Recently I was in Germany for just two nights to see Opa Karl who was sick and not getting better. He has had prostate cancer for years and perhaps it had spread, or perhaps more cancer had developed, or perhaps something totally different was going on. We didn't know for sure since he had limited diagnostic procedures done because he didn't want treatment anyway. Regardless, he had lost his appetite and then stopped eating. I saw him at Beate's house, where he had moved in just the week before, lying on a pull-out couch in their guest room. He no longer wanted to read, watch TV, or listen to the radio and instead spent his time drifting in and out of sleep. The window was open letting the spring sun and breeze into the room. His room was cool and quiet with just the sounds of the neighbor children playing drifting through. He was weak, but still lucid and would speak intermittently in a low, slow tone.
Just a little over a week after my visit he passed away, with Beate holding his hand. And with him passed an entire era of our lives, now finished.
As kids, once we were old enough to travel alone, my siblings and I began visiting Germany for six weeks during the summer, rotating in turns of two or three of us at once. We spent three weeks with my dad's parents, Omi and Opa Hans, and three weeks with Opa Karl and Oma. Both sets of grandparents lived in Heidenheim, the small town where both of my parents had grown up.
Oma and Opa lived in a house with a cellar with stone floors and walls, two middle floors, and an unfinished wooden attic under the slanted roof. They had built the house themselves shortly after World War II ended and have lived there since. Vera and I often rooted through the closets upstairs looking for old clothing or accessories that might have belonged to our mother, Inge. There were years and years of history neatly stored up there.
The entire back yard was a patch work of garden beds, covered planters, berry bushes, and two compost bins in the very back. There was a large apple tree on one side and the glass enclosures with the tomato plants closest to the house. There were large green barrels to collect rain water that had bugs skimming on the surface. Charlotte used to reach her hands in and drink out of them.
The houses in the neighborhood were close together and the streets were narrow with just enough room to drive by the cars parked along the side. The road was perfect for playing or biking since the occasional car had to go very slowly. And in that cellar there was a row of bikes of various sizes waiting for us to ride.
Our summer days with Oma and Opa were long and lazy. We biked around the neighborhood or sometimes into town, we played badminton in the street, we watched the summer Olympics, Tour de France, tennis, or the World Cup, we rooted through old picture albums, we practiced on Oma's sewing machine, we peeled potatoes, we hung wet laundry on the clothes line in the yard, we helped harvest vegetables from the garden for dinner, we pressed fresh apple sauce, we made jam from fresh berries, and we ate carrots straight out of the ground and tomatoes fresh off the vine.
The atmosphere was always warm and calm and routine. When Oma cooked she opened the kitchen window that looked out to the road. Occasionally a bee flew in and she'd shoo it out with her bare hands, never getting stung. When given the choice we always begged to eat at the kitchen table with the built in corner bench rather than the dining room. If we spoke too much English or were arguing Oma would tell us to stop. That's enough she'd say and we'd stop. She was calm and sturdy and loving, but also no nonsense. Actually, totally hard core. She mended the holes in our clothes, hemmed our pants, baked amazing cakes, and bent over backwards to take care of us.
Opa was a very practical person, always. As we grew older he liked to tell us about his health, his family history, and his views on politics and the news. Somehow he managed to explain everything in percentages and averages. He was a mechanical genius. He could build and fix anything from car engines to laundry baskets to toys to appliances. He bought a small electric car long before they were popular. However, his was smaller than a Smart Car and the battery would last for 30 miles or something like that before it needed to be charged again. He let us drive it in a gravel parking lot. We were just kids so he sat in the passenger seat and offered a lot of not-calm-sounding instructions. When we were older and had our drivers licenses he let us drive his actual car. He drove that car in a way that resulted in maximum fuel efficiency. When he drove he’d turn the engine off at red lights, always shift to a higher gear early, and once considered (or maybe really did?) removing the side mirrors to reduce drag. His driving lessons consisted of him yelling "shift slowly" (in German obviously) over and over. His standards were tough to meet. After one particularly bad driving experience with him I came back to the house pretty pissed off and Oma just laughed. She said Inge was just as frustrated when he had taught her how to drive. Obviously, I felt better instantly.
Opa had the biggest hands and largest fingers I have ever seen on anyone. Sometimes he would take the knuckle of his big, rough pointer finger and affectionately brush it against your cheek. He did that several times as I was sitting on his bed saying goodbye to him for the last time.
I could go on for many more paragraphs about all of my memories. But honestly, trying to write them down diminishes them somehow. The words just don’t do them justice. My memories of Oma and Opa are burned into my brain with such vividness that I can smell their house if I think about walking through their front door. I can recreate every picture hanging on every wall and every piece of furniture in my mind. I can feel exactly what it was like to kiss each of them goodnight. When we were kids, their house was our summer camp, our vacation home, and our refuge from an otherwise often tumultuous family. It was also our connection to Inge, our beginnings, and Germany. Even as a child I knew our utopia (as Jonas rightly called it) wouldn’t always be there. I remember visiting once in middle or high school and laying in bed at night crying realizing that one day Oma and Opa and their house would no longer be there for us to visit. That day came slowly, first with Oma getting sick and dying, and then the house being sold, and now with Opa passing away as well. And the finality of it all is as hard and awful as I had pictured it. For now I’m just going to bask in that sadness because I don’t really want to feel better about it yet.
1 comment:
I am glad you did write some of it down, you did it very beautifully and it is all so true. While it is gone it is still real and big in our hearts and memories, a tiny slice of eternity.
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