THE MYSTERY

My grandmother’s picture, on an old newspaper clipping, came in yesterday’s mail, sent to me by a relative The clipping was written in German, and on the top edge of the paper written in faded ink was the date 6.9.1934. The elderly woman in the picture, leaning on the arm of her granddaughter, who must have been one of my many distant relatives, stood tall and proud in a warm sweater, her white hair combed neatly to the back of her head, a half smile on her lips. The words, translated into English next to the picture, gave me her name and family connection:

"Mrs. Theresia Driessen, widow of Josef Cornely, will be 90 today. The birthday child will have a lot of stories to relate and has not lost her sense of humor in spite of her many years."

My grandmother had a sense of humor? That was good to know. I could see the resemblance, especially to my father’s face and now, when I look in the mirror, mine. She must have died a year or so after her birthday because it was in 1935 when something almost unbelievable happened that I have never been able to forget.

I was twelve years old, living in New Jersey and sharing a bedroom with my sister who was thirteen and a half at the time. My parent’s bedroom was next to ours. There was a connecting door, always left partially open, through which we could hear much of the nighttime conversation between them, their often intense arguments, their hopes, their tears…tears and weeping that were sometimes loud enough to awaken us and fill us with sadness and dread.

Mother was usually the one who wept in frustration at night; this time it was my father. He was so loud, so upset, and making such great gasping sounds that my sister and I were frightened. Father was usually the calm one, comforting mother who worried day and night about our older brother who was diabetic. Diabetes was a death sentence in those days, and he died when he was thirty-three.

I lay there for awhile, listening to my father and finally crept into their room to ask him why he was crying. My sister remained behind, shaking under the covers; she hated confrontation. "Was ist los, Papa? What is wrong, Papa?" I asked.

His face was contorted in grief and he grasped my hand in his.

Mother was trying to comfort him, "Shhh, Josef!" she whispered, softly. "You were dreaming."

"No! No!" My father shouted, adamant, brushing her hand away. "It wasn’t a dream. Mama was here. She was sitting right next to me. I felt the bed go down when she sat on it. She touched my face, Julia!" He seemed filled with a terrible, overwhelming sadness and then whispered the words once again. "She touched me and told me she had to go away. She just wanted to see me one more time."

I listened enraptured. Grandmother lived across the ocean in Germany. She was in her nineties and I hadn’t seen her since I was three years old, when I left her house and came to America to live. I had only one memory of her in her kitchen, a vivid memory of a huge tureen of soup she’d made, thick with mussels in black shells, steamed until they opened and, cooked in a creamy milk mixture which she ladled into wide rimmed white soup bowls. I guess it was the smell I remembered most because I have never eaten any mussels since that time.

My grandmother had been a very wealthy woman before World War I, but she’d lost everything except her home, and her housekeeper. She was seventy-nine at the time, and I was three. Now Papa said he saw her, here, by his bed. She lived so far away in Germany. How could that be?

"She told me not to worry, Julia," Papa repeated, his eyes brimming over. "She said she was happy but wanted to see me one more time before she had to go away."

"Now, Josef," my mother chided him. "You know that can’t be. Go back to sleep Liebschen. See! You frightened Betty," she admonished, seeing my startled face.

"She was here Julia," he insisted, speaking more calmly now as he dried his eyes on the edge of the crumpled bed sheet. "I swear she was. She said not to feel bad because she was truly happy now."

"There! You see," said mother, almost frantically, "Your mother said she was fine; so don’t worry. Sometimes dreams can be very, very real."

But Papa wouldn’t give up and he repeated his story again, fresh tears rolling down his face, dripping on my cheek when I tried to kiss him.

"There! There! Josef! Go to sleep now," soothed mother, once again.

I went back to my room, dazed by what I’d heard. My sister was pretending to be asleep in bed, and my parent’s voices had lowered to soft mutterings and the sweet sounds of reassuring kisses.

It was about ten days later that my parents received a letter from Germany, edged in black as death notices were in those days. Amazingly, my grandmother had died the very night of my father’s "dream." Had she really come from her deathbed, through time and space, to see her son one more time before she traveled to heavenly places? Is there really a time we are granted after death to fill the unfulfilled desires of our hearts? My father and my grandmother seemed to have that experience. It is a mystery we may never fully understand until we leave this earth.

What other mysteries will we finally be able to understand? In death, will there be knowledge about an amazing place that we can only dream of now? This is a voyage we all must make, a final voyage into the beyond. Will it lead us to the ultimate answer of life’s questions: Why are we on this earth? Where will we go when life is over? Will we see God? Will He really be there to welcome us home?

Today it is a mystery, but tomorrow will come, and then I hope, that like my grandmother, I too, will be able to say to my loved ones, "Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m happy."

Ó Copyright 2002 by Liz Kollar