Girtha Rising — Part 7 — Picking Up Dreams
This story is a narrative reconstruction inspired by family history, place, and imagination.
Girtha slumped at the overflowing family table. Edgar was buried over a month ago and along with the condolence cards and letters of sympathy falling through the mail slot, bills started to pour in as well. Everything had been tossed on the table. Payments were due for the funeral home and the casket. Workers still had to be paid to get the house set on the foundation. Work had to go on even if Edgar were not here to do it.
After Edgar’s body was removed from the work site and the rain washed the blood into the soil, the jacks were reset and the house was raised again. Girtha watched and waited for the house to wobble again, but it raised firm and solid this time. She answered calls from electricians and plumbers to complete the work Edgar had started.
Now, papers spread over Girtha’s table top, sketches, scraps with phone numbers, business cards with notes on the reverse, statements of bills due, invoices of materials on order. Estimates for putting up a porch, a pocket notebook with scribble notes about jobs in progress. How did Edgar ever keep it figured out? Girtha was used to figuring out what to make for meals, when to put up the tomatoes, how to tailor a fine fitted shirt with fancy cuffs but she had never done any banking or kept business accounts before. Confronted with the paper in front of her, she put her head in her hands and began to weep.
Tears spilled on to the papers and despair crept into her mind. What if she was just like papa, destined by bad luck to lose everything she loved. She had been so judgmental and a little contemptuous of her papa, but now she wondered if he too had been doing the best he could with the hand he had been dealt. Maybe her papa had tried with everything he had to hold on to their dear homestead in the mountains, but the dear Lord had a different path for him.
Edgar, what do I do now?
The house was still all around her. Girtha sat still and hoped to hear the door open, she prayed to hear Edgar’s voice filling the room with his laughter. But the kitchen stove was empty and the oven was cold. She had no one to share meals with. No one to feed. What to do with these papers?
She started sorting it into piles. Names and phone numbers together. She wrote down the jobs that were in progress. As she examined the receipts for lumber, concrete, shingles and nails, she found matches with the jobs and found patterns in the sorts of expenditures and papers on the table.
Time lost its meaning as she plowed through the records of their life together. Bank books, deeds, and loans that Edgar had made to others that were being repaid on payments. How did he keep all of this in his head?
When she picked up the deed to the corner lot, she stopped moving, her hand gripped onto their dreams. She swallowed and noticed she had been holding her breath. They had dreamed and loved together. They shared the joys of homemaking and planted fruit trees dreaming of their future.
“Can you make a cherry pie in the twinkling of an eye?” sang Edgar as he dug a hole for the cherry tree Girtha had selected.
“I’ll make you all the pie you can eat, but it will take a few years for this tree to bear fruit.”
Over the years, Edgar had brought her in cherry branches to force into early bloom, he brought her the first harvest placing them on a fine dessert plate and serving them to her in grand style.
Now all that was left were papers. She would never make him another cherry pie. But she would make sure that she saved their cherry tree. She would find a way to keep this home they had built in love and hope.
By the time she finished cleaning the table, she had a new understanding of the life her husband had created for them. His world was being resorted and reshaped into a way that Girtha could understand what needed to be done. As she sorted, she grew confident that she understood what the different papers actually meant. She took notes, made lists and took steps toward beginning her life without Edgar.
“You can do this, honey! You are clever and have the drive to get it done.” How many times had Edgar encouraged her to do things she had never thought she could do? “Zip-a-dee-do-dah mighty fine work.”
When she breathed in she could hear Edgar encouraging her and felt his love abiding within her. She sat at the table with all the papers understood now, laid her head on the table and finally fell asleep.
She could hear Edgar calling to her in her dream. “You did a super duper job with all the work I left behind! Well done, my love, well done.”
Girtha smiled sweetly as she slept.
Series Navigation
← Part 6 — The Brotherhood
→ Part 8 — Oil and Water Don’t Mix
