Chapter eightteen: Rosemary´s story

Rosemary’s story

Rosemary stand on the stage the crowd in front of her. She saw her parents sitting in the crowd laughing. It seemed that they were proud. Suddenly the people began to whisper, then louder and louder: “Rosemary, Rosemary...!”Her heart pulsated in her breast. She was so exciting! She didn´t know what she should do.. it was a good feeling... a feeling like she was something special?!

On the evening Rosemary red the rules of a Receiver of memory. There were eight rules. She thought about this rules the whole night. The first rule was: Go immediately at the end of school hours each day to the Annex entrance behind the House of Old and present yourself to the attendant.

This shows easy, everyone had to do it. The next rule was: Go immediately to your dwelling at the conclusion of Training House each day. This was easy to do, too. The next rule was a surprise: From this moment you are exempted from rules governing rudeness. You may ask questions of any citizen and you will receive answers. Rosemary didn´t thought that anybody can get special rules...

Rule number four: Do not discuss your training with any other member of the community, including parents and Elders. She thought this was logical because nobody knew something about the pain without the old Receiver. The next rules were curious. She could lie and she was prohibited from dream-telling. Thinking of her parents she lyed in her bed. In the morning her father talked about a dream from his work, was it only lies? Lied he all the time? Was it only rules for the receiver of memory? Was he the only one who can lie? And now she can lie, too? The feeling to be not normal came back to her. But before she could think about it, she slept.

The next morning began as usual, she talked with her family about dreams and feelings in the last night. But for the first time she had no dream. Her parents accepted it and she drived to the house of the Receiver. She felt very exciting as she knocked on the door. A voice said: “Come in, Rosemary!” She smiled a little bit, now the time had come! A young woman in the front room showed her where she had to go. Rosemary opened the door and went inside. The room looked like normal: a table, a chair, a bed, a couch and many books. So many books she had never seen before. If she was honest, she had never thought that so many books existed.

After a time she noticed the old man. He smiled to her and said: “Welcome Receiver of memory!” Rosemary smiled back and thanked for it. He asked her to it down on the chair and Rosemary looked eager to the old man. But she was scared and exciting too. The Receiver explained that Rosemary is the new Receiver of memory now, he would be the Giver. Rosemary listened carefully.

The next months it went away like this. Rosemary listened carefully. She laughed about driving in a carousel, about playing with cats and about having a picnic. She was enthusiastic and delighted to experience new things. She had much fun. But she wanted to see more. She wanted to see the pain and the Giver gave her the memory of loneliness and loss.

The memory was about a child which loss the parents. She was shocked.

After a time Rosemary began to change, she didn´t laugh so much like the first time. She was sad. The memories robbed her the will to live. But also she said that it is her duty to get this pain and she don´t want to get spare. The Giver noticed it but he couldn´t do something against the pain. He loved her so it broke his heart to hurt her. But he had to do the job too, he couldn´t transfer only the good memories.

With ten or eleven years she had often introduced with her friends what would be happen if you were released. Now she dreamed nearly every night of a better world without pain. In this community she had no friends. The time before she get to the Receiver she had many friends. Often playing with them near the river. But now it had changed. She had changed. She didn´t feel happy, only sad and very very old. She had no fun any more to play with her old friends and so she got more and more loneliness. She saw that she couldn´t be the Receiver... the pain hurts to much. She wanted to go into this better world.

Long time ago she had heard by one of her friends that the Old were happy to receive because they got into this world without pain.

Because of this she planed to get released too.