(19) 8th January, 2025

Featured & Cover (19) 8th January 2025

Set in Krakow, Poland

8 January 2025

Father looks at his mother, lying on the bed they gave her in the guestroom, surrounded by the family she helped raise, and he wonders, despite all of the body parts of hers that are failing, how her heart, of all things, beats so healthily.

How?

Her mother really has a strong heart, he reasons. He supposes that has always been her strongest quality, and the reason why she came to give so much to those around her.

2 May 2019

When the immigrants from the Middle East and Africa were coming to the town of Walcz and making it their home, Alina Kowalski was one of the few who didn’t seem to mind them. It wasn’t typical to see so many black people in the countryside, as it would have probably been for her son Tomasz who was proudly settled in Kraków. Still, unlike many people of her age and generation, she didn’t have a problem with them. She never insulted them in Polish while she crossed the cobblestones of the main streets. She never sneered at them or complained about them to their face, unlike her relatives and neighbours.

Once, she was cutting up the cabbage for the pierogi they were going to have for lunch. Her eldest son, Natan, was helping her by holding the cabbage steady as she cut it. He was complaining: ,,Those dirty people. Don’t they think there are enough people without jobs in Poland as it is? And they don’t speak the language, they don’t know how to wash themselves.”

Alina looked down and observed the brown dots on her own age-tarnished skin. Memories that she thought she had well suppressed were threatening to flash in her mind.

She had practiced keeping them out of her life for a reason. She responded to him calmly and measuredly. ,,If no one gave anyone a chance, we would not have found work, either. This is a welcoming village. I think it was just a generation ago. People forget so easily. Life was hard for us once, too.” Alina went to the fridge and realised that in her haste to cook she had forgotten to buy sour cream and eggs. It would be hard to finish the lunch without them. She would need to get it immediately.

That day at the convenience store, Alina Kowalski ended up meeting a girl from Liberia. She went by the name of Annie. She didn’t speak much Polish, but she was trying her best, making it a point to speak to Alina and be a part of her day. Her friendliness made Alina feel friendlier. Something about her youthful energy and outward curiosity reminded Alina of her oldest grandson, Tadeusz, who loved to travel the world, and who remain far away from Poland. She missed Tadeusz so much. When Tadeusz was a little boy, Alina had gone all the way to Kraków to help raise him. She taught Tadeusz how to swim, and she went out of her way to buy sugar-powdered cookies to spoil him with. As an adult, Tadeusz rarely talked to her even when she found the time to call him on the phone. She had since given up, but whenever she interacted with a younger person, she missed that kind of spirit that Tadeusz had. She really appreciated seeing it in other humans. She loved what it brought out in herself.

Alina told herself she would speak with Annie if she saw her again. It was hard for them to communicate, but at least she was making an effort. On her walk back home, she noticed the foreigners loitering about, this group of Syrians exiting a crepe shop, this group of Nigerian youngsters at the plaza standing idly by. She wondered more and more what it would be like to speak to them. She certainly thought that she liked seeing them around here. They had come to make Walcz their home after much hardship, in the same way she had done. She liked feeling that Walcz was embracing and accepting. It made her feel like she had been right to start her family in Walcz. It made her feel like Walcz was the home she had truly been meant for.

8 January 2025

Father is the doctor in the family. He is the only one who has seen death on a daily basis. Still, when the other doctor came from the hospital three days back and told him that his mother had caught pneumonia, it was not easy for him. She had already lost the use of her mind and legs. Now her lungs were withering out. She suffered a lot in the last three days. Seeing her now, lying on this bed, almost as inactive and inert as a corpse, Father can only wish and hope one thing.

Please just die.

He feels this way because he loves his mother. He loves everything about who she was and how she was and all that she did for him and the whole family.

He doesn’t want her to suffer anymore.

You don’t have to keep fighting like this. You have lived a full life. You received everything you sacrificed for. Why are you stubborn even as you are dying? What is there left to fight for? Please just die.

7 February 2024

It had only been a week and a half since his mother had moved from her hometown to the city to live with him, and Father was already wondering if he had made the right decision. Was he the proper person to take care of his mother?

Of course, he was a doctor, and Kraków was one of the best cities in Europe. But at the end of the day, Father had lived far away from his mother for decades and visited her only when it was necessary. He had paid her bills, entertained her calls, but otherwise kept as much distance as possible. How could he have done it any other way? Tomasz Kowalski was a boy with his own problems. His father had barely spent any time with him and had always decried him for being too effeminate, which resulted in his own brothers poking at him for his lack of athletic interest. He had left for the big city because he wanted to have the freedom to be who he was. He wanted to dedicate himself to his passion, and he wanted to have his own family, one that he could raise without any of the pressures he felt from his own father.

Tomasz became Father, and no matter how much he tried to be different from the man who had made him, his own anxieties, fears, and concerns resulted in him repeating some of the errors he had worked hard to amend.

The point was that Tomasz had spent so much time writing out the story of how he was going to prove the world wrong and become the success that the world had never imagined him to be that he had never taken the time or effort to understand who Alina Kowalski really was.

That was normal, he reasoned. It was probably the same for Son, who was so busy trying to figure out who Tadeusz Kowalski was going to be that he didn’t take the time to show that he cared about his mother and father.

It wasn’t intentional. It was just what happened.

