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He said praying was where you talk to God. And meditation was where you listen.”
On July 16, 1945, Adeline, Walt, and Will walked down a road that passed through beautiful fields of ruby, purple, and white wildflowers glistening in a light mist and fog. The chill on the northerly breeze felt good after so many days walking in the heat. She smiled as the sun came and went, gleaming, giving her a show and making her realize just how much she loved flowers. Their hue, delicateness, and shape. Their tragically brief time on earth.
But as the fog swirled in and out and they walked deeper into Hitler’s fallen capital, she soon realized that nearly ten weeks after the Nazi surrender, even with many streets cleared for traffic, Berlin remained a landscape of ruin,
a deeply scarred and wounded place, a charred, haunted maze where the smells of bomb soot, burned chemicals, and death vied for dominance. Eighty-one thousand Soviets, one hundred thousand German soldiers, and one hundred and twenty-five thousand civilians had died in the Battle of Berlin, street by devastated road and building by rubble and wreckage. Depending on location and the wind, the stench of death rose and fell. Some bodies had evidently not yet been found, gathered, and buried or burned.
