Imagined but based on fragments of truth...
One early
Autumn evening
in 1935,
eleven
days before she died,
my great
grandmother, Maria Clara,
called
from her bed
for the
nurse
who had been engaged
to attend to her
during
those final weeks.
The nurse
responded to the call
with quiet
efficiency
and
entered the patient’s sick room.
This room
was
a small
parlour at the back of the house
in which the
family had been living
since
arriving in England from Alsace
in the
early years of the century.
But Maria Clara was no longer
able to climb the staircase
and arrangements
had been made
for her
installation in the downstairs parlour.
On
entering, the nurse was asked
to fetch the sick
woman a pencil.
This, she did.
Her assistance
was then sought
to
support the old woman
out of
bed and across the room.
On achieving
the far side,
Maria opened
the dark wooden cabinet
that stood there,
filled with glassware,
dusty and unused,
and in a
shaking hand
she inscribed
the words
“Diese
Schränk ist für Elsie”
on the
inside of the left hand door.
Elsie -
Paula Elizabeth -
had, some two years previously,
become my mother’s mother.
Maria Clara placed the pencil
on the
polished mahogany top.
Having satisfied
herself that it would not roll off,
she
returned to her bed
and slept
while the
small coal fire dwindled
in the
grate.
Over the
course
of the
next few days
other
simple acts of endowment
were performed
to friends
and family members
who
visited the dying woman;
or, in
their absence, through the writing of careful notes
on scraps of paper, which were then
carefully
placed within the pages of her missal;
small
tokens – jewels, ornaments, trinkets –
passing
from one, who considered her life
to be of no real consequence
and of
little drama,
to those
she cared for
and who
now cared for her.
And on
the tenth day
after the
initial act,
having
completed her short catalogue
of
bequests,
she died
an
unassuming death.
After she
had closed the dead woman's eyes,
the Nurse
took pains to comb
her silver hair.
She arranged
her black lace mantilla
across
her face,
and
contrived
that her lifeless
hands,
holding
the missal,
be loosely
bound together
by her
rosary
in a final act
of prayer:
the
silver and ebony cross
lying
lightly across
her interwoven fingers.
The
family
were then
allowed into the room
to pay their
final
respects.
Chris reads An Unassuming Death
