I recall the almost causal feel of the simple chapel
at the cemetery in Oxelösund,
that day in high summer of 1992

At the time,
attendance seemed no more than an obligation;
just something expected of you

I was there with my mother, age 81, my older brother
and my son, 7 years old,
and maybe there were one or two others in attendance too,
though I recall them just as nameless shadows

The ceremony has totally slipped my mind,
except that it was brief and kept to an official minimum,
which was appropriate,
since my father was not at all religiously inclined,
and since we all were there out of a sense of plain decency

It was the prescribed way for relatives and society
to deal with that strange and hardly recognised,
yet 100 % certain, piece (peace) of Death,
- and a life-full of it, at that - at the very End

So there we were, sitting on wooden benches along the wall
in that narrow space,
the coffin on an elevated contraption between us,
our thoughts wherever they were,
our sitting position hardly ergonomically ideal,
no tears appearing, as far as I could notice,
and any words uttered by the officiant immediately forgotten,
though my mother and father had been married thirty years
and divorced almost as long,
blessed with six children, two deceased very young
and my other older brother at age 15, from polio

We'd done our ceremonial part, and departed from there,
in various directions,
and curiously, we were not required or expected
or even allowed,
to attend the cremation,
which took place about a month later,
the dust mixed with the soil at a so-called memorial grove

Some time after the ceremony
my brother and I sifted through our father's apartment,
transported some belongings to the municipal waste dump,
while holding on to some few items,
that possessed some sentimental quality,
like an old map case, a fat leather wallet
and various encyclopedias,
which we divided between us

I was surprised that Dad – who was 87 when passing -
had kept some objects from my childhood,
like school books and early essay booklets,
which revealed (though I wasn't unaware of it)
that I hadn't known him very well,
him being quite distant, keeping feelings to himself,
but now when he was gone
and only his earthly possessions were there to speak for him,
I began seeing him clearer than during his lifetime,
and became slightly more aware of him as he really had been;
a common man with feelings for his family, his kids,
but whose sentiments sort of drowned
in my mother's warm closeness and flowing feelings,
on the verge of becoming totally alien

I learned already when I was quite young,
that he was a man of honor,
who stood up for justice, his and others,
and who, in his work with farm animals
- cows and horses – was a skilled and caring caretaker,
always highly thought of by his employers

He was born in 1904,
and spent most of his working life,
which started at an early age,
on farms, albeit never his own,
but when the barn on a farm burned down in 1957,
(when he, by the way, managed to get all the animals out to safety)
he started working at a big steel mill in the town of Oxelösund,
by the Baltic Sea,
where he stayed until he retired at age 65, in 1969

In 1963, when we were still living on the farm mentioned above,
he was hit hard by divorce,
and settled into a small apartment near the factory in Oxelösund;
an enormous change from the farm life he'd lived
in the familiar openness of the countryside he was accustomed to.

He by no means became an alcoholic,
but sometimes he sought relief from his pain in the bottle,
and one time in my early career at the Police Department,
minding the seized or arrested,
I was temporarily relieved of my duties
by my thoughtful commissioner
as my father was brought in for public intoxication

Going through his left property
I was reminded of his deep interest in science, geography, expeditions
and other subjects not very common among the poorly educated
of those days,
and it suddenly dawned on me that he had been the one
that had instilled in me my desire for knowledge, art & travel,
though my mother, who read frightful fairytales to me,
had fired up my fantasy and imagination.
After my father's passing I grew more aware of
how the combination of those two
really had formed much of what I became

I had been foresighted enough to interview both my parents
on tape in 1989 and 1990.
The result later became three CDs with my father and two with my mother;
now priceless objects; vaults of incredible knowledge
as well as the closeness of my parents, their breaths,
their voices, their ways of expressing themselves
in remarkable detail,
sometimes describing the same event,
like how they met, from their different views,
when she was just 15, he 22

My father was a wonderful storyteller
He used to call me up on the telephone
from time to time, and tell me things
from his life.
That is what finally got me to bring a tape recorder
to his home in May 1989, and record him
during two extended sessions
One of the earliest memories of his on tape
were the headlines of the newspaper
the day after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912,
one of the later how he and I went out in the October night
in 1957
to watch the Sputnik drift by up above
like a traveling star

My ability, though, to see him as another adult like myself,
with his place in my life and others,
didn't really clear
until I and my brother sifted through his wordly goods
that day in the summer of 1992,
when flickering memories began to sprout,
like when he took me on the back of his moped
to my first ever movie,
a Disney Donald Duck animated cartoon
in the People's House at Björkvik Village
in the Swedish countryside in 1954

Then again,
he wasn't a hero or always a fair man
For instance, he had always promised me a moped
for when I'd turn 15, the lawful age for such a vehicle
in Sweden,
but when the time came, he didn't make good on the promise,
with the excuse that my mother had divorced him the year before
Instead my mother, who was quite poor, took a loan,
to have a shiny new Puch Florida moped standing there,
on 13 February 1964

---


The interviews with my parents from 1989 & 1990 can be heard on Soundcloud, but they're all in Swedish:

https://soundcloud.com/user-782001904-315487351/helge-och-viola-12

and

https://soundcloud.com/user-782001904-315487351/helge-och-viola-22