What Remains — By Anna-Christina Schmidl

artwork by Valerie Timmons

There are traces of you in unexpected places. I remember that you read Die Buddenbrooks and De Gaulle, Mon Père. You watched The English Patient, listened to words now tattooed on my arm. I am writing to you in a language we didn’t speak to each other. I switched languages because of you. Every man I’ve ever loved I measure against your ghost.

When grandpa was taking his last laboured breaths in the hospital, his body emaciated and face contorted with pain, your voice echoed in my head: “This is a part of life. Don’t be a coward.” So I stayed, weeping, and held his hand. That’s what you’d said all those years ago when your own father was dying. It is the only time I remember seeing you cry. You were sitting in your armchair in the living room, wiping eyes wet with tears, Mozart’s Requiem on the stereo.

Your father died on 31 December. You said there was beauty in returning the book of life at the end of a year.

Less than three years later, in early December, you, too, were dead. Your skin cold to the touch, your heart no longer pumping blood. Your body was washed and dressed in a suit; a rosary placed in your palms. Then a hearse took you away. It’s easier to speak of you in foreign lands, where the sun shines in winter; the past tense still hurts. In our hometown, I sometimes deny your existence, pretend you never lived. I am a coward running from your absence only to stumble into you. Stay with me for just a little longer.

Anna-Christina Schmidl is an international lawyer and writer based in Stockholm.