A light family tradition in the dark

It’s always very beautiful. All the lights. Flickering in the dark. And it strikes me, like so many times before, how on most every grave there are candles lit.

It is All Saint’s Day, Allhelgonadagen, in Sweden. A church holiday becoming more and more dear to us, it seems. When I was a child I remember dad walking to the cemetery to make my grand parents grave look nice for the the pretty dark holiday. It wasn’t that easy to light a candle in the cold or rainy fall back then, as the plastic wrapped ones is a fairly new phenomenon, so only a few vague flares, that’s my memory of my childhood All Saints Day cemetery.

Today every cemetery in Sweden is lit up in honor to our loved ones. The gloomy holiday we payed as little attention as possible has changed to a celebration of light. Some cemeteries even offer coffee for warmth to visitors shivering in the dark.

My parents passed away only six months a part 2004 and 2005, and since then my sister and I have made it a tradition to visit the cemetery in Nordmaling, 45 minutes south of Umeå where we grew up, at All Saints Day. It hasn’t happened every year, but my guess is Trouble & Trouble and their three cousins remember it as an annual event. And it’s not always we are all gathered either, the nicer when we are.

Over the years our little crowd has been blessed with girlfriends and a wife. Which is nice also because we like to sing to our parents/grandparents. And as my sister and I have produced only male voices, imported female voices come in handy.

Yesterday we all met up at the family grave. We lit the candles in the lantern, one tall for dad and one shorter for mom. And then one for my grandparents. The evening was unusually beautiful. Dry, calm, some degrees above freezing point. It wasn’t quite though, as we aren’t that quite. On the contrary, we are pretty loud. I hope no one was offended by our laughters, and if they were, my hope is we were forgiven when singing grandpa’s and grandma’s favorite hymns. We even sang them a Christmas hymn in harmonies, Jul jul strålande jul, as we won’t be there on Christmas Eve.

This year we also brought them a very special gift. My sister’s oldest son’s one year old daughter. This was her first visit to the family grave, and I can easily picture my parent’s joy watching her toddle around before them, singing already, and looking exactly like my sister that age.

Afterwords we were all invited to my sister’s place for a nice warm dinner, and joined by the little girls newborn baby brother. Only 10 days old he was passed from one arm to another through the evening, we all wanted to have our share of this new family miracle, and he let us. It was so nice of him.

I am happy and grateful to see my sons and their cousins appreciate this tradition. I am happy there is a way for them to visit their beloved grand parents. I feel the value of the stately tombstone my sister and I carefully selected, our parents names engraved in a font my dad would have picked out. The stone is a picture of them, a picture we all recognize and know. It’s a comfort it’s always there. And that we are always welcome.