land a job at a small provincial bank known as the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Cooperation, or HSBC in case you ever heard of them.
Four years later, another major change appeared in their life, kicking and screaming. While I may have grown a bit since then, I can assure you I've still got the kicking and screaming part down. Back after moving into their first place, my parents had agreed that whoever had a better career perspective would focus on just that, their career, while the other one would support them by handling the household and any children that might appear. Since my mother had begun climbing the career ladder at HSBC, it was up to my dad to leave his job at Iduna. However, he had specialised so much on the punchcard systems that he never got a chance to get trained on the then brand new IBM mainframes, so leaving his job wasn't as big an issue as you might think.
Not even a year later, the next big step came. While my parents had both been working, they had amassed quite a bit of savings, and they had been looking to invest it in a sailing yacht, since my dad had been quite a skilled sailor in his teens and twenties. However, with me on the scene, that yacht began to mutate. It eventually morphed into a house in a small commuter village outside of Hamburg, a house which I would call home for the first twelve years of my life. It was soon dubbed "Villa Wahnsinn" or "Madness Mansion" because my parents often got asked what the hell they had been thinking when they bought the place. My dad retrained at the time to become an IT specialist, and soon began working again himself, although together with my grandmother, I was still taken care off well. Still, my dad took his work home and this early exposure to computers meant that I was soon as familiar with company names such as Microsoft, Apple, Novell (Remember them?) or IBM as I was with the Saturday morning cartoons.
Then, in 1994, came the biggest change yet in our lives. My mother was posted to Prague, and ended up taking the entire family with her. The Prague years turned out to be magical, a real adventure for all of us. My dad actually managed to land a job as well, working as a software developer. He also tried to teach me programming skills, although he was less than successful in that endeavour. Maybe it was a bit of payback for conspiring with my mother to put me into the English language International School of Prague, rather than the German school, although that would later turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Outside of that, my dad and I were soon exploring our new home country, traversing it from Plzen to Brno, and from Liberec to the Šumava National Park on the Austrian border. In fact, our tours took us beyond the Czech borders to Austria and even down to Croatia. That being said, the time in Prague wasn't always harmonious. Both my Dad and I can be very stubborn, and my teenage years didn't help one bit.
I'm pretty sure he breathed a sigh of relief when I headed off to a boarding school in the Austrian Alps back in 1997. My parents also left Prague a year later, heading to Heidelberg where my mother had landed a new job at a US Software company. My dad meanwhile started concentrating on running the household again. The introduction of Windows 95 had Brough huge changes to the software industry, and my dad hadn't managed to keep up. In addition, his employer in Prague had lost the one major client upon which they had depended. That didn't mean that my dad turned his back to computers, though. He started concentrating more on the hardware side again, turning his attention to case modding. Some of the resulting computers were "interesting" to say the least, but hey, they sure caught your eye. He also continued to support my mom, which now included regular runs up the A5 motorway to Frankfurt Airport as she began racking up frequent flyer miles.
Then came another major change at the turn of the millennium. My mother had changed her employer again, beginning the Trema years. This brought with it a move to Frankfurt, where I rejoined the family back in 2002. This era turned out to be a golden age for my parents. Trema was more of a family than an employer, and my parents began flying all over the place, both for business and for pleasure, culminating in long stays in Boston or Finland, and trips to southern France that became so regular that we began including it in our shopping plans. It was also at that time when my dad had his first and only stage appearance, as a Roman soldier in Jesus Christ Superstar. Thank god it was not a singing role, as my dad's singing voice could best be described as Chewbacca after a three day drinking binge!
Then, in 2008, another change came, once again initiated by my mother's change of jobs. Soon after, they moved to Speyer, and my dad really came into his own again during the move. He'd also taken up his old hobby of photography, and soon, he had a camera with him wherever he went. I had remained in Frankfurt, where I had gotten a job at DHL that I enjoyed. While my mom's business itinerary rapidly emptied, my parents began flying all over the world for pleasure, with Canada, Ireland, and Scandinavia being the most popular targets. In fact, it was their trip to Ireland back in 2008 that caused me to fall in love with that country. Even when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, that didn't slow them down, at least not initially. They were proud as punch, and a little green with envy, when I landed my job at Apple in Cork back in 2012, and moved to the Emerald Isle, although I never quite managed to convince my dad of the advantages of using Apple devices. Unfortunately, my father was also diagnosed with cancer a short while later, and like my mother, he began an ambitious series of radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Not that this would stop them from travelling mind you, the flew to Canada several times and even scratched the United Arab Emirates off their list during this time.
Everything came to an end in 2017. The death of my mother back in June 2017 hit my dad hard, and the intense cancer therapy he underwent at the same time. Looking back at it, it is a miracle that my dad even survived the time between my mom's death and her funeral in September. He had been receiving psychiatric help and, to be fair, had shown tremendous improvement over the last weeks and months. He had just regained his confidence and will to live in the last weeks, and insisted on picking me up at the airport every time I flew over to Germany. Okay, admittedly, he did show signs of getting older, mainly by driving noticeably slower, he only rarely exceeded 200 km/h on the Autobahn in his last months. Still, we were making plans for the future. In fact, my dad had planned to come over for Ireland for Christmas 2017, and stay at my new apartment for a few weeks. Our last phone call, less than 24 hour before he passed away, dealt with this particular issue. All that has since turned into dust in the wind.
