Nurse Kerstin's navy blue coat

It was tailored for her. In a navy blue woolen material you can’t find anymore. In the fifties. When she started her studies for becoming a nurse. I kept it after she passed away. And last summer I lost it.

My mother and I had a difficult relationship. She didn’t like me. I can’t remember ever sitting on the lap of my mother. Or getting a hug. Not until she became old and week and needed the hugs for herself. And I didn’t like my mother. I guess you can’t afford liking or wanting someone who in every sense makes you feel unwanted and not likeable. This continued until she died, 82 years old.

She was a nurse, my mother. A member of the first generation educated women with a monthly paycheck. Making them independent of men. My mother and her colleagues were all outspoken, fearless, strict, stern and strong in their professional confidence. I grew up among women who had an obvious place in the community and new their value.

She worked at a nursing home, my mother. That wasn’t what she wished for, she wanted something more, but in the small town where I grew up it was the only option. During my high school summers I worked there too, as an assistant nurse. And that’s how I become aware of my mother as a different person than the wife and mom.

She was a good nurse, my mother. She cared about her patients. She was nice and warm to them. Her group of colleagues was a tight gang who dominated the male doctors and ruled the place. They had a lot of fun together and you could hear their laughter and giggles filling the corridors. At her job, my mother was happy. I very rarely saw her happy at home.

Her fifties nurse uniform had a place at the back of the family walk in closet. A blue and white striped weekday cotton dress. The black wool Sunday dress with pin tucks. And the navy blue double-breasted wool coat. My mother kept her figure most of her life, and I remember her wearing the black dress for Good Fridays and Christmases. Nobody wanted to work those weekends, so my mom and her colleagues made it a thing dressing up, making it more fun and paying respect, although times had changed into white coats and scrubs.

It’s a mystery how those pieces of clothing fitted me perfectly! We were both slender, but my mom was at least 4 inches (10 cm) shorter than me. Yet, the sleeves go all the way down to my wrist. I loved that uniform. It was something about the quality. And weighing the heavy coat in my hand, rubbing my cheek in the Sunday dress, made me feel like they were a door to who my mother was as a young woman. Before me. The child who made her angry and upset.

I didn’t grieve my mother when she died. It wasn’t a loss. And I didn’t hang on to a lot of her things. I didn’t want to be reminded. But I kept her navy blue nurse coat.

I kept the part of my mother who I could bear. Who I could tolerate and even appreciate. I kept the professional woman. The one who cared for her patients and was warm and nice. I kept the laughter and giggle. I kept the happy part of my mom. I kept Nurse Kerstin.

I wore the coat for her funeral. And I wore it for a different funeral last summer. My choir was singing from the church stand and the navy blue was hanging in the coatroom. It was a warm day, and I walked out of there in my summer dress, simply forgetting about the coat.

The day after, it was gone. Someone had stolen Nurse Kerstin’s coat. My relative Lisa who is the church organist looked everywhere for me, but it was gone. I couldn’t believe it. And oh how I blamed myself loosing the only thing of my mom I wanted to hold on to.

I grieved. This was when I lost my mother. Seven years after her passing away. I couldn’t accept that her coat was gone. A part of myself was lost. I spread the word on Facebook and I even put an ad in the local paper: a photo of my mother graduating as a nurse, and begging the thief please to return the coat where he picked it up.

Nothing happened of course and I slowly had to accept the fact but never forgave my carelessness.

A week ago, while writing my weekly posting, Lisa sent me a question: is this your coat? A mobile photo, a bit blurry, followed the inquiry. It was a dark double-breasted coat tossed over a table. My jaw dropped. Picture number two showed Lisa with the coat on. I closed my eyes. I was shaking my head. It was unreal. But yes, it was Nurse Kerstin’s navy blue coat.

One year and three months later it was back in the church coatroom. Just hanging there. Lisa passed the space, like she does a dozen times a day, and from the corner of the eye something called for her. She has never even seen the coat, only heard my description, yet it caught her eye.

Where has it been? What story could it tell?

This weekend is All Saint’s Day weekend in Sweden. Friday evening my sister and our families went to our family graves to celebrate our gone loved ones. A quite Seattle-like rain fell making us cold and wet in the dark November evening, but the cemeteries were glowing from candles at most every stone. It was beautiful.

At my mother and father’s grave in my home town we let them know that Audrey was keeping the rain away with Grandma’s faded pink umbrella, and Trouble 2 was wearing Grandpa’s dark blue fifties hat. And then we told them the amazing and incredible story about a lost, much missed and astonishingly found navy blue wool coat. It was quite a moment.

This Sunday evening I try the coat on for the first time. Unfortunately I have grown a bit too big so I won’t be able to where it (anymore?) (for now?), but it makes me happy just watching it hanging in my hallway. Like it’s never been away.

I rub my nose in the dark fabric. So weird. It smells like my childhood walk in closet. Where has it been? I stick my hands in the pockets. There is some fine debris at the bottom of the right one, feels a bit like saw dust. I am turning the pocket inside out. The dust is reddish-brown. I am putting my nose to it. It smells like my father. There has been a cigarette in the pocket.

My father died from lung cancer five months before my mother passed away. He had been smoking most of his life. The scent of my dad was cigarettes. This is a bit overwhelming. I am washing my hands. The smell is still there. I have wrapped my mother around me and from her right pocket my father is saying hello. I am drinking a glass of cold water.

And then I continue writing my Sunday story. I wonder who took Nurse Kerstin’s coat. I wonder where it was for more than a year. I wonder how it came that the thief returned it. Did she see my ad in the local paper? Did she read my begging for her to return it? And did, 15 months later?

I will never know. But I know Nurse Kerstin is back with me. The part of my mother who I was able to like. I think it will be healing. And my father unexpectedly popping up from her pocket is a welcome greeting from a loving dad.

So, mom and dad, this All Saint’s Weekend. Thank you.