Jan 28, 2018

Bidding Alida a last farewell

So. Now it’s here. The day when I am writing my last chapter about Alida. 

100 years, 5 months and 15 days. That’s how long Alida’s life came to be. That’s how long she walked on this earth. Caring for us. December 27, 8.20 PM she passed away. Quietly and peacefully. That’s how long she stayed with us. 

Alida was my neighbor. The woman next door. She has been there all my life. All my children’s lives. All my mother’s life. And half my grandmother’s life. Alida carries all generations within her.

When I was a very young girl I used to take my little tricycle the 80 meters to the hot baker’s cottage where Alida and her husband Värner were making their delicious thin crust flat bred. It was my assignment to pick up the fresh warm morning bread for our front yard summer breakfasts. At that time, this place at the end of the road, was my family’s summer house. The bike ride was also a safe adventure for a little girl.

At 25 I moved here with my boyfriend who became my husband. At 30 Trouble 1 arrived, and at 32 Trouble 2 joined us. Alida and Värner were still baking their bread and little boys were now riding the tricycles. 

The foundation for Alida’s and mine friendship was founded when I was a tiny girl and she a woman in her forties. When I started my home here she was about the same age as I am now. Taking care of our cats and plants when my husband and I were gone, which we were a lot. Later being a fix point for Trouble & Trouble growing up. 

I think though, the most important time together for the two of us has been the last eighteen years. My husband and I separated and divorced. Värner, who was older than Alida turned fragile and had to move in to a nursing home. It was hard times for both of us and we found strength and companionship in each other. The day Värner passed away in 2008 at the age of 98, she called me. Now he is dead, she said. 

I used to walk the 80 meters trough the grove in the dark fall and winter afternoons to Alida’s house. We sat at her kitchen table drinking tea, having biscuits and coockies. I liked those with chocolate, she preferred the strawberry ones. We talked. We sighed. We laughed. Trouble & Trouble grew up and moved away, and we had even more tea. She was actually a coffee drinker but with me, she had tea.

Aren’t you afraid of the darkness, she asked me - as it’s pretty dark where we are at. No, I said, there is a lot of things I am afraid of, but not the darkness. Really she said, well in that case I won’t be either.

When Värner had to move away from home she was beating herself up of course, as most everyone does when it finally is impossible to take care of the spouse and life companion any more. I asked her to not be so hard on herself. You have done absolutely everything in your power for Värner all these years, I said. Is that so, she responded. Well, in that case I will let that one go.

That’s Alida.

When my back entered the level of acute back out phases starting in 2004, she picked up the mail and news paper for me as I couldn’t get to the mailbox myself. Even in her nineties she was looking out for me. 

At around 95 Alida still took her speedy walks in the forests and visiting her friends around the village most every day. Eventually she turned more fragile and her strolls became limited to our road. We used to meet between our houses, she supported by her walker and me on my Nordic Walking poles. We hugged and smiled and sighed. 

When it finally was time for Alida to be assisted by home care, they checked on her ones a day and she didn’t like it a bit. It was pretty much at the same time as my life ended the way I knew it to be, and I needed assistance six times a day.

When Alida for some reason was away, I felt like my backbone was gone. When her house was empty I was unguarded. I dreaded the day she would be gone, and it happened a little more than three years ago. She moved away, into a nursing home. 97 years old. And I had to learn to live without her. And to let go of her.

In June Alida turned a hundred years old. She had reached the goal we weren’t quite aware she had set up for herself. And I am so incredibly grateful for the beautiful summer afternoon her granddaughter Josephine and I had together with her a couple of days later. I got to meet her one last time. Holding her hand. Caressing her face. Singing her songs. And remembering together.

On Friday we bid our farewell to Alida. The mother. The grandmother. The great grandmother. The mother in law. And the friend. The sun was shining on the snowy landscape for the first time in weeks.

At the goodbye to Värner I sang Bliv kvar hos mig - Abide with me, the beautiful and poetic evening hymn also so right at the end of a life. And I promised Alida I would sing the same song at the end of her life as well. I’ve dreaded it though. How would I do it? In that moment?

