"Open your eyes and look out. The sun is already rising over the Wechsel; and the Blessed Virgin is sitting on the mountain-top, with the Child Jesus on her knee; and your mother is sitting on the stool at her feet, with a spinning-wheel before her, weaving her heavenly garment."
Then they knew at once that mother was dead.
"Would you like to look at her?" my sister now asked.
And she went to the head of the bier and slowly raised the shroud.
I saw my mother. Heaven's bliss still lay on the stiff, stark visage. The load was gone from my heart, relieved and comforted; I looked upon the dear features as though I were contemplating a white flower. It was no longer the poor, sick, weary woman that lay before me: it was the face lit up with a ray from the youthful days long past. She lay there slumbering and was strong and well. She was young again and white and gentle; she wore a little smile, as she often did when she looked at the merry little fellow playing about with his toys at her feet. The dark and glossy hair (she had no grey hairs yet) was carefully braided and peeped out a little at the temples from under the brown kerchief, the one which she loved best to wear upon her head when she went to church on holidays. She held her hands folded over her breast, with the rosary and the wax candle between them. She lay there just as though she had fallen asleep in church on Whit Sunday, during the solemn High Mass; and thus, even in death, she comforted her child. But the rough hands clearly showed that the slumberer had led a hard and toilful life.
And so you stood before this sacred image, nearly as still and motionless as the sleeper.
At last, you whispered to your little sister, who stood softly weeping by your side:
"Who closed her eyes?"
A sound of hammering came from the parlour. The carpenter was knocking together the last dwelling-house.
After a while, Maria drew the shroud over the head again, as softly and carefully as when she used to cover up our little mother, hundreds and hundreds of times, in the long period of sickness.