I walk away, afraid. Afraid because I don’t want my own funeral to be that forlorn and empty. I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.
So much life- so much to live for- yet somehow, I’m certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away.
Hans Hubermann had her by one hand. Her small suitcase had her by the other.
When the elderly Jew climbed to his feet for the last time and continued on, he looked briefly back. He took a last sad glance at the man who was kneeling now himself, whose back was burning with four lines of fire, whose knees were aching on the road. If nothing else, the old man would die like a human. Or at least with the thought that he was a human.
A few nights later, however, Hans Hubermann came home with a box of eggs. “Sorry, Mama.” He placed them on the table. “They were all out of shoes.
Some fanatical Germans.
Only when she got up to leave did she notice the three imitation-gold medals sitting next to her. She knocked on the Steiners’ door and held them out to him. “You forgot these.” “No, I didn’t.” He closed the door and Liesel took the medals home. She walked with them down to the basement and told Max about her friend Rudy Steiner.
She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses.
So much of the dying hurt us.
The young man wandered around for quite some time, thinking, planning, and figuring out exactly how to make the world his. Then one day, out of nowhere, it struck him – the perfect plan. He’d seen a mother walking with her child. At one point, she admonished the small boy, until finally, he began to cry. Within a few minutes, she spoke very softly to him, after which he was soothed and even smiled.
Whenever they had a break, to eat or drink, he would play the accordion, and it was this that Liesel remembered best. Each morning, while Papa pushed or dragged the paint cart, Liesel carried the instrument. “Better that we leave the paint behind,” Hans told her, “than ever forget the music.
In the hall, Papa hugged her. She desperately needed it.
I thought you might be too old for such a tale, but maybe no one is.
You know, they say that there are countless saints who have nothing to do with church and almost no knowledge of God. But they say God walks with those people without them ever knowing it.
A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn’t feel like this.
As they walked back to Himmel Street, Rudy forewarned her. “One day, Liesel,” he said, “you’ll be dying to kiss me.
What good were the words? She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. “What good are the words?
He would suffer before he’d belong, unable to show himself easily; a preference for greater hope – to find someone who would know him completely.
You could see how hard he loved her. His heart was so obliterated, but he found the will to work it. He was tired, so tired, in the porch light. Just bits-and-pieces of a man.