It was a beautiful ceremony. It was sweet. And I wanted to contribute with what I had been given, my voice. I sang for Alida. I sang for her family. I sang for me. For Trouble & Trouble, my mother and my grandmother. For my extended family. I sang for all of us and for the moment. 

Back at my seat afterwords I could let go. Meanwhile the organ was reflecting, the pictures came to me. All the hours at her kitchen table in the winter darkness. Our brief meetings at the road. The deserted feeling returning to my empty home, knowing Alida was still in the house next door. Keeping me safe and sane.

Thank you Alida for everything you gave us. Thank you for staying with us much longer than we asked for. Thank yo for being such a presence in my life. I will always carry you with me. As I also carry your name.

Earlier chapters about Alida:




Jan 21, 2018

Having hygge?

- We are thinking of taking some pictures in the beautiful weather and maybe swing by for a fika, how does that sound?

Sounds good to me! I wouldn’t agree on the weather being precisely beautiful because it’s overcast, but the landscape is like a story book of fluffy two feet cold white, the trees heavily covered with snow. I do agree with Trouble 2 and Audrey on the general feeling of a beautiful northern Swedish winter day.

So, the conditions for hygge is optimal. Like they also are in Seattle, the number 1 hygge city in the US! Never heard of hygge? Let me explain.

Hygge is a Danish word summing up the feeling of coziness, contentment, warmth and socials making you feel really good. You might curl up at the fire place with a book or a knitting, gather together with some friends for a board game or meet up at a coffee shop or a pub to hang out with your mates as pastime. It’s relaxed quality time designated for just being and feeling good, and a lot of times there are candles involved.

This is something people in the Nordic countries really have a talent for. I would say the Finnish saunas is there way of hygge. Swedes get together for a fika, a sit down social including coffee, cardamom buns and some cockies. And Norwegians go inside their hytte, cabin, after the cross country tour in the mountains. I’m not sure what the Icelandic hygge looks like, maybe someone can fill me in?

According to Bert Sperling, American demographic expert and founding of Sperling’s Best Places, there are certain factors required to achieve hygge. You need cozy weather, fun activities, fire places and gathering places. His idea of cozy weather is, rain, cold, snow etc, weather that pushes you to want a fireplace and candles.

It was my friend Jannie who works for my home care company making dinner for me today. As it so happens she is actually Danish, perfect for a reality check! She agreed on Sperling’s list, although not quite on the weather point. Hygge is not weather-dependent. Hygge happens in any weather all year around where people get together to hang out and enjoy each other during hyggelig conditions. So, hyggelig is the adjective meaning pretty much nice and cozy.

As the term hygge now is starting to spread outside Scandinavia, Sperling’s Best Places is naturally taking an interest in finding the best places for hygge in the US. They have made an inventory of American cities, listing cozy weather, fun activities, fire places and gathering places as ranking factors. Not too surprisingly they found that four of the top five cities are all in northern states. And Seattle is the hygge-ist of the hygge cities, taking home top honors with a first-place ranking!

Seattle earned it’s spot because of the book loving Seattleites and the fact that 58% of the homes have fire places, the most in the country. The runner up Portland OR, Seattle’s baby sister, has the most hygge venues in the US and a good overall hygge pastimes. And here are the top five!

Sperling’s top five hygge cities:

1. Seattle
2. Portland
3. Minneapolis
4. Salt Lake City
5. Denver

So do you want to know which cities are the least hygge in the US? Here they are:

46. Tuscon
47. San Antonio
48. Miami
49. Riverside
50.Los Angeles

Bert Sperling, who himself is Swedish-Norwegian means that Denmark and Miami is the most far from each other on the list when it comes to life styles. And Salt Lake City, which might come as a surprise as the nr. 4 hygge city in the US actually has a large Danish heritage, that would explain their hygge tradition.

So, Trouble 2 and Audrey stopped by for a cozy Sunday afternoon fika in my yellow kitchen. Jannie and I had good laughs as she fixed my dinner while light flurries started falling over my snow-covered perfectly still landscape. And tonight I am enjoying my candles while writing my story under my blanket. It’s been a hygge day.