And once again I find myself asking: What remains at the end of a life? A feeling of thankfulness. Thankfulness for being able to call such an extraordinary, intelligent and humorous man my father. He may not always have been the most practical human being out there, which caused quite a bit of friction with my mom, but he was a visionary, someone who could think or dream up some highly unconventional solutions to issues. Thankfulness also for passing on his penchant for writing to me. Without this, none of my three blogs would have ever gotten off the ground, depriving me of a vent for some of the things I have in my mind.
There's also a feeling of deep calm, as strange as that may sound at first. My parents were inseparable, their story was one of those great love stories that you only find in books or cheesy romantic comedies. One without the other was incomplete, and their connection was apparent right up until the last weeks. I do not know what lies behind that final frontier that my parents have both crossed, but I know that they are re-united now. I also know that neither suffered during their final hours, and that my dad was happy and content, which is a great comfort for me in these dark hours.
Most of all, however, there's a great void. Something that had always been there for over thirty years has suddenly disappeared, something I could always rely on. Every day, I catch myself thinking what dad would say to a certain situation or issue, or I find something that would crack both of us up, or I reach a goal that I'm sure my dad would love to hear about. In a way of course, he'll never leave me, and I know that I'll be more than able to continue the journey that is still ahead of me. There is still more out there to do, so much to see. Still, the road ahead has just gotten a whole lot more lonely.
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| This is a later image obviously, but from the moment they met, my parents were absolutely inseparable. |
The first few years were par for the course for a young couple. There were a lot of parties, lots of travelling, and the occasional spat with the neighbours. I still vividly remember their tales about the "loudspeaker war". In one of their first apartments, the neighbour below them tended to play cheesy 1950s music at very high volumes at the most inappropriate times. One day, my parents had enough. My dad has always been an audiophile and had set up quite an impressive stereo system in their apartment. They took the speakers, and laid them on the floor, membranes facing downward. Then they turned up the music up to 11. Jethro Tull. Locomotive Breath. They never had issues with loud music from downstairs again. I ended up taking over that tactic from my parents by the way, although I recommend using Tchaikovski's 1812 Overture instead, preferably a recording with actual artillery pieces. The effect with todays bass-heavy speakers is impressive.
On September 9th, 1977, this whole madness was put onto a permanent foundation. My parents were married in a civil ceremony at the registrar's office in Bergedorf. Even my maternal grandmother, initially not pleased at all with the relationship between the two, had come around. Everything seemed to be looking up, especially as my mother managed to land a job at a small provincial bank known as the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Cooperation, or HSBC in case you ever heard of them.
Four years later, another major change appeared in their life, kicking and screaming. While I may have grown a bit since then, I can assure you I've still got the kicking and screaming part down. Back after moving into their first place, my parents had agreed that whoever had a better career perspective would focus on just that, their career, while the other one would support them by handling the household and any children that might appear. Since my mother had begun climbing the career ladder at HSBC, it was up to my dad to leave his job at Iduna. However, he had specialised so much on the punchcard systems that he never got a chance to get trained on the then brand new IBM mainframes, so leaving his job wasn't as big an issue as you might think.
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| It feels like an eternity, but everything started in or around Hamburg. |
Not even a year later, the next big step came. While my parents had both been working, they had amassed quite a bit of savings, and they had been looking to invest it in a sailing yacht, since my dad had been quite a skilled sailor in his teens and twenties. However, with me on the scene, that yacht began to mutate. It eventually morphed into a house in a small commuter village outside of Hamburg, a house which I would call home for the first twelve years of my life. It was soon dubbed "Villa Wahnsinn" or "Madness Mansion" because my parents often got asked what the hell they had been thinking when they bought the place. My dad retrained at the time to become an IT specialist, and soon began working again himself, although together with my grandmother, I was still taken care off well. Still, my dad took his work home and this early exposure to computers meant that I was soon as familiar with company names such as Microsoft, Apple, Novell (Remember them?) or IBM as I was with the Saturday morning cartoons.
 |
| "Villa Wahnsinn", our home in Northern Germany. |
Then, in 1994, came the biggest change yet in our lives. My mother was posted to Prague, and ended up taking the entire family with her. The Prague years turned out to be magical, a real adventure for all of us. My dad actually managed to land a job as well, working as a software developer. He also tried to teach me programming skills, although he was less than successful in that endeavour. Maybe it was a bit of payback for conspiring with my mother to put me into the English language International School of Prague, rather than the German school, although that would later turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Outside of that, my dad and I were soon exploring our new home country, traversing it from Plzen to Brno, and from Liberec to the Šumava National Park on the Austrian border. In fact, our tours took us beyond the Czech borders to Austria and even down to Croatia. That being said, the time in Prague wasn't always harmonious. Both my Dad and I can be very stubborn, and my teenage years didn't help one bit.
