To be a mother

Past

Quickly it became obvious that the marriage will bring her more pain than anything else. Her husband could not deal with the war anymore. At least that is what she told herself. He started becoming abusive and came home drunk. She remembered him as a drunk more than he was sober. They had five children together. Because he started spending his money on alcohol and did not care about his family anymore they lived in poverty. Sigrid could barely feed her children. Over the years, her trauma got worse, and she could not sleep anymore without having nightmares.

She did not have any kind of education, so she could not really work anywhere, where the salary would be better. Her life did not improve in any way.

One day in summer she was at the lake with her children and she went to take care of something. Suddenly, she only heard other children screaming and trying to find someone. The name they kept screaming was her nine-year-old son’s name. They could not find him. She was thrown back to all those years ago when she hid in the cupboard and her parents were taken away from her. Now her son too? Sigrid started to run into the water, but she never earned how to swim. There was no trace of him left. It was as if he was never there. Other children were crying, but she only tried to hear her son.

Nothing.

Only the water lapping at the shore, as if it did not just take her child away from her. She was in a kind of trance. She did not know what to do. Where would she go? One of the men at the lake dived into the water in search of her son.

When he came up he only shook his head. It was as if the sun left the sky. It was dark, and she did not know the way out. What would she tell her husband? How would she explain to her other children where her son is now? She would love to know the answer herself. But it seemed like God thought that she did not suffer enough yet. Now he took another person away from her. Sigrid looked up at the sky and repeated, “What do you want from me? What do I have to give, so it will be enough?” The sky only rumbled with an incoming thunderstorm.

She could not leave. How could she leave the lake? Maybe he would swim ashore later. Maybe he would resurface and ask for his favourite food like he did after every swim in the summer. No, she could not leave.

Somebody brought her home and took care of her. She barely realised what was going on around her. Her thoughts were only with her son.

Not long after her husband died too. Though, where she felt constant pain after her son’s death, here she only felt something akin to relief. She could not say that out loud. But all she felt was relief.