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This is a true story. Something I have put off writing for years.
Dedicated to Sven-Erik.
Over and over my mom, my aunt, my half uncle, any one, had kept telling me that I didn't have to.
But I wanted to. I needed to.
We were all sitting out in a waiting room. We all spoke in hushed voices. My cousin, Elise, had agreed to do it too when I had. I didn't particulary like my cousin but part of me was happy she was there.
My half uncle came out into the waiting room the fetch us. Slowly we walked into the room.
I was so scared.
The room was lit by a ceiling lamp accompanied by candles. That was when I first glanced at the dead body. His skin was so gray, his eyes were red and sunken into his skull. He had a cap over his thin, almost non-existant hair. His lips were white and thin.
But it wasn't as bad as I thought. I knew it was just a body. He was dead.
We all stared at the body in grieving silence. My aunt, Anita, her husband, Ketil, their three kids, Elise, Joel, and Anton, my other uncle, Kenneth, and my half uncle, Håkan, my cousin, Jorgen (Håkan's son) and his wife KC, my mom, my dad, my brother and sister.
The whole family had been brought together yesterday at a dinner, but this was all that had come to see his body. It was a month and a day ago he had died but hadn't been buried yet because it was customary in Sweden to wait before you bury your loved ones. We had traveled, taken off a week from school to come to the funeral. Kenneth, who also had moved to the USA, had taken a week off from his firm to come here with us.
Kenneth's face was red, making his blonde buz-cut hair stand out. I could tell he was trying not to cry. Any one talking was doing so in a hushed voice.
My mom had alreayd started to cry at the death of her father. Within minutes I spotted tears on Kenneth's face too. Anita went up to him and hugged him tight, rubbing her hand across his back, soothing him. He sobbed quietly into her shoulder. Soon their embrace stopped and I went up and stretched my twelve year old hands around his neck and whispered, "It's OK."
Eighteen years earlier Peter had died. Peter was my uncle who I never met. My brother was supposedly alot like him. He had had luekemia. It hadn't killed him but it had worn down and ruined his body so much he died from somehow having water in his lungs. I didn't know the whole story, I was afraid to ask. Right after he had died my grandfather had said, "I'm coming after you soon."
My grandfather now lay dead before me. He, Sven-Erik, had died at the age of 87, from pneumonia. He was in his lat seventies when he became senial. He had had a mild stroke and his short term memory had been damaged. That is why he hardly remembered us when we visited him. He thought we were still little kids. We never really liked visiting him. The only part we liked was that he always had a full jar of candy, sneaking treat after treat as my mother talked to him. I felt ashamed to admit that now. I should have treasured his life more. I shouldn't have groaned when my mom said it was time to visit.
Around me everyone talked about what his last words to Peter had been and how strange it was they had died in similar ways.
I remembered the time before he had died.
My mom had talked so much on the phone to grandma. Sometimes I caught her crying. She told us grandfather was really sick. She didn't say it right out but we knew that they thought he was going to die. And he had. The last gesture he had made was when my grandmother was visiting him. He had twitched his lips a little, a signal that he wanted a kiss. He had already been put to bed and couldn't get up to her without help and a wheelchair. She leaned over and kissed him.
That night at three o'clock he died.
We had been spending time in Boston for spring break. MIT, Harvard, BU. College was just a year away for my brother and each morning of my precious break I had to get up at 7 so we wouldn't miss our tour at 8. We were on the way home, me in my new Boston hoodie, when mom's cell phone called. The conversation was short but I was more interesting in the music blasting into my ears than to listen to what my mom was saying. She hung up and turned around.
"I need to talk to all of you." She said and I turned off my iPod. Her eyes were glazed and her face had a sad look.
"Sven-Erik is dead."
I had already guessed it but it still came as a shock. I stared out the window, forcing myself not cry. The tears disobeyed and brimmed over my eyes. I wiped them away, not wanting anyone to see. We sat there in the car for the three hours of the trip that was left, dad driving solemnly, my brother quiet in the back, and me, my sister, and my mom all crying.
A month later we missed a week of school to come to Sweden for the funeral.
Never again would we pick wildflowers for him. Never again would we see his face light up in a memory. Never again.
I don't know how long we were in that room. Elise was being the stupid girl she was and fooling around. I doubt she even missed him. My mom had told me, thinking this would cheer me up, "Anita told me that the first thing Elise said when she heard about it was 'Will Elisabeth be there?'" But it hadn't made me happy. It pissed me off.
We soon realized it was time to get the funeral going and went to the door we thought the way out was. We ended up in a room that looked like a hospital room with a dead body on the table. Elise gasped and I just stared.
Another one's pain, another one's sadness.
We then took the other door which led outside to the parking lot. They caried out his coffin and placed it in the funeral car. We got into our car and drove to the our small church, gray clouds over head threating to rain.
Ironic that when he is dead I know more about him than when he was alive.
He told me how Sven-Erik had been incharge of youth activities and how all the youth loved him. How no one ever saw him as old as he was because he was always fun to be around.
He was the kind of person that made you wish you had been born earlier so you could've known him.
He had been an orienteerer. I had already known that. I had heard the story of how he had lost his map in the stream and had to swim to get it, and how he had been in a cross country skiing orienteering race and saved a man who had fallen throught thin ice. The man speaking told me of things I hadn't known too. His last race had been when he was 77. Ten years before. I had been two then. There were other speakers as well and then all the grandchildren went up to sing. We had praticed yesterday at the family reunion dinner. As we sang I felt like I was going to cry when we started the first chorus but fought not to.
"Led mig, stod mig, gå brevid mig, så att jag en dag återvända kan till Gud om jag har lytt hans lag."
I looked out on the faces and almost everyone was crying. After the last verse we all sat back down. Soon we all left to go to the grave site.
The hole was deeper than I imaged it would be. It was scray to think that ever deeper under the hole lay Peter's grave. Sven-Erik was being buried in the same place. The copper gravestone had been taken away so they could add Sven-Erik's name. To think all the times we had visited this grave I never thought this day would come so soon. Even if his death had been expected.
All the family members stood to one side and went up the the grave, now with the coffin in it, first. I had been bottling up tears and I couldn't hold them in when I heard Anita say, "He was a such a nice father." She said it sounding so sad.
Soon my cousin and I went up. We both held roses in one hand and vit sipor in another. First we both dropped the roses, my cousin looking around, almot embarrest. I let the tears fall and slowly whispered, "Good bye grandpa."
Then when all the family members had put their roses in my cousin and I again came up and slowly spread the vit sipor over the pile of flowers. Vit sipor were a flower that strived in the spring, despite how cold it was. They had been Sven-Erik's favorite flower. This was only the second time in my life I remember seeing them as they had always bloomed out when we came to Sweden for our annual summer visit.
They seemed to coat the flowers like snow.
Then friends started to come up. His orienteering friends all had a pine tree branch with them.
"Here is your part of the woods." They said.
Then came Sven-Erik's sister. I don't know why she hadn't been standing with us, the other family members but it didn't matter.
"You were a good brother. Good bye." She said in a shaky voice.
Soon we had all finished up. There were only traces that I had been crying now.
That's when it started to rain.
Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are
Wake Me Up When Spetember Ends
By Green Day
