***
I was standing on a chair washing the big window in the dining room, waving now and then to passersby in the alley, while in the kitchen Mama peeled potatoes for lunch. It was 1918; the dreadful war was finally over: even in the way people walked you could sense a new hope in the air.
It wasn't like Mama, I thought, to let the water keep running that way; she never wasted anything.
“Corrie.”
Her voice was low, almost a whisper.
“Yes mama?”
“Corrie,” she said again.
And then I heard the water spilling out of the sink onto the floor.
I jumped down from the chair and ran into the kitchen. Mama stood with her hand on the faucet, staring strangely at me while the water splashed from the sink over her feet.
“What is it, Mama?” I cried, reaching for the faucet. I pried her fingers loose, shut off the water, and drew her away from the puddle on the floor.
“Corrie,” she said again.
“Mama, you're ill! We've got to get you to bed!”
“Corrie.”
I put an arm beneath her shoulder and guided her through the dining room and up the stairs. At my cry Tante Anna came running down the stairs and caught Mama's other arm. Together we got her onto her bed and then I raced down to the shop for Father and Betsie.
For an hour the four of us watched the effect of the cerebral hemorrhage spread slowly over her body. The paralysis seemed to effect her hands first, traveling from them along her arms and then flown into her legs. Dr. van Veen, for whom the apprentice had gone running, could do no more than we.
Mama's consciousness was the last thing to go, her eyes remaining open and alert, looking lovingly at each one of us until very slowly they closed and we were sure she was gone forever. Dr. van Veen, however said that this was only a coma, very deep, from which she could slip either into death or back to life.
For two months Mama lay unconscious on that bed, the five of us with Nollie on the evening shift, taking turns at her side. And then one morning, as unexpectedly as the stroke had come, her eyes opened and she looked around her. Eventually she regained the use of her arms and legs enough to be able to move about with assistance, though her hands would never again hold her crochet hook or knitting needles.
We moved her out of the tiny bedroom facing the brick wall, blown to Tante Jans's front room where she could watch the busy life of the Barteljorisstraat. Her mind, it was soon clear, was as active as ever, but the power of speech did not return-with the exception of three words. Mama could say “yes,” “no “ and-perhaps because it was the last one she had pronounced-”Corrie.” And so Mama called everybody “Corrie.”
To communicate, she and I invented a little game, something like Twenty Questions. “Corrie,” she would say.
“What is it, Mama? You're thinking of someone!”
“Yes.”
“Someone in the family.”
“No.”
“Somebody you saw on the street?”
“Yes”
“Was it an old friend'?”
“Yes”
“A man?”
“No.”
A woman Mama had known for a long time. “Mama, I'll bet it's someone's birthday!” And I would call out names until I heard her delighted, “Yes!” Then I would write a little note saying that Mama had seen the person and wished her a happy birthday. At the close I always put the pen in her stiffened fingers so she could sign it. An angular scrawl was all that was left of her beautiful curling signature, but it was soon recognized and loved all over Haarlem.
It was astonishing, really, the quality of life she was able to lead in that crippled body, and watching her during the three years of her paralysis, I made another discovery about love.
Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street-and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world.
And so l learned that love is larger than the wails that shut it in.
More and more often, Nollie's conversation at the dinner table had been about a young fellow teacher at the school where she taught, Flip van Woerden. By the time Mr. van Woerden paid the formal call on Father, Father had rehearsed and polished his little speech of blessing a dozen times.
The night before the wedding, as Betsie and I lifted her into bed Mama suddenly burst into tears. With Twenty Questions we discovered that no, she was not unhappy about the marriage; yes, she liked Flip very much. It was that the solemn mother-daughter talk promised over the years for this night, the entire sex education which our taciturn society provided, was now not possible.
In the end, that night, it was Tante Anna who mounted the stairs to Nollie's room, eyes wide and cheeks aflame. Years before, Nollie had moved from our room at the top of the stairs down to Tante Bep's little nook, and there she and Tante Anna were closeted for the prescriped half-hour. There could have been no one in all Holland less informed about marriage than Tante Anna, but this was ritual: the older woman counseling the younger one down through the centuries--one could no more have gotten married without it than one could have dispensed with the ring.
Nollie was radiant, the following day, in her long white dress. But it was Mama I could not take my eyes off. Dressed in black as always, she was nevertheless suddenly young and girlish, eyes sparkling with joy at this greatest occasion the ten Booms had ever held Betsie and I took her into the church early, and I was sure that most of the van Woerden family and friends never dreamed that the gracious and smiling lady in the first pew could neither walk alone nor speak.
It was not until Nollie and Flip came down the aisle together that I thought for the very first time of my own dreams of such a moment with Karel. I glanced at Betsie, sitting so tall and lovely on the other side of Mama. Betsie had always known that, because of her health, she could not have children, and for that reason had decided long ago never to marry. Now I was twenty-seven, Betsie in her mid-thirties, and I knew that this was the way it was going to be: Betsie and I the unmarried daughters living at home in the Beje.
It was a happy thought, not a sad one. And that was the moment when I knew for sure that God had accepted the faltering gift of my emotions made four years ago. For with the thought of Karel-all shining round with love as thoughts of him had been since I was fourteen---came not the slightest trace of hurt. “Bless Karel, Lord Jesus,” I murmured under my breath. “And bless her. Keep them close to one another and to You.” And that was a prayer, l knew for sure that could not have sprung unaided from Corrie ten Boom.
But the great miracle of the day came later. To close the service we had chosen Mama's favorite hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus.” And now as I stood singing it I heard, behind me in the pew, Mama's voice singing too. Word after word, verse after verse, she joined in, Mama who could not speak four words, singing the beautiful lines without a stammer. Her voice which had been so high and clear was hoarse and cracked, but to me it was the voice of an angel.
All the way through she sang, while l stared straight ahead, not daring to turn around for fear of breaking the spell. When at last everyone sat down, Mama's eyes, Betsie's, and mine were brimming with tears.
At first we hoped it was the beginning of Mama’s recovery. But the words she had sung she was not able to say, nor did she ever sing again. It had been an isolated moment, a gift to us from God, His own very special wedding present. Four weeks later, asleep with a smile on her lips, Mama slipped away from us forever.
From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. Pp 62-66.
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