The three women lost their mother the day before. From her portrait on the wall she is now observing their work. Surrounded by crates, boxes and chairs covered in clothing, much of it thirty or forty years old, hand-sewn, of fine fabric, they toil. They find shoes never worn, their gifts for her, never opened but carefully stored, a life to be sorted and dismantled, ordered and filed away.
Which are suitable items to be distributed among grandchildren? Where to store them for now? What should, what can the daughter from Canada choose as a keepsake for her grown children, of a grandmother remembered from brief visits, long ago, on both sides of the Atlantic?
If only the sisters could negotiate for more time here, that they might be allowed to slow down, have a chance to say goodbye, but the caretaker appears at the door again, ready to transport more boxes and baskets to the waiting car. Six garbage bags sit out in the hall. At noon the next day the decorators will be here, stripping Mother’s walls of paper and that yellowing poster in the far corner that no one was able to safely remove. The cell phone rings among all the strewn about possessions and isn’t found in time to be answered.
A sister comes to the door to offer them coffee and cookies on a tray, the sister who had prayed at Mother’s bedside during the last hours.
She is thanked warmly, the tray placed on the empty bed, the women reach for their cups and sip, avoiding eye contact. Let’s just get through this and leave, now that it’s over.
“I was immensely moved by the Requiem Mass last night,” says Anna, “all those people in wheel chairs rolling into the chapel downstairs, and someone on crutches. And isn’t the Priest a perfect package of good news? Isn’t he? And Mother wasn’t even Catholic, which he knows perfectly well.”
“Yes, yes,” says Nadja, “but all this is still awful. By the way, did you see him leave? The Priest? On his heavy motorbike? His Harley?”
“She contributed to and enriched the culture of the place, the director said. He had a copy of the poem she wrote for his last birthday,” says Anna.
“Oh really,” says Korinna, “she was still writing them! Amazing, isn’t it? At 94.”
That’s the caretaker at the door again looking at his watch. He’s off for the day, and they assure him they’ll be back in the morning.
Tonight they will take in-laws, nieces and nephews and their significant others out for dinner to celebrate Oma’s life.
“I’ll look after these clippings,” says Anna, pulling a chair towards the window now. Guiltily, she sets up a new garbage bag to receive ancient ads, letters to an editor on a long forgotten subject, with mother’s neat, tiny handwriting on the margin. Articles saved and never passed on to the intended beneficiary. There were four identical envelopes with the names of her four children, all containing a copy of the same poem.
An Sich, by Paul Flemming (1609 – 1640)
Sey dennoch unverzagt! Gieb dennoch unverloren!
Weich keinem Glücke nicht, steh höher als der Neid,
vergnüge dich an dir und acht es für kein Leid,
Hat sich gleich wider dich Glück, Ort und Zeit verschworen.
Was dich betrübt und labt, halt alles für erkoren,
Nimm dein Verhängnis an. Lass alles unbereut.
Tu was gethan muss sein, und eh man dir’s gebeut.
Nadja had held vigil by her bedside the whole night before Mother died, relieved the thirst with little teaspoons of water, Nadja her second, and her special, favourite child.
“Look, here she kept notes on Foffie’s activities at the university in 1968,” says Anna, “likely news of fresh disasters, protests, demonstrations, emergency meetings. Let’s save these for him. And oh, here she has an envelope of features with your by-line, Korinna.”
Anna begins to sort papers into shiny file folders given to Mother to keep track of her possessions, never used, and very handy today.
“Oh look, here’s a book by one of her gurus on early childhood education, published in 1931,” says Korinna, “dog-eared and with neatly underlined pages on sibling jealousy.”
“She always wanted us to have a perfect childhood — health food from the Reform House, clean air, creative toys, ballet class for us all, music lessons —” says Nadja.
“A different childhood from her own. I think we’ve known how hard she struggled to get it right, Pestalozzi and Fröbel at the ready,” says Anna. “So what do they have to say about sibling rivalry?”
“Oh dear, a lot. They go on and on,” says Korinna, “and she has covered all the pages in notes.”
“You were an infant then, Nadja,” says Anna, “I must have been a beast. Poor mother.”
“Let’s keep the book, put it over here,” says Korinna, starting a fresh box.
“I wonder when she realized that her philosophy on child rearing was about to be challenged,” says Nadja. “She must have been very upset, as a professional as well as a mother.”
“In the summer of 1933, to be precise,” says Anna. “She told me once that when Korinna was born hospitals were already handing out sheets on the new style baby-care. Infants were to be left alone in their crib, except for feeding, bathing and diaper changes. They were not to be picked up every time they cried, and fed on a strict time schedule.”
“I remember being ignored,” says Korinna slowly.
“You REMEMBER?” asks Nadja.
Nadja had arranged them in a suitcase by the bed, but out come the photo albums. The crinkle-framed black and white photos show three small girls in the bathtub, laughing, three small girls in a row boat, climbing a tree, in a sand box, in front of a Christmas tree, on a walk, with Korinna, the youngest girl, holding the hand of a kind, dark haired smiling woman. And there, a picture of Korinna sitting on a kitchen table with Kati tying her shoelaces. There is only one photo with Mother, Kati and girls in the back yard, a picture of harmony.
“Anyway, she was very good with Mother,” Anna repeats.
“Oh, look, there we were all roller skating in front of the house in Berlin. Is that Lilly? No, it’s Canada! Where have these photos been! I wonder what happened to her. Last time I saw her, we ran into each other on the subway, after I returned from Hildesheim. I’ll never forget the day we met them, though, her and her brother Dirk, before the war,” says Anna.
“Wonderful neighbours,” says Nadja.
“Friends, I would say,” Korinna adds. “Weren’t they?”