Jan 14, 2018

Paramparça - my dramatic dinner company

The 85th episode of the second season chocked me. Well, not a real chock but a TV-series chock. No, it’s not possible, how can the story even go on with one of the main characters dead?! Heads up, spoiler alert, if you are following the series and haven’t watched season 2, stop reading here!

During the extremely sad summer 2017 weather wise, I bumped into the Turkish soap opera Paramparça. The Swedish names is The exchange (obviously not, that’s English, but you know what I mean. In Swedish Förväxlingen), and it’s the story about two girls born at the same time at the same hospital and with very similar family names. They get exchanged at the hospital, grow up in the wrong family, and the mix up doesn’t get revealed until the girls are in their teens. !

The plot is very simple. One family is obscenely rich and live in a luxury home at Bosporen. The other one poor and their home is a moldy rental in what’s in the story is called the slum. So, the poor girl Hazal should have had her life in the wealth at Bosporen and the rich Cansu should have grown up in the Istanbul slum.

The characters in the story are extremely easy to read, kind of like caricatures of themselves. To a western eye they are way over dramatized, but my Middle Eastern friends tell me that’s the way it is. Up until episode 90 of 100 in the first season the characters also stays true to how they are first presented.

So, this is the cast:

The rich family: mother Dilara who is evil, going crazy all the time. Father Cihan, the good, wise, always balanced head of the family who only occasionally in the heat of the moment knocks someone down. Brother Ozan, a light soul in his late teens most often frustrated and mad about what’s going on in his family. Then of course Cansu, the sweetest teenage girl with a golden heart always open for everyone. 

The poor family: father Özkan who took of to Germany when his daughter was only little, leaving his wife with his debts, he is in German prison when the story starts. Gülseren, the mother with a heart and soul like an angel but also a will power and fighting spirit that can make mountains move. The daughter Hazal is hard to like. She is ungrateful, manipulating and plainly mean. 

These two families of course get entangled when it turns out they have raised the wrong daughters. There is nothing but drama here and in the center of it the good father Cihan and the good mother Gülseren who fall in love with each other. 

I have spent most dinners together with these families for about half a year now. The episodes are only half an hour here in Sweden so they are easy to fit in. Pretty often I watch two though. Three, no, when I do I feel like I have eaten too much candy or something.

It’s interesting watching a story which is differently shaped than the western template I am used to and fed up on. The dramaturgy is pretty much the same, but so much more of everything. It’s constantly over the top and most of the time totally predictable. Once I accepted that, it stopped being annoying and these people became my dinner friends.

I also find it fascinating watching something in a language which is absolutely foreign to me. No words related to anything I am familiar with. Not quite true, they often say bye bye, surprise is the same word pronounced in French, euro of course and taxi, taksi. Other than that it’s just sounds. I love it! And I now even have a few turkish words in my vocabulary.

The story this far has moved over a few years. Cihan and Gülseren’s love is of course inconvenient, to Gülseren even impossible. Cihan is persistent though. His marriage to Dilara is unhappy and unfriendly, although Dilara for the longest time wants to keep it for the status and the honor. Aside of this the dramas within and between the families just keeps coming. Now and then someone is in the hospital in life threatening conditions after severe accidents or shootings. They always survive miraculously and without complications though.

For the longest time you can’t tell if the actors are talented or not, as they keep acting the stereotype of the character, always being the same. But at around episode 90 of the first season something is happening. 

The dad Özkan, who has been mean and pretty much stupid, is showing a vulnerable, exposed and very sad part of himself. You feel sorry for him and even start liking him. Dilara’s character is developing as well. She starts questioning herself, becomes softer, and realizes she is a very lonely woman. 

There is especially one part of this story that really touches me. At Cihan and Dilara’s divorce they are thanking each other for the 20 years they had together, for better and for worse. And for being good parents to their children. Cihan, who is the one moving on, expresses time and time again how he will always be there for Dilara should she need it. And how crucial it is for him knowing what’s going on in her life, because that is what’s going on in his children’s life. In their children’s life. “Dilara, we will always be parents together”. He shows unusual responsibility and awareness about what it is being a parent.

