Monday at Ten

'Can you be a witness?' 'Huh? Excuse me? Witness? To what?' 'To my passing.' When Ulrich's request for assisted dying is approved, the author is plunged into a deep conflict. She'd not expected the approval, much less such an early date for her chosen father's self-determined death. As an undertaker, he'd cared for the bereaved and accompanied the deceased to their final resting place for over three decades. His positive nature, courage, and lust for life shaped his existence. Now he's decided to end his life. So the author joins him on a journey through his last five days. Can she stop fighting against the decision made long ago by the 'father of her heart'? And what comes after death? Questions to which the answers reveal themselves in unexpected moments and the ultimate end turns out to be nothing but a shift into new beginnings... A highly topical and touching book about the essential things that determine our humanity and which we all encounter in one way or another. A book about the power of love, acceptance, connection, and loss; about the pain and the vastness of the sky that opens when we transcend the periphery of our being.

Carola Gehrke, born in 1965, studied biology, German literature and pedagogics at the Technical University, Berlin, in order to become a teacher. Early on she realized that her vision of intuitive learning and self empowering students was in opposition with the school system of the time. So instead she focused on completing an MSc in biology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn. During a student expedition to Northern Swedish Lapland, she fell in love with nature north of the polar circle, and subsequently went on to work as a nature guide and researcher at ANS Abisko Scientific Research Station for five consecutive winters and summers. In cooperation with the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat and BAS British Antarctic Survey, she also participated in research expeditions to the Antarctic and Svalbard. In 1991, Carola moved to Sweden and obtained her PhD in biology about global climate change effects on arctic ecosystems at Lund University and completed a post doc at Copenhagen University. An ecologist at heart, she's always believed there has to be more to 'the science of life' - which biology signified for her - than experiments and numbers. Already as a teenager, she'd written poetry inspired by nature and had never understood the common separation between the humanities and the natural sciences. For her, the two complement one another and belong together. Leaving 'hard core' science in 2000, she moved to the warmer climate of Los Angeles. As Dean of Doctoral Programs in Integrative Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine at Yo San University, she implemented and developed the curricula and passionately supervised PhD students, facilitating both their integrative research and personal growth. Since 2013, she has lived in Berlin, resuming her vision of intuitive teaching and developing techniques to simplify learning for her students in Swedish, English, and German. After gaining first hand experience in using energy for healing purposes, she teamed up with a kinesiologist to explore the complex interplay between the function of the human body, free flow of energy, and processes in the conscious and subconscious mind. In her spare time, Carola loves strolling around in nature, marveling at its complexity and wonders. Fascinated by ancient cultures, her hobbies include ethnic music, oriental belly dancing, and practicing bow and arrow shooting. She continues to write poetry and short stories, and is working on her first novel.