the final week
- Missy La Vone
- Mar 21
- 5 min read
I pass Oma's neighbor today in the stairwell. I didn't realize she ever left her apartment without medical transport, but there she was, hobbling up the steps with a cane. Alles langsam, she says. Man must move themselves--a phrase I heard from Oma and Opa for years. She tells me she got along well with Oma and Opa, and especially Opa, who helped so much. The rest of the weekend I spend hours going through old binders and shredding files. Amid the chaos, I find a piece of paper that tracks all the monetary gifts Opa gave us throughout our life. Of course I agree: he helped so much.
I walk to the greenway to bask in the afternoon sun but the clouds hang over the torn-up field and blanket the rays. In the shade, my fingers grow cold from the wind. I tuck into my jacket, look out at the dirt mounds overtaking dead grass with abundant earth: signs of life from the underground. Have I been there too, forging tunnels to fresh air? Can I inhale now? The forecast is sun the rest of the week, and I leave for America in less than seven days.
On Monday I go to the Amstgericht for my Erbschein appointment. I arrive early so walk around the park square. The tulips are beginning to bloom, fresh strong shoots of Easter green, Easter eggs of luxurious silky yellow and violet. Across the grass, a woman pushes an elderly woman in a wheelchair as a bicycle whizzes by. An orange garbage truck creeps slowly through the park. A pigeon flaps its wings.
Inside the building, a security guards tell me to go sit in an empty room, and I wait 15 minutes and then walk back downstairs and tell them this just can't be right, and then they find the man who had been waiting on me. He carries a chair into his office and invites me to sit, and he reads a long paragraph of German legalize in such a calm and strong and soothing voice, and I sign even though I have no idea what I signed, and he hands me a piece of paper and says, "This is the Erbschein" and I say wait, what, I thought I had to wait months, and he said Well, I imagine you're not in Germany for fun.
When I leave, the security guard asks if I'm off to America now, and I say one more week, and that I've been here for months and am ready. You've had enough of Germany, he smiles, and I say yes, plenty of it, I'm done.
During the two-day bus strike, I walk to the Arcaden, and then to the bank, and then to the gym. On the way there, I see a homeless man biking on an old mail bike with its giant empty front wagon, and I wonder what he plans to collect.
On the sidewalk, I walk past a slice of candy yellow woodblock cheese.
I daydream about how summer sounds like beads on bicycle wheels and the buzz of deep freeze in too-cold stores.
The Thursday before I leave, three people knock on my door: the apartment manager and two women with iPads and intentions: to take photos of the apartment and calculate what needs to be done before the next renter. They walk in and don't take off their shoes; they comment how everything is well taken care of. I hang in the hallway and cross my arms and wait. They talk about how nice it is that all the windows face out to the greenway. And then they say bye, and the apartment manager tells me to have a nice flight, and I thank him for everything.
Friday morning I invite Oma's nephew and his wife over to the apartment to take whatever they want. They show up within the hour and stand awkwardly at the door. Hallo, I smile at them, I'm Oma's grandchild. Bodo gives me a German handshake, so hard and sincere it almost hurts my shoulder. He talks about how fast everything went, how in December Oma had invited them for coffee, and a few weeks later he finds out she's dying in the hospital. He tried to visit her, he says, but she wasn't there when he showed up, and next thing he knows I'm telling him she's dead. There are tears in his eyes. I know, I say, over and over, I'm so sorry.
Him and his wife take a couple of suitcases, a record player, binoculars for their grandchildren, a coffee maker. They say they'll come back for the ladder. I hand them the keys, trust them to bring them back next week when I'm gone. It's a shame, I tell them, that we never met each other, that Danielle and I always thought Oma was the last one of our family alive. Well, it's a bit difficult, they said, living so far away. Bodo tells me he Skyped with Mom once or twice (his cousin) after Mom moved to America. He says he remembers them playing together in a garden when they were like six or seven. He says it's unbelievable how you can talk to someone on the phone and a few months later they're dead.
My last meal in the apartment is reheated noodles and sausage. And then I empty the fridge and the freezer of everything that could go bad. I toss onions and sprouting garlic in the trash. I throw away little containers of linseed oil, which Oma used to mix with quark. I leave the jar honey on the counter because there's still so much left. I leave the squeeze honey on the table, because it says Flotte Biene, and that's what Oma used to say she was, a little fast bee.
Saturday morning, I wake before the sun, when the moon still hangs in the sky. I face the Kinderzimmer window and watch a magpie couple build their nest. For weeks they've been laboring. The male's long tail balances awkward weight, stick by stick, as the female arranges the treasures he brings into a cozy little home. Every day I wonder what else he plans to bring: how much bigger can the nest get?
I read that some magpies return to the same nest year after year. I wonder who will be sitting here next spring, gazing out of the room my grandparents spent so much of their time. I wonder what pictures they will hang on the wall, what bread they will put in their basket, what mouths they will feed. I wonder what life they will be building.
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