Now, back to episode 85 season 2. I watch it the day before Christmas. Just one more before the Holidays. This is the episode where Cihan and Gülseren after years of back and fourth is finally marrying. The daughters are excited and Dilara has accepted the situation. Özkan is drinking heavily crying, as he wants his ex-wife back.

In the middle of the after-ceremony reception joy the usual drama continues and someone steps in with a gun. The room is filled with guests, but the bullet which is planned for Cihan’s son Ozan, hits Gülsüren as she in her goodness covers the son and gets shot in the stomach. 

We didn’t see this one coming, but why not, this is Paramparça after all. Thinking their marriage will start with some month at the hospital. But that’s not what happens.

Gülseren dies. She dies. Just like that. She really dies. I can’t believe it. You can’t let the main female character get shot and die without planting it in some way, that’s not right!

The day before Christmas Gülseren dies, I don’t have any hot water and Christmas Eve morning my house is cold. And I can’t even see how the story is going to go on with Gülseren dead, that’s not even possible!

But as season 2 is120 episodes, the story continues. After the Holidays I took a deep breath and started watching again. Yes, it continues.

I have grown very fond of my dinner friends. And also the actors who I now can tell has depth and skills. But I will miss Gülseren. The warm angel with the good soul and the big heart. I will miss her dearly.


Jan 7, 2018

Contentment at the end of my timeline

Every New Years I am summing the old year up at the end of my journal and writing words of ahead before the new year coming. The aheads are largely depending on the experiences from the year just passed and the state of mind it has put me in.

2017 was an administrative year. I have taken care of a lot of practical matters in my life that needed to be done, which is good. Some of them has been pretty taxing on me, but life has spared me catastrophes of different sizes this year, for which I am truly grateful.

2018 I am entering the new year in a place I am not that familiar with and can not quite put my finger on. Or find the right words for. It might be a new level of acceptance. There is a fine line tough between acceptance and giving in. Resignation. But can giving in and resignation also be contentedness?

It’s five years now since my back problems turned handicapping to the extent that I can't take care of myself practically. Since then I am relying on every day assistance from society and I am so lucky to be living in Sweden where such help is available. I am fighting for it though. Right now my case is up for scrutiny and I don’t know where that is going. But for now I have the aid I need.

I am also so lucky to have the very best help you can find. Civil Care, an Umeå company always going that extra mile for me, personal oftentimes becoming dear friends and like family to me. Civil Care is my life savor.

During these years my world has become a lot smaller of course. I am still singing in my choir during periods when my back can take it, but other than that my life pretty much is treatments of different kinds. And daily routines. 

I haven’t been to the movies  and I can’t go to concerts or out for dinner, except in very rare occasions and with a lot of assistance. I can’t travel. During these five years I have been in Skellefteå two hours north of Umeå twice, and to my childhood small town Nordmaling 45 minutes south of here a number of times. And oh, I have spent Midsummer’s Eve at the island Norrbyskär with my family a couple of times. That’s my world.

Facebook keeps informing me it’s a bigger world out there. I see friends and family frequently traveling wide and far. That used to hurt a lot and sometimes it still does. But often it’s just flickering by. I note it, but not so much more. I am wondering if my current restricted life has become normalized and internalized to the degree that my longing for something more is gone? Or if it’s a self preservation to not wish for something I know I can’t have?

I think the fact that I let go of my Seattle last year is a player here. Cleaning out my storage and getting rid of my car was finally giving up my dream of Seattle such it was. My dream of a future there, but also my hope of returning one last time. I am quite sure that won’t happen. Seattle is now a story in past tense. The Emerald City is now in my book of memories.

I don’t know, but it might be that process turned most everything including dreams, hopes and will power in an outer world to a past tense. Something is different.

I feel like I am at the end of my time line. I am not dying, that I know of. I don’t feel like it’s the end of my days. There is no drama here, on the contrary. I just feel like it is over. And that’s a quite place. 

I am standing at the last spot of my time line and somehow it is located in my mother’s see of lupins here at the end of the road. That’s where I am and that’s where I will be. It’s sunny and pleasant. I am running my little queendom in a soft voice. Waiting patiently for plumbers and electricians. You can’t be here next week? No worries, maybe next year? 

