Requiem [COMPLETED]

Dissolution

There were skiffs and shadows of snow that looked like accrued frost from so many mornings' frozen dew at the coming of winter. The world outside was all tones of paleness, and all the plants were skeletons of themselves, as if transfigured by the passage of fall into the afterlife. Their ossified fingers stretched out, as if hungry for the warmth that leeched out through the thick glass pane behind which the three people sat.

It was nearly December. The light was already becoming thin, waning towards the solstice. In the pallid light grandma's face seemed full of angles and thinness, like ice crystals. She looked old, much older than I had ever thought before.

Sven sat by her; he watched her with a quiet affection and devotion that almost made me choke on envy. How could he give so much to someone who he saw a handful of times in childhood, who abandoned us to a risk-filled uncertainty? Someone who gave so little?

I couldn't help it. "You said you've made several mistakes about family but you keep saying that they were the most important thing in your life."

She looked very sad and a bit defensive. "There was nothing I could have done. I was powerless, helpless. No one wanted to step in and talk to Per because they were afraid of his temper too."

"Yet from your diaries it always sounds like you went to great pains to hide any hardship and tried to keep the family really self-contained, not letting other people know when something bad happened."

"I never gave you permission to read my diaries," she snapped, suddenly angry. "How did you get them in the first place? I was sure Per had destroyed them after I left; it was the type of thing he'd do when the kids left." Then, softly, "He was gone. Per never said where."

"Gone?"

"Yes, gone."

"So he ran away?"

"Well, he certainly wasn't at the farm," she snapped, impatient at Sven's curiosity, as if it were an irritating fly hovering. "We all had a lot on our plate already and then he ran out on us." Tears came in her eyes. "He was my baby, my first child. I still wonder how he could do that to me." She wiped away the mist. "But I don't like to talk about those things, those terribly sad things. There's nothing can be done to the past and I've never been one to indulge in self-pity or regret. We mustn't talk about those things anymore; I get depressed and can't sleep."

"Is that why you just stopped writing about them? They left home? You never said another word about either of the boys."

"I don't want to talk about them with you; it's none of your business."

"What was Sven like, grandma?" asked Sven rather humbly. Calculating, I thought. "Did mom name me after him? I never knew where my name came from."

She responded a bit crisply, though calmer. "Yes, he was your mother's favorite. You look like him. You don't have anyone's voice; yours is different than anyone in our family. You have his eyes. He was always popular with the girls at school."

Sven smiled at that. I forgot how handsome my brother could seem because he was so often sulking or pensive when it was just the two of us.

"He was a bit shorter than you, but you're older than when I last saw him; you're full grown now?"

"Yeah, stopped when I was 18."

"You're 21 now?"

"And Sigrid's 18. Birgit would have been 26."

Grandma stared off, remembering the child long gone.

"Grandma, I know you did the best you could," said Sven. "We know; we grew up with grandpa too."