I sit down on the green wooden bench, caressing with my eyes the name on the cross in front of me, while I talk to my mother. 'I have come back to you, mother, to find peace. For twenty years I have been away from you, far, far away, amongst strangers. When last I sat here saying good-bye to you I did not realise what I had lost. I was a child and you a young wife. Now you are an old wise woman, and I am a life-weary man with hair already beginning to turn grey. Only give me the peace you won years ago and I will stay with you.'
I seem to see my mother sitting opposite me, an old woman with white hair and gentle, brown eyes. I forget the time while I look into her eyes, until I am awakened from my thoughts by the church-bell striking seven. I take the wreaths which are still hanging on my arm, and kneeling down, I place them on the grave. 'Thank you, mother. Thank you for everything—in the old days and now.'
But my heart holds also another gratitude while I slowly, surrounded by the twittering of birds, the playing of wind in the trees, leave the peaceful, sweetly-scented garden of death. A gratitude for the old town's faithfulness, that has not allowed my mother's grave to lie forgotten, but has guarded and tended it. Is there ever such deep memory and constant faithfulness to be found in the big towns, where each day's news chases noisily along the streets, pushing out everything of the past. There Death is only remembered in the clamouring cries of the newspaper announcements. There the
