My father waited until all three of my brothers had taken their chairs in the sunroom of the care home in Fond du Lac, and then he asked for his glasses, and then he asked for a glass of water, and then, in a voice I had not heard since I was ten, he asked for a minute. I stood against the wall with my hands clasped. I was fifty seven years old. I had spent two years being called the daughter who dumped him, and I did not know whether the old man in the wheelchair was about to forgive me or finish me.
“I was not alone in that barn,” said Gerhard. “Christine found me on the floor in the cold. But the night before, I had a visitor. Karl came to the farm at nine o clock.” The sunroom was silent. Karl, my oldest brother, fifty nine, a successful man from Madison with a good watch, sat very still. “He asked me for ninety thousand dollars. I said no. I said I would not sell the farm to pay for his boat and his divorce. We argued in the barn. I had been drinking. I said things I will not repeat. He walked out into the snow.”
My father looked down at his hands. “I fell after he left,” he said. “I got up and I fell again. The envelope with the cash was something I had put together that afternoon, thirty thousand dollars, because I was going to give it to Karl in the end. I could not make my hands do it. I lay there all night, and I thought, he did not even look back. Christine did not leave me. She is the only one who ever came.” He lifted his face. The tears ran down into the creases beside his mouth. “I told everyone she dumped me because I was too proud to say who did.”
An envelope found beside a brandy bottle gave one daughter the afternoon to bring her father back to the truth in Fond du Lac.
I gave my terms standing in the middle of the sunroom, with the winter light coming through the glass. “Dad, I am not angry at you. I am too tired to be angry. I want only three things. First, you will tell the pastor and the church the truth, the way you told us. Second, Karl will apologize, to you and to me, in this room. And third, nobody is selling the farm. It is sitting empty because I could not bring myself to do it. In the spring, I want all four of us to drive out there together and see what it needs.”
Karl stood up. His face was pale and wet, and he held out both hands as though to show that they were empty. “Chris,” he said, “I walked out of that barn at nine thirty, and I never looked back, and I have not slept properly since. I thought he would be fine. I thought he would go in. I heard in the morning, and I told myself it was his drinking.” He swallowed. “I was ashamed to ask for money, and then I was angry that I had to. I let you carry it. I am so sorry, Chris.”
It was the sight of the envelope of cash, brought out of a plastic bag by the social worker and placed on the table in front of him, that undid Karl. He snatched it, spun around, and ran for the glass door of the sunroom, intending to be gone before anyone could see his face. The door opened onto the corridor, and in it stood Marta, the night aide of the care home, five feet tall and seventy pounds lighter than my brother, with her arms folded across her scrubs. “Sir,” she said, in her soft Polish accent, “the visitors do not run in my hall.”
Karl halted in the doorway, with the envelope in his hand, and looked down at Marta. She looked up. Neither of them said a word. Then my father, from the wheelchair, said very gently, “Karl. Come here.” My brother turned around. He walked back across the carpet with his head down and knelt on the floor beside the chair. Gerhard laid his big, shaking hand on the top of the head of Karl. It was the first time, I think, in forty years.
The money consequences were simple. The thirty thousand dollars went to the care home, to pay down the bill, and Karl wrote a check for the rest, which came to nine thousand more. My brothers withdrew their petition, and the church, hearing the story from the pulpit, sent a casserole to my door every day for a week. The farm of one million, seven hundred thousand dollars was not sold. It stayed in the family, in the name of Gerhard, with the four of us as trustees.
In the name of my mother, Hannelore, who passed in 2018, I started the Hannelore Bauer Fund. It pays for in home care, respite and legal help for family caregivers, in Fond du Lac, Dodge and Sheboygan counties. In the first year we helped forty nine caregivers. One was a daughter of sixty from Campbellsport who had cared for her father alone for six years. She slept through the night for the first time, and she woke up and cried because it was already morning.
In April, the four of us drove out to the farm in the van of my brother with Dad in the front seat, in his flannel coat and his old cap. The snow had melted from the fields, and the barn stood gray and quiet against the sky. Gerhard asked us to stop at the door. He looked at the place where he had lain for a whole night. Then he put his hand on the side of the van and, to my great surprise, said, “Christine. Thank you for finding me.”