EDR's husband passes

Gustav’s Last Days

Gustav slept a lot, but one Sunday afternoon I noticed that he was sleeping with his eyes open. He did this until Friday, but he was not aware of it. During his last days he had a fever and muscle spasms in his legs all the time. He was so glad that I could help him.

He said to me, “One day I will reward you greatly.” “How?” I asked. “Right now, I don’t know, but one day I will do it,” he said. Later when I told this to Lina here in Canada, she said, “Mother, he rewarded you in that it was because of him that you were not sent back to Russia.”

With a soft cloth I wiped the sweat from his forehead and eyes, “Do you have any message to pass on to our children, in case I should see them again?” I asked. He said, “I do not even have my pocket watch to give them. I send them my greetings and my message to them is, ‘Make everything ready for eternity!”

Thus Thursday passed slowly and the last difficult night began. Because his legs were twitching constantly, I had to keep shifting his feet around. “AmI being too rough?” I asked as I messaged his calves. “O, not at all,” he cried, “It feels good!”  So I slid about on my knees around his straw bed on the floor and did my loving duty to my companion of 45 years.

The morning dawned and I had not slept at all. “I’m only human too and I need sleep,” I said, to which he rescinded by giving me some room beside him. I lay there within an arm’s length of him on the straw bed. When I looked up after a while, I noticed that he was chasing away the flies with a green branch that Val had brought him. It was his last loving deed on the morning of the day he died.

I fed him a saucerful of mashed potatoes with a soft egg. He drank some of our milk from his bottle. I made sure he always had some on hand. 

His voice remained strong and sure as if he were not so sick. He felt hot and I wiped the sweat from his brow with a soft cloth. “Do put your cool hand on my forehead,” and then “That feels good!”

“Should I sing something for you?” I asked, “Yes, do sing.”

We’re going home to our Father’s house,

Who knows, perhaps tomorrow.

Gone then, O heart, is all your pain

And all your anxious sorrow.

O weary child, the streets up there

Are golden, pure and sunny.

And heavenly joy will banish pain

With songs as sweet as honey.

Who pray to God and sow in tears

Find comfort for their sorrow;

To our Father’s house, so bright and dear

We will go, perhaps, tomorrow.

Then again:

My lovely heavenly home,

Stately and serene,

How deeply I long for you.

My heart’s not here;

O home above the starry sky,

My heart is there.

Gustav said, “Thank you! Val, learn these beautiful songs from your grandma!” She had just come in to go to bed and was not aware of anything.

I asked him if my singing gave him a headache. “No, not from that, but do take my arm out from under the blanket,” which I did and then rubbed it a bit. “I feel so hot, give me some of that sour milk.” Then I shifted his feet to a more comfortable position and rubbed and massaged his legs up to the knee. “That feels good,” he said. But suddenly he turned on his back and cried, “Lord, help us!” These were his last words.

I started to sing the song, “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,” the same hymn that was sung when his father was dying. Three times he tried to sing along with me, but he could not. While I was singing the fourth stanza, he stopped breathing, and I put a teaspoon of water to his dry mouth. He took this and swallowed it. There were six short breaths, and without another movement, he died.

Val had long been sound asleep in her corner. I thanked God for Gustav’s gentle passing. I was so glad that his end had been so peaceful, so completely peaceful. His face was as handsome as it was when I first knew him.

It was getting dark. Since I had not slept the previous night because of the restlessness in his feet, and I had to shift their position every few minutes, I was exhausted. I lay down on my straw bed next to that of my dead husband and fell asleep. At dawn, I awoke refreshed. With a peaceful expression on his face, my dead companion of 45 years was lying an arm’s length from me.

I washed and coles him carefully and pulled him onto a blanket into the empty room and thought of our children. “Where is grandpa?” Val asked, surprised. When she knew, she ran outside and got green branches and a bouquet of blue cornflowers. With a serious look on her face, she adorned him. He was buried with that little bouquet in his left hand. He was wearing a long woven shirt-like garment with long sleeves, a brand new one, given to me by Mrs. Maishak from her portion of the (German) booty.

The funeral

Gustav died on Friday night, June 15, 1945. We had to walk to Lindenbrueck to report his death at the mayor’s office and to ask for a grave. He wrote notes to give to three German women who were working in the neighborhood on Polish farms, instructing them to help me. I could not reach them until evening, and when I did, they indignantly refused even to consider such a suggestion. So on Sunday morning I had to go to the mayor and ask again. He was just having breakfast and he told his housekeeper to pour me a cup of coffee. He said I should just wait patiently. On Monday, two prisoners of war would dig a grave and help me. Encouraged by his words, I asked him for a wide covered ironing board on which I had slept when I was in the first camp, and he said I could have it.

In the cheese-dairy, I asked for two large sheets of white paper to cover the board. The present manager, Mr. Janneck, had formerly been a worker there and had occupied a room in the same house where we had lived. A few weeks before, when I asked him for sour milk, he had given me 10 sloti and I could come again and again to get sour milk for Gustav so that he always had some to drink. How kind he was to us! May God bless him even now!

I picked beautiful large daisies, cornflowers and clover blossoms in the ditch and three kinds of evergreen branches in the woods. Now I could adorn his last resting place. I sewed a pillowcase from a white shirt, filled it, and sewed delicate green spruce twigs around the edge. I also sewed spruce branches all around on the board. There was enough left over for two wreaths and a bouquet of flowers.

On Monday, June 18, two men, Lenz and Prieper, took him to the cemetery in Sassenfeld, driving slowly so that could easily walk behind. There was just enough room for Val in the wagon and she held the wreaths. I was in a solemn mood. I sang quietly, “Let me go, let me go, that Jesus I may see.”

I covered his face completely with flowers, then with a clean handkerchief, and placed his cap on top. Then I put a woven blanket over everything. I did that last of all in the grave itself before they filled it.

With his spade, Mr. Lenz shaped a cross onto the neatly made grave as he had learned to do in the war. Then they drove hurriedly away, and Val and I remained standing at the graveside for a while. We continued to entrust ourselves to the protection of the Father of widows and orphans. Slowly, we returned home.

Later, I planted two spruce trees on the grave. Only the one at the head-end took root. I also sewed flowers and planted primroses. The grave next to Gustav’s, also belonging to a German buried without a coffin, was a shapeless heap of earth. Otherwise, it was a neatly-kept Catholic cemetery. Gustav’s grave is 20 steps from the tall cross.