Love of Death
Love is the mightiest power among men. It can make one cunning. It can give one the strength to go against what ones government tells you. Love can withstand what most can’t. True love can’t be parted by death. A Gravestone Made of Wheat, written by Will Weaver, shows, through its theme, that love really is a mighty emotion.
Will Weaver grew up a dairy farm located in Minnesota. At first, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He graduated college with an undefined certificate. It was later on that he discovered writing and pursued it.
A Gravestone Made of Wheat is a short story about an old man who is dealing with the death of his German wife, Inge. Within this story, the old man, Olaf Torvik, remembers when he first met Inge. This occurrence happens because of the complications of burying a body in ones own yard.
This takes us to the first instance of how love is powerful. Olaf wants to be buried with his wife on the farm that they had lived on for their entire ‘married’ life. The law prohibits this notion. A person that didn’t love his/her spouse wouldn’t go through much trouble just to have a burial on ones own property. The sheriff said himself that Olaf, or his boys, had ever broken a law. Why else would an honest man like that choose a simple task like this to break one?
“Einar spoke. ‘Say we went ahead with the burial. Here, like we planned.’” It is then this statement that helps to take us from the last to the next.
The flashback begins, taking us to when Olaf lived alone on the farm, only writing letters to his parents in Norway about a young German girl they knew. Of course, it was curiosity from lack of detail that kept Olaf interested. He wanted a wife and family to live with, tired of being by his lonesome. Upon meeting Inge at the train station, they rushed to get married.
The marriage should’ve happened. However, because of the war with the Germans, and he being German herself, made it difficult. After being told it may help them out, they wrote quickly to get letters of recommendation. Sadly, this took weeks. They could have easily given up hope. They put up with it, bore with the times and their thoughts of each other. Their emotions grew more and more, and so did their anticipation to get those letters back. When the letters did finally come, they both raced back to the courthouse, eager to make their relationship final. To bind their lives together forever, until death do they part.
“’I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but the judge feels these letters are not sufficient.’
‘Olaf caught the clerk’s wrist. The clerk’s eyes jumped wide and round and scared; he tried to pull back his arm but Olaf had him.
‘We want to get married, that’s all,’ he said hoarsely.”
This piece, taken straight from the book itself, shows how much the attachment between the two had gone. His affection towards Inge gave him the strength, the courage, to stand up to this man, to demand what he wanted.
It was then, after the final deny, they realized that they didn’t need papers to tell them they were happily married. It wasn’t the marriage that told other’s that they were in love. No, it was them themselves. They knew they were love, and they that’s all they needed.
Then, Olaf remembered that Inge never became a citizen, and they were never married. Inge only existed in the people that truly knew who she was. She existed in Olaf, but not to the people of the state. It was Olaf’s love for her that he managed to remember this fact. And it was this memory that fueled Olaf’s initial intentions of burying her on the farm. It was the love for her that made him strong enough to face the state, cunning enough to win, should Inge’s grave be discovered, and it is his love for her that will never fade. Even as her body lies in the coffin, even though it should be ‘until death do you part’, it’s not how it happens. Death is just another hurdle to jump.