Sometimes someone is stopping by to say hello. I am offering them a Stoltergården Arnold Palmer. My neighbor Gunnar delivers his wife Ondina’s eggs every Sunday. I am walking a few steps on my road or up the fields. The village kids try to climb the treehouse Kojan where they are not allowed because it’s really high up and dangerous. Once in a while I write a song to put in my drawer. My adorable kitten Sorella is scouting for breakfast at the bank of a ditch.

That’s pretty much it. And I don’t wish for anything more. It’s peaceful. A former girlfriend of one of my sons and I exchanged Messenger greetings before Christmas. She said “I miss you and your world”. It was interesting. I wondered what she saw as my world. Maybe it was this.

Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. This might just be a phase. And if it’s not, for now it seems like a pretty good place to be in.

Jan 1, 2018

Holiday healing

It is interesting how long it can take to adjust to a new situation. And I am not talking about adjusting intellectually and/or emotionally, but adjusting at the very core of yourself.

2010 was the last Christmas I, my ex-husband and our children spent together. I guess that’s also the last Christmas Trouble & Trouble came back to the house for wrapping the Christmas presents, making ready for the celebration. 

Since then, there hasn’t been a “home for Christmas” in a general meaning. Arriving here with bags filled, sleeping over, writing Christmas rhymes for the presents, the house smelling of breakfast coffee. Well, that is, except for 2012 which was like a movie home for Christmas! My Seattle daughter Becca arriving from Spain where she studied and Trouble 2 and Audrey from Paris where they stayed for the year. And it was -15°C (5°F) and 0,5 meter (1,5 feet) of snow!

So, this is my seventh Holiday on my own, except for that Hollywood year. My sister and I and our families have Christmas Eve together, but apart from that I am on my own here at the end of the road.

I know this of course, planning for the Holidays, entering them. Still, for many years I filled my kitchen with food and treats for a family and teenage sons’ tons of friends. And it wasn’t until two years ago I stopped buying 8 rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, addresses, ribbons and tape for an industries and intense Santa workshop.

Slowly I have adjusted to 2 rolls of paper and 1 bottle of mulled wine. And that paper last for three years and only half the bottle will be consumed. I have found it sad. 

Through life crises and traumas appearing right at Christmas starting 20 years ago the Holidays turned from a still child starry eye to something dreaded and the color red made me sick from anxiety. But don’t we all want that child starry eye? When nothing yet is complicated and the only anticipation is pure excitement? Not to talk about New Years. I simply hate New Years Eve. A lonely evening and the moment of the year I am allowing self pity to be my companion since what I can do to push that shiny new year in a more positive direction for myself is very limited.

For many years I have avoided playing the favorite Christmas albums. It is just too painful. For as many years I have been wanting to write Swedish lyrics to the most beautiful and no doubt saddest Christmas song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Now. An impossible task, that phrase itself is nothing but untranslatable, at least into Swedish.

Last year though I forced myself to take a seat in my yellow sofa chair in my yellow kitchen to listen to the album that hurts the most. Let the memories and the pain come and take care of them. One by one. There and then I knew what I needed to do.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas carries the grief and sorrow of golden days passed. But also the hope and faith that some day all the troubles will be out of sight and everyone being together again. 

That’s the part where I can not sing along. I needed to write those lyrics for myself. I wanted to convey the need to take care of myself in the grief and the loneliness. To hold and carry myself. To make my empty house light and warm for myself.

I found a way in to what became the lyrics. And I spent New Years writing. A very good and healing way of spending the transition to a new year.

Entering the Holidays this year felt differently. It was like what I have known intellectually and experienced emotionally before, now had settled in my bones. I was fine with not needing to buy more wrapping paper, a good thing actually. The only bottle of mulled wine hasn’t looked that lonely. 

And for the first time in all these years I didn’t wrap any Christmas gifts for myself. I didn’t feel the need. I think putting words on that amorphous heavy blanket of Holiday anxiety gave me an image with contours, possible to see and grasp.

The fact that my house was literary cold for four days over Christmas (yes, that’s how the heating pump situation evolved!) was taxing of course and made me feel quite a bit sorry for myself. But it seems like something might be healing within me. At the core of myself. I hope so.

A Happy New Year to all of you!