The start of World War II marked the advent of an era of personal loss for people worldwide. Families faced death with greater regularity, their sorrows the outcome of times fraught with mass hatred and disrespect for humankind. How people dealt with this tragedy varied across the diverse predispositions of societies at war—their culture, personal preferences and emotional inclinations the added influence.
In my short story Egg Harbor, the Mueller family experiences the impact of death beyond the scope of war-related loss. Though only a few of their relations perished in battle, the Reaper still sought after the clan’s numerous older and weaker individuals residing in Jersey’s South Shore. Rooted in a German subculture, they honored their dead with stoic pride, doing whatever was necessary to survive their grief. But their hearts remained closed to their real feelings hidden beneath the crusted surface of uncertainty and trepidation.
The narration is seen through the eyes of twelve year old Carl Mueller, the family’s youngest member. He layers the circumstances surrounding his grandmother Oma’s passing over his struggle to handle death as it interfaced with the limited experiences of his daily life. Alienated from his relatives by age and childhood innocence, Carl seeks to understand the play of events through attention and observation of adult behaviors.
Their affectations, however, offer him little comfort or insight. Within the haze of a smoke-filled kitchen, Carl watches his family feast on bratwurst and beer to a medley of pop 40’s tunes piped through a player piano. Their concerns for Carl’s emotional welfare wither into safe inquiries about his physical appearance and grade in school, the offering of a plateful of food an acceptable substitute for genuine interaction.
While Carl eats his lunch across from his grandmother’s open casket, his second cousin, Greta Schultz, joins him in the parlor. She asks if he’s doing okay, but Carl is too overwhelmed by the influx of stimuli and the immanent presence of death to discuss the matter.
His untapped feelings remain a vague and muddy collage of disturbing images that haunt him throughout his stay in Egg Harbor. He recoils at the thought of dying in one’s sleep (like his Oma) and worries over his mother’s possible demise, when he views her wrinkled face and graying hair at the Rosary service the night before the funeral. Other occurrences trouble Carl as well: the imagined appearance of his Aunt Dora’s ghost in the bedroom; the neighbor boy’s cold indifference to life after the boy kills a crow in the woods; and his Auntie Bess’s surprising leap onto his grandmother’s coffin after it’s lowered into the ground.
The passing of an acquaintance, friend or loved one, in my opinion, brings the soul to light as it views the finality of loss from a limited third dimensional perspective. The pause button activated, we still our hearts to face the unfathomable reality of the immutable disappearance of someone we knew. We texture our confusion within the maelstrom of impending change, the inevitable question a torment to our consciousness: Where has he/she gone?
At the story’s end, Carl reaches his own conclusions as to his Oma’s whereabouts—a fate we all must face as humans bound to this earth. For some, the scientific approach to this conundrum works best. Others choose faith and surrender as their cornerstone of peace.
The Muslim’s refer to the term inshallah, or God’s will, to explain future occurrences both in this world and the cosmos. On a personal note, I, too, believe my life is the joyous expression of God’s work. Everything I do is scripted by His hand. Where fate leads me in death is not my concern—if I trust in this process. With our Creator’s assistance, the evolution of humankind will lead us to a greater awareness of the true source of our being. Once that level of intelligence and understanding is reached, the question of where we go when we die will then lose its significance.
In my short story Egg Harbor, the Mueller family experiences the impact of death beyond the scope of war-related loss. Though only a few of their relations perished in battle, the Reaper still sought after the clan’s numerous older and weaker individuals residing in Jersey’s South Shore. Rooted in a German subculture, they honored their dead with stoic pride, doing whatever was necessary to survive their grief. But their hearts remained closed to their real feelings hidden beneath the crusted surface of uncertainty and trepidation.
The narration is seen through the eyes of twelve year old Carl Mueller, the family’s youngest member. He layers the circumstances surrounding his grandmother Oma’s passing over his struggle to handle death as it interfaced with the limited experiences of his daily life. Alienated from his relatives by age and childhood innocence, Carl seeks to understand the play of events through attention and observation of adult behaviors.
Their affectations, however, offer him little comfort or insight. Within the haze of a smoke-filled kitchen, Carl watches his family feast on bratwurst and beer to a medley of pop 40’s tunes piped through a player piano. Their concerns for Carl’s emotional welfare wither into safe inquiries about his physical appearance and grade in school, the offering of a plateful of food an acceptable substitute for genuine interaction.
While Carl eats his lunch across from his grandmother’s open casket, his second cousin, Greta Schultz, joins him in the parlor. She asks if he’s doing okay, but Carl is too overwhelmed by the influx of stimuli and the immanent presence of death to discuss the matter.
His untapped feelings remain a vague and muddy collage of disturbing images that haunt him throughout his stay in Egg Harbor. He recoils at the thought of dying in one’s sleep (like his Oma) and worries over his mother’s possible demise, when he views her wrinkled face and graying hair at the Rosary service the night before the funeral. Other occurrences trouble Carl as well: the imagined appearance of his Aunt Dora’s ghost in the bedroom; the neighbor boy’s cold indifference to life after the boy kills a crow in the woods; and his Auntie Bess’s surprising leap onto his grandmother’s coffin after it’s lowered into the ground.
The passing of an acquaintance, friend or loved one, in my opinion, brings the soul to light as it views the finality of loss from a limited third dimensional perspective. The pause button activated, we still our hearts to face the unfathomable reality of the immutable disappearance of someone we knew. We texture our confusion within the maelstrom of impending change, the inevitable question a torment to our consciousness: Where has he/she gone?
At the story’s end, Carl reaches his own conclusions as to his Oma’s whereabouts—a fate we all must face as humans bound to this earth. For some, the scientific approach to this conundrum works best. Others choose faith and surrender as their cornerstone of peace.
The Muslim’s refer to the term inshallah, or God’s will, to explain future occurrences both in this world and the cosmos. On a personal note, I, too, believe my life is the joyous expression of God’s work. Everything I do is scripted by His hand. Where fate leads me in death is not my concern—if I trust in this process. With our Creator’s assistance, the evolution of humankind will lead us to a greater awareness of the true source of our being. Once that level of intelligence and understanding is reached, the question of where we go when we die will then lose its significance.
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