Martin’s downy neck lost its colour, his hands around Dad’s neck turned transparent like water. For a moment Dad held a body of water in his arms; a perfect, transparent sculpture of Martin.
Then the surface broke and the water fell to the floor in a shower of glittering drops, and when they fell against the cement tiles they sounded like rain. A still, warm spring rain, washing the world clean.
Dad just stood there with his eyes closed, his clothes soaked, his arms bent as if he were still embracing a child. I watched his closed eyelids, frightened of what I might see in his eyes when they opened. Would he be the same as he had been just after Martin’s death? Back to those weeks when he couldn’t get out of bed?
Neither of us spoke. Dad kept his eyes closed and I kept watching. And then he opened his eyes, and in that instant I knew that it was all over.
The grief that had been in his gaze for so long was still there, but I saw something new as well. Or rather, I saw something that had been missing for so long that I almost had forgotten what it looked like.
Life. There was life in Dad’s eyes again.
So slowly and still, so completely without pain.
Chapter Nineteen
A K IND OF AN E NDING
H enrietta died at dawn, between night and day. A window was open in her room, and the air that sifted in was cool. The first blackbird of the new day started singing in the garden, and I thought I saw a smile on her sleeping face as she heard it.
Dad and I held Henrietta’s old hands in ours and watched life seeping out of her for almost an hour. There was nothing fearsome in it. On the contrary: it went so slowly and still, so completely without pain. Her breathing became weaker and weaker, until it stopped altogether.
Dad pulled the sheet carefully over her face, and then we went downstairs together to get something to eat. The first ray of sunlight broke through the mosaic in the stained-glass window on the stairs just as I passed it. I stopped and let it shine on my closed eyes for a couple of seconds.
Henrietta had lived a long life, and now she was gone. The earth kept turning, leaving behind an empty space in the world. What else can you say about the life of a human being?
I lean back and look at the words I have written. It feels like a kind of ending, but it’s too early to know. Perhaps I’ll recall something that I’ll want to add in due course.
I’m writing this sitting in my special study. It’s dark around me, but the screen on Dad’s old laptop—which is mine now—lights up my face. I know that it’s just a computer screen, but I can’t help thinking of it as a window, or perhaps a door. A shining opening into all the days I have not yet lived.
It has been almost two years since the morning when Henrietta died, and I’m fourteen now. Older than Wilma was then, and we are still living here. In the end it turned out that no one apart from Kajsa wanted to sell Henrietta’s house, so we divided it into flats instead. Mum, Dad and I live on the second floor, and Daniel, Signe and Erland live on the floor below. The ground floor is divided into a shared sitting room and a flat, which Kajsa sold. A young Iranian family lives there now, with a littlegirl who Mum says looks exactly like me when I was that age.
Mum turned up at Henrietta’s house after only a couple of days, and she and Dad took care of all the practical matters. There was a lot to be done, of course. Mum said that there usually is when somebody dies. A lot of everyday things that no one has thought of suddenly turn up and have to be dealt with. In the evenings I lay under the table in the dining room and listened to their calm voices. They made phone calls, found solutions. After a while Dad started writing again, and then he bought a new computer. In the afternoons I’d write my diary on his old computer, while I listened to him tapping on his keyboard in the next room. It was so like everything I’ve ever dreamt of that
Then the surface broke and the water fell to the floor in a shower of glittering drops, and when they fell against the cement tiles they sounded like rain. A still, warm spring rain, washing the world clean.
Dad just stood there with his eyes closed, his clothes soaked, his arms bent as if he were still embracing a child. I watched his closed eyelids, frightened of what I might see in his eyes when they opened. Would he be the same as he had been just after Martin’s death? Back to those weeks when he couldn’t get out of bed?
Neither of us spoke. Dad kept his eyes closed and I kept watching. And then he opened his eyes, and in that instant I knew that it was all over.
The grief that had been in his gaze for so long was still there, but I saw something new as well. Or rather, I saw something that had been missing for so long that I almost had forgotten what it looked like.
Life. There was life in Dad’s eyes again.
So slowly and still, so completely without pain.
Chapter Nineteen
A K IND OF AN E NDING
H enrietta died at dawn, between night and day. A window was open in her room, and the air that sifted in was cool. The first blackbird of the new day started singing in the garden, and I thought I saw a smile on her sleeping face as she heard it.
Dad and I held Henrietta’s old hands in ours and watched life seeping out of her for almost an hour. There was nothing fearsome in it. On the contrary: it went so slowly and still, so completely without pain. Her breathing became weaker and weaker, until it stopped altogether.
Dad pulled the sheet carefully over her face, and then we went downstairs together to get something to eat. The first ray of sunlight broke through the mosaic in the stained-glass window on the stairs just as I passed it. I stopped and let it shine on my closed eyes for a couple of seconds.
Henrietta had lived a long life, and now she was gone. The earth kept turning, leaving behind an empty space in the world. What else can you say about the life of a human being?
I lean back and look at the words I have written. It feels like a kind of ending, but it’s too early to know. Perhaps I’ll recall something that I’ll want to add in due course.
I’m writing this sitting in my special study. It’s dark around me, but the screen on Dad’s old laptop—which is mine now—lights up my face. I know that it’s just a computer screen, but I can’t help thinking of it as a window, or perhaps a door. A shining opening into all the days I have not yet lived.
It has been almost two years since the morning when Henrietta died, and I’m fourteen now. Older than Wilma was then, and we are still living here. In the end it turned out that no one apart from Kajsa wanted to sell Henrietta’s house, so we divided it into flats instead. Mum, Dad and I live on the second floor, and Daniel, Signe and Erland live on the floor below. The ground floor is divided into a shared sitting room and a flat, which Kajsa sold. A young Iranian family lives there now, with a littlegirl who Mum says looks exactly like me when I was that age.
Mum turned up at Henrietta’s house after only a couple of days, and she and Dad took care of all the practical matters. There was a lot to be done, of course. Mum said that there usually is when somebody dies. A lot of everyday things that no one has thought of suddenly turn up and have to be dealt with. In the evenings I lay under the table in the dining room and listened to their calm voices. They made phone calls, found solutions. After a while Dad started writing again, and then he bought a new computer. In the afternoons I’d write my diary on his old computer, while I listened to him tapping on his keyboard in the next room. It was so like everything I’ve ever dreamt of that
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