For months I didn’t feel like writing, but time always rebalances me, encourages me to check back in. I was convinced I’d lose all the details, the purpose, the catharticism, but waiting this long was the right thing to do, because now I can actually hear my own voice. Now I can stand back and look over everything and say good lord, where have I even been?
When Austin arrived in Berlin at the beginning of February— more than a week after Danielle went back home— I didn't want him near me, didn't want anything close. I felt myself transitioning, needing every ounce of space to heal from the traumas of the last several years. Like both mom and Oma on their deathbeds, I didn’t want distractions. My mind was spiraling into existential questioning, obsessive thinking that the energy between us wasn’t quite right, that I’d fallen in love but was clawing back out. Being in a healthy relationship had fulfilled me for so long, but now? I was shedding it all off— grief, love, weight—retreating back to the version of myself I knew so well, who preached attachment avoidance while claiming I wanted nothing but genuine, powerful connections.
Austin reminded me: you have a lot going on. We've had a lot going on. December was all sickness. January all stress. It's cold and winter and Oma just died. Did her slack mouth, thin skin, glazed eyes remind me of a time in my life when everything was spinning, when my heart was stretched and breaking, when I embodied a version of myself I may not have otherwise been? Did Oma dying make me want what I don't have or want nothing at all?
I know you say you feel depressed sometimes, but this is different, Austin said. I've never seen you like this before.
He comforted me when I let him, but mostly we talked, and talked, and talked, until I felt myself coming back— first me, then us.
I sorted through photographs, rubber glove thumbs, bread ties and bent paper clips. Scraps, scraps, scraps, and ladybug stickers. Starched towels, bleached and faded and stiff. Blood stains and bottle caps. Eroded rubber bands. Used bread bags, a negative COVID test. Old account numbers, new account numbers. I crawled over carpet to look under shelves and inhaled clouds of dust. Each morning, I woke up sneezing.
Every day, I carried bags of clothes to the donation bin by Netto. I tossed away loads of ironed, ugly shirts from the dollar store, hearing Oma’s voice in my head: The streets look different now. No one goes out anymore in fine coats and heels. They worry someone will steal their nice things. This whole time, we thought they had such riches, but that's because they gave it all to us and spent the rest on vacations, villas by the sea where they always paid for breakfast.
How did the mental gloom pass? It was like trying on new skin, waking up and crawling in. And then there was vanity: new eyebrows, eyelashes. Pausing in the mirror for the first time in weeks.
Two weeks after Oma died, Danielle traveled here for another week. We made phone calls, folded boxes, decluttered the storage unit in the basement. We squirreled away photographs and silverware in our suitcases, wrapped glassware in silk scarves. Is it meaningful? Will it get used? We tore out full-color pages from spine-broken books, rescued vintage German recipes. I spent thirty minutes throwing package slips from the 1990s into a pile only to pull a lot of them back into the binder: that was our childhood, the contents of every package Oma and Opa ever sent us, Kinderschokolade and Katzenzungen. How do you toss love letters like these away when they remind you of twine net between your fingers, the thrill of slicing it open and diving in?
We ate a lot of currywurst, always with ketchup, sometimes with mayo. The place we loved most was the one by the corner, a few hundred feet from the Zimmerman bakery, across the way from the cheap store and the funeral home, the hole in the wall with an always dark hallway and a man in a suit. Do you have access to Oma's accounts? he’d asked when I showed up there a couple days after Oma died. No, I answered. And when you are going back to America? Maybe another month? Well then, he said, that's going to be quite difficult. We looked at each other; he waited for me to fix the problem. I think he tapped his pen. Do you have her PIN to her debit card? Well, yes, I guess I do, I said, but she just passed and wouldn’t that be weird to — go for it, he said. Please. Take the money out of her account (so I can get paid).
The whole thing has felt, at times, like a heist.
The neighbor pulled me from the hallway into her galley kitchen: please, pull cabinets apart, look under carpets, bookshelves. I went through so many other rooms and closets first. Dad told me to do it methodically; I didn't listen. Finally I found it, a purse strap tucked behind a plastic towel bin. Hasn't it been like this, finding treasures amid trash?
Danielle worried about taking things out, giving things away. But who would deny our inheritance when we're all over the walls? Who would deny us these frosted apple-shaped bowls, this beer-stained Stein, when above the entrance table hangs my favorite family photo, five-year-old me in my beloved sky blue dress? And what about over there, a headshot of me in a neon pink genie costume, and what about over there, an 8 by 10 of my least favorite yearbook photo, and what about in all the wallets, tiny prints of my sister and me and Mom, stacked portraits with scribbled dates? And what about all the post-its that exclaim: “Flug nach Nashville, November 14, 9:55 am”?
Here in Berlin there are tons of Entrümplers, companies you hire to get rid of all of your stuff. The first one showed up while Danielle was still here and told us many times, "This is a lot of stuff.” We shook our heads emphatically, but also what did he expect when we told him we were liquidating an entire apartment? He quoted us $2,400, which actually would have been a pretty good deal if we’d included the kitchen. But how would we know that "clearing out the apartment" actually means hacking out the whole kitchen: countertops, dishwasher, cabinets? Ceiling fixtures, curtain rods?
I guess here in this complex they burrow in, like the elderly neighbors who never leave without emergency transport. Like Oma in her bed in December after bragging for years about being a little buzzing bee: Why would I sit in the living room when there’s no one to talk to, and I can be warm and cozy in my bed? It’s not bad, I make it nice, I have my radio. (It's white plastic, red bow, something from the drugstore, but Danielle and I wrap it in a tea towel and say we’ll bring it home.)
This is all it is, I told the coordinator at the burial — just us three: Danielle, Austin, me. I wonder if she thinks Oma wasn’t loved? Should I have told her I found a long list of Oma and Opa’s friends and acquaintances that died from 2015 to 2017--imagine who else in the last seven years? I told Oma’s older sister about her loss, but I’m not sure she understood — the first time I called, a man answered the phone and said she had dementia.
At the burial, they didn't ring the church bell like they did for Opa; there weren’t bagpipes or singing. We sat in the empty, cold wooden church for a few minutes and then followed a man who carried a big bouquet of flowers to an anonymous hole in the ground, tucked a flower into the top of the urn, and lowered the urn in the ground. Each of us sprinkled dirt in the hole, and we stood there staring, and then we walked to the bakery, occasionally slipping on ice.
At Zimmerman, we ordered 25 euros worth of cakes and pastries. I shooed Danielle and Austin out of the dining room when we got home to set the table with a scalloped cloth and clean heart-shaped mats. I filled a flower porcelain teapot with freshly brewed coffee, lit a single candle, and turned up the classical radio. And then we sat there together, indulging in cheesecake and flaky apple turnovers, puddingschnitten and donuts.
Outside, there was actually sun; I lowered the blinds so it wouldn’t swallow the flame.
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