I'm pretty sure he breathed a sigh of relief when I headed off to a boarding school in the Austrian Alps back in 1997. My parents also left Prague a year later, heading to Heidelberg where my mother had landed a new job at a US Software company. My dad meanwhile started concentrating on running the household again. The introduction of Windows 95 had Brough huge changes to the software industry, and my dad hadn't managed to keep up. In addition, his employer in Prague had lost the one major client upon which they had depended. That didn't mean that my dad turned his back to computers, though. He started concentrating more on the hardware side again, turning his attention to case modding. Some of the resulting computers were "interesting" to say the least, but hey, they sure caught your eye. He also continued to support my mom, which now included regular runs up the A5 motorway to Frankfurt Airport as she began racking up frequent flyer miles.
Then came another major change at the turn of the millennium. My mother had changed her employer again, beginning the Trema years. This brought with it a move to Frankfurt, where I rejoined the family back in 2002. This era turned out to be a golden age for my parents. Trema was more of a family than an employer, and my parents began flying all over the place, both for business and for pleasure, culminating in long stays in Boston or Finland, and trips to southern France that became so regular that we began including it in our shopping plans. It was also at that time when my dad had his first and only stage appearance, as a Roman soldier in Jesus Christ Superstar. Thank god it was not a singing role, as my dad's singing voice could best be described as Chewbacca after a three day drinking binge!
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| Now how the hell does this thing work anyway? - All jest aside, my dad had a real hand for photography. |
Then, in 2008, another change came, once again initiated by my mother's change of jobs. Soon after, they moved to Speyer, and my dad really came into his own again during the move. He'd also taken up his old hobby of photography, and soon, he had a camera with him wherever he went. I had remained in Frankfurt, where I had gotten a job at DHL that I enjoyed. While my mom's business itinerary rapidly emptied, my parents began flying all over the world for pleasure, with Canada, Ireland, and Scandinavia being the most popular targets. In fact, it was their trip to Ireland back in 2008 that caused me to fall in love with that country. Even when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, that didn't slow them down, at least not initially. They were proud as punch, and a little green with envy, when I landed my job at Apple in Cork back in 2012, and moved to the Emerald Isle, although I never quite managed to convince my dad of the advantages of using Apple devices. Unfortunately, my father was also diagnosed with cancer a short while later, and like my mother, he began an ambitious series of radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Not that this would stop them from travelling mind you, the flew to Canada several times and even scratched the United Arab Emirates off their list during this time.
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| Right up until the end, he always picked me up at the airport when he could. This was taken in August 2017, just before I flew back to Ireland. |
Everything came to an end in 2017. The death of my mother back in June 2017 hit my dad hard, and the intense cancer therapy he underwent at the same time. Looking back at it, it is a miracle that my dad even survived the time between my mom's death and her funeral in September. He had been receiving psychiatric help and, to be fair, had shown tremendous improvement over the last weeks and months. He had just regained his confidence and will to live in the last weeks, and insisted on picking me up at the airport every time I flew over to Germany. Okay, admittedly, he did show signs of getting older, mainly by driving noticeably slower, he only rarely exceeded 200 km/h on the Autobahn in his last months. Still, we were making plans for the future. In fact, my dad had planned to come over for Ireland for Christmas 2017, and stay at my new apartment for a few weeks. Our last phone call, less than 24 hour before he passed away, dealt with this particular issue. All that has since turned into dust in the wind.
And once again I find myself asking: What remains at the end of a life? A feeling of thankfulness. Thankfulness for being able to call such an extraordinary, intelligent and humorous man my father. He may not always have been the most practical human being out there, which caused quite a bit of friction with my mom, but he was a visionary, someone who could think or dream up some highly unconventional solutions to issues. Thankfulness also for passing on his penchant for writing to me. Without this, none of my three blogs would have ever gotten off the ground, depriving me of a vent for some of the things I have in my mind.
There's also a feeling of deep calm, as strange as that may sound at first. My parents were inseparable, their story was one of those great love stories that you only find in books or cheesy romantic comedies. One without the other was incomplete, and their connection was apparent right up until the last weeks. I do not know what lies behind that final frontier that my parents have both crossed, but I know that they are re-united now. I also know that neither suffered during their final hours, and that my dad was happy and content, which is a great comfort for me in these dark hours.
Most of all, however, there's a great void. Something that had always been there for over thirty years has suddenly disappeared, something I could always rely on. Every day, I catch myself thinking what dad would say to a certain situation or issue, or I find something that would crack both of us up, or I reach a goal that I'm sure my dad would love to hear about. In a way of course, he'll never leave me, and I know that I'll be more than able to continue the journey that is still ahead of me. There is still more out there to do, so much to see. Still, the road ahead has just gotten a whole lot more lonely.
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