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 recognized,

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