Love Finds You in Amana Iowa (25 page)

When the doctor glanced his way, he lifted the spoon as if to offer Matthias some of his medication. Matthias shook his head. He would have to be strong for Hilga and her parents first. Then maybe the doctor could give him something to try and block out the pain.

He raked his fingers through his hair and then leapt to his feet. Amalie was asleep, and he couldn’t stop to let his mind work through the ramifications of losing his friend. Not until he found Carl and Louise and Hilga.

The Vinzenz family was in the kitchen house, eating their noon meal. When Carl looked up at Matthias, he dropped his fork onto his plate, and the clatter echoed through the room.

“What’s wrong, Matthias?” Carl demanded.

He motioned for Carl to come outside and both Louise and Hilga followed them. He struggled in his mind, trying to form the right words, but there was no right way to tell them that their son was dead.

She loves you, Matthias, but she can’t come back.

Louise’s words echoed in his mind. The words she’d told him twenty-one years ago when his mother left. How had she done it then, tell a boy that his mother was gone for good?

And how could he tell them today that the son they loved was gone as well?

The three of them stared at him, waiting for him to speak. Louise’s eyes were wrought with panic, her fingers fastened around Carl’s arm. Matthias wanted to tell them there was nothing to worry about, that Friedrich had only left them for a season. But right now, eternity seemed far away.

They followed him into the parlor next to the kitchen house, and Louise gasped when she saw Amalie, asleep on the sofa. Louise teetered on her feet, and Carl helped her into a chair as the doctor reached back into his bag.

Tears streamed down Hilga’s face even before she heard the news, but he couldn’t wrap his arms around her to comfort her.

The doctor helped Hilga into the remaining chair, and as they all mourned together, Matthias shared the colonel’s words.

“My son…,” Louise muttered. “I want to see my son.”

When Matthias finished speaking, Carl lifted his voice in prayer. He begged God for guidance. For strength. Friedrich was already basking in the light and peace of God, but they needed God’s Spirit there with them today. Desperately needed Him and the hope they had in the cross. The power of the cross.

“I want my son,” Louise repeated, looking at Matthias as if he were hiding Friedrich from her.

Carl knelt beside her, tears streaming down his face as he took his wife’s hands. “He isn’t coming back,
Liebling.”

Matthias knew Carl loved his wife, but he had never heard him call her darling before.

“I want my son,” Louise said again.

Matthias turned and slipped out of the room. He might like to pretend that he was the son of Carl and Louise, that they loved him as much as they loved Friedrich. He didn’t doubt their love, but he wasn’t Friedrich nor could he ever replace him.

Out of the village he walked, back through the fields and trees to allow them time to grieve as a family.

Instead of turning on the trail back toward Homestead, he walked to the Indian Dam. The place where he and Friedrich spent hours and hours fishing.

He hadn’t been to their fishing hole since Friedrich left. As the weeks passed, he didn’t want to go without his friend, so he kept waiting until he and Friedrich would fish together again. But now Friedrich would never return to fish with him or work with him or eat their meals together. Their time together on this earth was gone.

He picked up a rock and ripples sliced the surface when he tossed it in. The book of Revelation talked about a river of life pouring out of the throne of God, clear as crystal. Did the river have fish in it? Perhaps Friedrich was fishing somewhere right now, basking in the glory and wonder of Christ.

All this time they’d been waiting for Friedrich to come back to them. Now Friedrich was waiting for them to come to him.

Looking up into the heavens, he wondered if Friedrich could somehow look down upon them all, see how many people were grieving over his death. If Friedrich could say last words to them from the next life, what would he say?

Friedrich’s unopened letter was tucked away in Matthias’s room, and when he was ready, he would open his friend’s final words to him.

Collapsing onto a flat rock, his dropped his head into his hands. Out in the wilderness, far away from the brothers and sisters in his community, he grieved for his friend.

Life’s hourglass flows swiftly on and soon my course on earth is run,
And what is past is gone forever! Eternity is now my goal.
F. A. Lampe

Hidden amongst the branches and fallen leaves in the forest were flocks of wildflowers. Orchids. Wild petunias. Amalie plucked the stems of the flowers and formed a purple and yellow bouquet. There was a large garden with both autumn flowers and vegetables at the edge of Amana, beside the cemetery, but it didn’t seem right to place garden flowers on Friedrich’s grave.

His heart was passionate and beautiful, and unlike her, he loved the forest. His grave should be covered with flowers just as wild and colorful as his life.

As she walked out of the woods, she saw the Vinzenz family and Matthias standing in the prairie grass, among the dozen white headboards that marked the graves of the brothers and sisters who’d gone before them into eternity. The wooden headboards on each grave were identical, no grave more or less important than the others. God loved Friedrich the same as every other man and woman in this cemetery, but she didn’t love them all the same. This grave would be closest to her heart.

There would be no hymns today or a member of the Bruderrath reading Scripture. When a member of their society died, hundreds of people gathered at the cemetery to commemorate their life, but when Friedrich left for the war, he also left their society. Only his family and Amalie were permitted to remember him.

She hoped the elders would let Matthias’s marker remain among the other headboards so that many years from now, no one would know that Friedrich had left their community. Nor would they know his body was lost in Tennessee instead of buried in Amana. The grave would remain as a memory of Friedrich’s life for the next generations of their community.

