Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire by Ursula Hegi
Authors: Ursula Hegi
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and almost believed his death had been waiting for him in that meadow all along.
The Thread of His Grieving
O nce I was almost caught stealing flowers for my brother’s grave. I’d done it before, making sure to check the paths of the Burgdorf cemetery before I took flowers from other graves, but I never took more than one. I’d gather them in my hands until Joachim got a bigger bouquet than anyone else, and I’d try to feel the sadness I read about in our housekeeper’s romances.
In those books there was always the single tear that slid down the heroine’s cheek without blemishing her complexion or dignity. I can still see myself at twelve, trying to squeeze out that one significant tear. But I simply wasn’t skilled at producing tears; I cried too seldom, and the few times I did, it was in wet, noisy gulps of frustration over something Rolf had said or done. Most of our battles were over his mother’s attention, which I had to reclaim every day and he took home with him at night.
How I yearned for real tragedy. But the most tragic thing in my life—my brother’s death—had happened when I was two, and I couldn’t even remember his face, or touching him. He was just a sequence of letters on the family headstone below the names of my mother’s parents;still, he was my only link to real tragedy, and I kept returning to the cemetery, trying to feel his loss.
I badgered my parents with questions about his death, and I took their words and filled in the spaces until I could evoke the afternoon he’d died and watch it on an inner screen like a film I could rewind or stop at will. Since we had no photos of Joachim, his features kept changing for me, but he always had reddish hair like my father.
My mother rocked my brother for three hours after he died. He was only nine days old. Sitting on a wooden chair inside the hospital room, she held him in her arms, rocking her upper body back and forth though her chair stayed motionless. It was as though the nuns’ prophecy about her pregnancy with me had suddenly caught up with her.
At first my father tried to have her relinquish the dead infant to the nurse who spoke to my mother in soothing words. He felt powerless as she sat there, staring straight ahead, her body rigid, their child in her arms, rocking. Rocking. Finally, allowing his grief to match hers, my father knelt beside her, his arms around her and his son, his body a shadow of her rocking motion.
And so my mother sat there for hours, her arms around my brother, encircled by my father’s arms. From time to time the doctor entered the room, and my father told him, “Not yet.” By now he felt the soothing rocking himself, felt the thread of his grieving woven into that of my mother’s.
The muted light of the winter afternoon gave way to dusk that stripped the white from the walls and made all sounds in the street seem to come from far away. My father laid one finger against the cheek of his child. Only a few hours earlier his son was still breathing, a sound as if he were blowing bubbles from a place deep within his narrowchest. His face was flushed, but slowly it turned ashen. Though his cheeks stayed red for a while, they soon faded until his skin became translucent and his lips took on a bluish tinge. And his rattly breathing—it made the room seem small and opened up a wish in my father, the wish for it to end, the wish to spare Joachim the struggle as his lungs filled with fluid.
Gradually my mother’s body lost some of the rigidity that first made her cling to the child while others tried to take him from her. My father knew she’d be able to let go—not yet, though—but with each moment it seemed more possible. He knew this child, knew the way his hands had formed fists, then released themselves into curled fingers as he nursed. He knew the way his son’s eyes had resisted closing when he fell asleep as if he sensed how brief his life would be and felt reluctant to miss one single
The Thread of His Grieving
O nce I was almost caught stealing flowers for my brother’s grave. I’d done it before, making sure to check the paths of the Burgdorf cemetery before I took flowers from other graves, but I never took more than one. I’d gather them in my hands until Joachim got a bigger bouquet than anyone else, and I’d try to feel the sadness I read about in our housekeeper’s romances.
In those books there was always the single tear that slid down the heroine’s cheek without blemishing her complexion or dignity. I can still see myself at twelve, trying to squeeze out that one significant tear. But I simply wasn’t skilled at producing tears; I cried too seldom, and the few times I did, it was in wet, noisy gulps of frustration over something Rolf had said or done. Most of our battles were over his mother’s attention, which I had to reclaim every day and he took home with him at night.
How I yearned for real tragedy. But the most tragic thing in my life—my brother’s death—had happened when I was two, and I couldn’t even remember his face, or touching him. He was just a sequence of letters on the family headstone below the names of my mother’s parents;still, he was my only link to real tragedy, and I kept returning to the cemetery, trying to feel his loss.
I badgered my parents with questions about his death, and I took their words and filled in the spaces until I could evoke the afternoon he’d died and watch it on an inner screen like a film I could rewind or stop at will. Since we had no photos of Joachim, his features kept changing for me, but he always had reddish hair like my father.
My mother rocked my brother for three hours after he died. He was only nine days old. Sitting on a wooden chair inside the hospital room, she held him in her arms, rocking her upper body back and forth though her chair stayed motionless. It was as though the nuns’ prophecy about her pregnancy with me had suddenly caught up with her.
At first my father tried to have her relinquish the dead infant to the nurse who spoke to my mother in soothing words. He felt powerless as she sat there, staring straight ahead, her body rigid, their child in her arms, rocking. Rocking. Finally, allowing his grief to match hers, my father knelt beside her, his arms around her and his son, his body a shadow of her rocking motion.
And so my mother sat there for hours, her arms around my brother, encircled by my father’s arms. From time to time the doctor entered the room, and my father told him, “Not yet.” By now he felt the soothing rocking himself, felt the thread of his grieving woven into that of my mother’s.
The muted light of the winter afternoon gave way to dusk that stripped the white from the walls and made all sounds in the street seem to come from far away. My father laid one finger against the cheek of his child. Only a few hours earlier his son was still breathing, a sound as if he were blowing bubbles from a place deep within his narrowchest. His face was flushed, but slowly it turned ashen. Though his cheeks stayed red for a while, they soon faded until his skin became translucent and his lips took on a bluish tinge. And his rattly breathing—it made the room seem small and opened up a wish in my father, the wish for it to end, the wish to spare Joachim the struggle as his lungs filled with fluid.
Gradually my mother’s body lost some of the rigidity that first made her cling to the child while others tried to take him from her. My father knew she’d be able to let go—not yet, though—but with each moment it seemed more possible. He knew this child, knew the way his hands had formed fists, then released themselves into curled fingers as he nursed. He knew the way his son’s eyes had resisted closing when he fell asleep as if he sensed how brief his life would be and felt reluctant to miss one single
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