August 4, 1943. In the hot August of 1943, we had come to Sonneberg from Leipzig as usual, and our somewhat stubborn grandmother had to pick currants in the sweltering heat. The result was a stroke, and the very next day she closed her eyes forever in her old apartment at Bahnhofstrasse 4.
My mother laid her down in the most beautiful room, which had always been riveted shut in the years before, and lit candles on the bed. Grandma Schellhorn was the first dead person I saw in my life. I thought that her normally stern features now seemed much milder. The funeral ceremony that followed was like a film for me. I had made a small wreath with flowers from Aunt Fanny’s garden, and as the coffin slowly disappeared down into the funeral parlor, I was the last to say my goodbyes. I had been Grandma’s only granddaughter and did not yet understand how final death is. I had only had one grandma, and she was now gone forever. Her two sons had come, but her children in America only found out long after the end of the war that their mother was no longer alive.