Matthias dug a small trench for the headboard and secured it in the hard ground. When he was finished, Amalie placed her bouquet beside the marker.

Matthias offered her his arm as she stood to her feet, and he escorted her toward Louise. Amalie had spent the past two days fluctuating between grieving alone in her room and hoping that perhaps Colonel O’Neill was wrong, that Friedrich had been wounded or taken prisoner instead of being killed. But Matthias and the elders and even the Vinzenz family had resigned themselves to the loss of Friedrich’s life on this earth.

Louise cried out in the silence, and Amalie felt like she should join her in her tears to honor Friedrich and his legacy, but she felt numb inside, as if her body had ceased to feel anything except pain.

Beside her, Carl read from the book of Revelation.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Friedrich was free of pain—and she was grateful for it—even if she had to bear the weight of the pain for both of them. There were no tears for God to wipe from her eyes, but she prayed that in time, God would heal her heart. She didn’t know how she could go on day after day with this pain constricting inside her, paralyzing her.

Carl finished his reading, resting the Bible at his side, and they all bowed their heads to pray silently. Inspirationists didn’t mourn their dead, at least not in their dress or by wailing like those of the world did. Friedrich had been freed from the burdens of this life, and she was certain he was now enjoying eternity with their blessed Savior.

But even as she tried fervently to rejoice, Amalie couldn’t muster any joy. Friedrich’s body and his spirit had been released from pain and suffering, but those he left behind would continue to suffer for a long time.

* * * * *

Matthias’s hands ached to work after the small funeral, to stay busy, but his mind couldn’t seem to focus on even the simplest of tasks. Instead of joining Niklas at the unfinished kitchen house, he escaped to the quietness of his room.

Friedrich’s letter was on top of his desk, waiting for Matthias to open. He’d tried to read it multiple times over the past two days, but he couldn’t bring himself to even touch it. He didn’t know why, but something about opening the letter meant that he had resigned himself to the truth that Friedrich was really gone.

He sat down by the desk and turned the envelope in his hands several times. Then he took a deep breath as he slid his fingers under the glue.

You are the most loyal of friends and brothers,
he began to read and then he dropped the letter into his lap, his hands shaking.

He knew it would be hard to read Friedrich’s last words to him, but he had no idea how hard.

The letter in his lap, he glanced out the window, at the vibrancy of the summer sky and people hurrying in straight lines along walkways. Life in Amana continued on without Friedrich, at the same steady pace it had when he was here and after he’d left for the war. But everything had changed for Matthias.

I don’t think I ever told you, Matthias, but long before you arrived in our home, I had prayed for a brother. I was too young to realize exactly what was happening in the weeks after your mother left, but I remember begging Papa and Mama for you to stay. I needn’t have begged. They had already made up their minds to take you in as their son.

Matthias closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered that day so well, back in 1842, when he was five years old. His mother with her soft brown eyes and her dark hair tucked back in a handkerchief, leading him down to the castles and estates in the province of Hesse-Darmstadt. They traveled for three days, and as they walked, she told him grand stories about the pietist people residing there known as the Community of True Inspiration, people she said would care for anyone in need.

At the gates of one of the estates, his mother kissed the top of his head and asked him to wait there for her while she found him something to eat. As his stomach cramped with hunger—strange how he could always remember that feeling of hunger—he’d wondered about the tears in her eyes. He’d thought maybe she was crying because she was hungry as well.

Minutes passed and then turned into hours as the daylight faded to darkness. His mother never came back.

Louise Vinzenz found him, taking him to her family’s rooms for food and rest. Friedrich made a bed for him on the floor and told him grand stories about the persecution of their people and the fact that they might be voyaging over to the Americas soon.

No one in Amana seemed to care about his heritage, or if they did, they never discussed it with him. He was an Inspirationist. The Vinzenzes were his family. And Friedrich had helped him become a member of this Society.

I can’t say good-bye to you in person this morning. If I try, I won’t ever leave, and I believe this is what God requires of me—to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. And so I go today to face the evils of the world, the unknown, and I pray that I am used by His hands, in whatever way He asks.

Even as I struggle against my own will and desires, I want to be used as His vessel.

I will strive to be just while I have mercy. To pray for love even as I fight. And to remember to pray for you and Amalie and our family.

You know I have loved Amalie for most of my lifetime. Please take care of her for me while I am gone.

Your Brother Always,

Friedrich Vinzenz

The words complete, Friedrich’s letter fluttered to the floor. Matthias left it on the ground as his gaze wandered back out the window.

Why had God required this of Friedrich? It was too much, to say good-bye to his friend, to face the rest of his life without him.

Take care of Amalie for me.

The words rang back to him.

Did Friedrich know what he was asking? Had he guessed at Matthias’s affections? His friend had spent a lifetime loving Amalie, while Matthias had spent his life trying to hide his love from her. From all of them.

A wave of guilt passed over him. There was no way he would dare tell Amalie what Friedrich had said nor would he ever tell her. He could never pursue her after the death of his best friend.

Friedrich hadn’t mentioned caring for his family, but Matthias would help care for all of them.

Someone else would have to care for Amalie.

Who has not stood the battle’s strain
The crown of life shall ne’er obtain.
Johannes Scheffler