Requiem [COMPLETED]

I Can't Handle the Truth and Other Truths I Can't Handle

I reread the diaries. I found the entry where grandma mentions her son Sven had disappeared; it was distraught, full of fear. My beautiful boy, she wrote. My beautiful boy, not you. When she stopped writing about Clifford, the tone was absent; the person behind the written words had in effect vanished. No thoughts, no feelings were written anymore. Just actions. Then Cee turned 18; Per said no to her working in town any longer because he thought she had started seeing a boy. Then Cee disappears from the diary entries too. How could one's own mother simply stop writing about them, as if they'd never existed? How can people just vanish? Wouldn't someone look for them? Or start asking questions? Maybe they ran away, since grandpa was so strict. Some things in the entries didn't add up, didn't make sense; I started to wonder if grandma was completely okay; she'd always seemed odd but I hadn't thought to doubt her sanity.

I had brought a list of questions I'd accumulated while reading through the diaries. I had forgotten all about it during the visit, taken aback by her reactions. Now I read through them, trying figure out the answers myself, writing in tentative answers that were really just more questions. I was her mother, somehow? And nothing happened? In such an amalgam I could hardly rejoice in the latter answer, even though a few answers managed to cross out some unknowns. The answers as a whole just made everything more confusing, made me more anxious rather than less.

Reading through all those volumes, several things struck me: The change in personality of the writer was so stark. Grandma was Vivian, and despite the early moment of clarity in our conversation, for the most part she was just like the last journal entries: vague, making excuses, rambling about things inconsequential to what was going on that went unwritten.

Over the years after Severn's disappearance, several additional people disappear, but this was never mentioned or explained. They had four children: Sven, Celia, Clifford, and Birgit, who all at some point simply are never written about or mentioned again. I don't know what happened. Our mom's name was Birgit? I couldn't recall her proper name being said, except at the funeral, and now the memory had faded too much. And if mom shared the name of our step-sister, was it just a coincidence?--I wrote a note to look into this on the margin of the page.

Per was Grandpa. He seemed to morph over time, changing significantly from journal to journal. He became increasingly religious after marrying grandma; she mentions his quotations more often as time goes on. He starts off as mild, meek, and gradually has more outbursts of rage or sullenness followed by contrition, and eventually showed casual, almost daily violence towards his family. Who was this man who became a beast? Per seemed to display a level of anger I couldn't see in grandpa. Was my grandpa really the same person? I'd thought of his quiet happiness when I'd returned home that afternoon and briefly hugged him, relieved to be away from a woman who made me feel nothing but uncertainty. Of how he kept encouraging me to clean my plate, worried I wasn't eating enough. The more I 'discovered' the less things made sense.

* * *

In the darkness I was sitting in bed, unable to sleep. I had not been afraid of the dark since I was very young, but now it felt like it was lurking, a sentient thing pushing in on me like smoke trying seep into my lungs and poison me. Even though I was a teenager I felt scared of the night, of being alone and of unknown entities who cursed us and were coming after us. After me. And I was the only one left, other than grandpa and grandma.

I began to cry quietly. I wasn't sure what I was crying about; whether it was Sven, or Grandma, or something else--a bad dream about darkness. I crawled out of bed and did something I hadn't for a very long time. I flung my arms across the coverlet, my head bowed. There was no prayer on my lips, but I hoped God still knew my heart, and could hear the words I was too scared to think of. I feel alone. It still feels new, this loss; I thought the pain was supposed to lessen. I don't want to face whatever this is alone. I wish Sven was with me now. Make me brave. Make me brave. Don't let me give up, or give away the hope that is in me. Make me brave.