On Thursday, around midday, my grandfather died.
I was in school, dad was with him when he took his last breath. When I arrived at the hospital, he was still quite warm.
A dead body is a weird thing. It was as if he had lost his features. An empty shell. Which is what he was, I guess.
I didn’t cry. The only thing I could think about was how incredibly hot the male nurse intern was. He came in with papers for us to sign. He was tall and blue-eyed and I thought that either he must be such a door-mat, gay, or simply the perfect man. I like to think of myself as deep and intelligent, but then I find myself in a room with the body of my dead grandfather and all I can do is start fantasizing about the hot nurse. I am shallow and have inappropriate reactions in sad situations.
Now they’re all dead, my grandparents. Both the Swedish ones and the one I had in Finland. I wonder what they imagined their future life together would be like, Lilian and Lars, when they got married in the early 1950’s (I think). Sweden must have been so full of promise, everything pointing in one direction: forward. I don’t know, of course, but I imagine seeing that in their clear eyes and bright smiles. Great hopes for the future.
Times are different now. Couples don’t take wedding photos in black and white anymore.
I remember one morning at the farm in Sonoma, Abbie coming late out to the blueberry field. She told us that her grandmother had just gotten really sick and the doctors didn’t know if she would get better. And then Abbie started crying, in her straw hat and gardening gloves, in the bright California sun. I’m not good with emotional things, but somehow my instinct told me to hug her and I think she appreciated it.
See, that’s appropriate behavior when you get news of death or sickness in the family. Abbie is going to Berlin in the spring, she might be able to pass by Stockholm on her way east. A HUGE maybe. But I hope she will. I really do. Not only because she could teach me some proper grief behavior.
Not that I think my grandfather would have minded. He wasn’t big on showing feelings. He was a very straight forward kind of man. On Tuesday, the last time I saw him alive, he complained about everything on TV being about Mandela, eulogies and praise. Mandela was one of his biggest idols and the only time I’ve seen him cry, except for when grandma died, was in an overheated van during a family holiday in Capetown, Christmas 1997, when he held a monologue about how incredible he thought Nelson Mandela was. I guess that means that you can even get sick of your heroes.
Shit. I really don’t have a point to this story, more than. Now he’s dead. And in a way, I got to say goodbye. The last memory I have of him is there in the hospital bed on Tuesday evening, him holding my hand, squeezing it and smiling – and then I had to run, to babysit my brother while dad and stepmom went to see a play.
And so, life goes on. I’m knitting baby hats. All my friends seem to be getting pregnant these days. Well, maybe not all. But still. Life. The eternal cycle.
Katja Malmborg 