Still, it had to have hurt the parents. This was something Father could only understand because he had become Father, the one who had made all those sacrifices on behalf of his son.

Father wiped the sweat off of his mother’s neck while the uncontrollable smell of her age got into his clothes, and he thought about who she was. He wished he could have asked her something, just anything, about her life. He wished he could have asked if she was proud of him, if she felt he had done enough for her as a son.

But it was too late.

Father continued wiping her sweat and looked at his mother. Yes, his two brothers and their families had done a good job taking care of his mother in Walcz, but he had invited her to the city for a reason. He had wanted to put his insecurities to rest and to do the right thing for her by taking care of her in her last days. Was that selfish? He just couldn’t help but feel, deep down, that something was going to go horribly wrong because of his decision.

He suppressed his feelings by reminding himself that he was a doctor, that he was well trained for patients like his mother, that he lived in a city with a lot of resources and wealth. The expertise and resources he had accumulated over the years, combined with his love for his mother, were going to be more than enough to ensure that his mother’s health would improve.

8 January 2025

When the lungs wither, they wither. And it isn’t just the lungs that have left. The mucus has built walls in the air ducts, covering up the nose.

His mother’s eyes are completely colourless. There is no longer any excess strength for her nerves to deliver sight. So, her eyes are like blank pool balls in their sockets, responding to no stimulus.

Her legs are puffed and swollen. They are looking more and more rotten with each hour that passes. The reddening is growing, expanding, taking over her body like moss conquers rock.

Every part of her body is dying as all of what remains of her energy goes to her heart so that it can beat on.

Around her are her loved ones. Father’s sisters-in-law are with their handkerchiefs crying. All of their sons and daughters except Tadeusz are in the room, either holding the hands of their mothers, trying to reach for their grandmother, or helping out the priest. Father and his two brothers are by their mother. One brother holds one hand, another brother holds the other, and Father stands there.

He is the doctor in the room. He is doing his best to understand what is happening to his mother.

But there’s no point in holding a stethoscope or reading her heartbeat. There’s no point in administering medicines or feeding her water.

Father has seen so many patients over the course of his career, and he knows what every other loved one is struggling to accept.

The time has come.

7 August 1944

Every day she worries thay she’ll be put to death. Every day she sees people keeling over as they are forced to shovel, being fed to dogs, being a living person one day and a corpse in a pile of bones the other. She’s only eleven. She works in the camps unclothed. She watches women get raped and shot in the head immediately after. There are even soldiers who grope her small breasts and put themselves inside her and spill alcohol all over once they are finished.

She’s grateful she’s too young to be able to carry a child. The ones who get impregnated are immediately killed. She doesn’t want to be like those women who are fed to the dogs or shot in the head.

She works in the field. There’s no thing as a schedule. When you work, you work. And when you pass out, you are beaten by the guards so that you keep working. She gets so tired that it’s a miracle she can still stand. All of her ribs are poking out of her skin.

They don’t see her as a human being. She’s an impurity that needs to be taken off of the human record. She’s a naughty evil blemish. And they can do whatever they want to her.

Someday, most likely they will kill her.

But she wants to keep living. She doesn’t know why this is the case. She doesn’t understand it herself. Given all that she has seen and been through, it would make sense that she should wish to be one of the ones who are given a shower and who never come back. But no matter the pain in her nerves that make her wish for it all to end, she feels like a light that refuses to stop shining.

She wants to keep living.

8 January 2025

Father receives a call and sees that it is from Annie. It’s the middle of the night and she’s trying to call despite that. Father is grateful for it but now is not the time to answer. He is hearing the death rattle. That is the sign that the end is beginning. His mother suddenly breathes deeply as if she is gasping. The sound is sudden and abrupt, sending convulsions down her body. They try to prop her head up with a pillow, they try to give her some water, but once it has begun it will not end. There is no way for her to clear the mucus from her throat, and her lungs are no longer able to pump air in and out of her body. Her chest spasms, up and down, down and up, in order for her body to receive whatever air it can.

The priest is at their side. He has smeared oil on her head to bless her. He begins giving his anointments. As he asks for God to provide her liberation from her body, Father sees his wife crying. She and the other wives are praying out loud, their eyes closed, refusing to see the body. The children avert their eyes. It is only Father and his two brothers who keep their eyes on their mother’s face, gripping her hand or arm as well as they can.

His mother’s legs are growing redder and redder. Her hands are covered in veins. Her eyes are open, but all that stares out are grey irises. Her mouth is open so that air can flow in.

The priest puts a dash of wine in her mouth and says another prayer. He pardons the sins of the woman, though his mother is no longer able to speak and has nothing to confess.

The heart machine shows a straight line. That means her heart is no longer beating. The women clamp their eyes down and pray even louder. They say their prayers in unison, almost singing for peace and blessings and love and forgiveness. Their prayers are like their heartbeats—rushed and loud. And in the meantime his mother is still gasping, her body convulsing up and down.

Her neck tilts forward, a loud gasp resounds, and a wide mouth remains.

Then the body sinks back, and goes cold. The skin loses what remains of its colour. The eyes glass over completely.

Father calls the mortuary.

It is at this time, 2:19 in the early morning, that Alina Kowalski, proud mother of three and resident of Walcz, dies of old age and natural causes.

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