Dead for longer than they had been alive

Disa woke early. When she went past the living room window she saw that the ground outside was covered in snow. The woods behind the house were transformed into a winter landscape and spruce and fir stood tall with snow-powdered tops, it almost looked as if they had snow in their hair.

Her black clothes lay ready and the beautiful bouquet with pink lilies and white baby’s-breath stood ready in Grandma’s vase. The wreath she and her siblings had prepared together was already at the church.

Outside the sky was clear blue without a single cloud and the sun was shining brightly. It looked warm and pleasant, but was probably icy cold. Temperatures fell below freezing overnight and she could see car windows were covered in ice. She spotted a pair of birds landing on the bare hedge outside, holding on to the branches with their claws. Then a few more came, one by one and sat down next to the first pair. They were a bit bigger than the small birds that usually visited their garden. The tufts on the top of their heads looked like the birds she had seen at Grandma’s apartment – waxwings. Suddenly they all flew away as if heeding some unheard signal.

She took the car and the highway brought her all the way to the church. She thought of her grandma during the drive – she’d always had been so loving and took everyone into her warm embrace, even if they had only just met. This weekend Disa had visited the municipalities project “Old and young united.” She knew Grandma had wanted to meet the young girl, and Disa had gone to tell her why Grandma wouldn’t be showing up. The room was the same as before, as were the slips of paper on the tables. She recognised several of the old folks sitting around the table by the window, which seemed to be their favourite. Disa saw the girl sitting by her usual table for social issues. She went up to her and asked if she could sit down. They shook hands and introduced themselves and she found out that the girl’s name was Victoria. Disa told her that her Grandma had died and that’s why she wouldn’t be coming. Victoria was saddened and she told Disa that she would miss her even if they had only known each other for a short while. Disa believed her. That was exactly how Grandma was, she swept everything and everyone in the world into her warm embrace. It was a loss to the world and to humanity that Grandma was no more. Disa noted that the scars from razor blades on Victoria’s arm had faded. She wasn’t doing anything to hide them and there seemed to have been no new ones since the last time they met. Disa noticed an old man with a walking stick coming towards their table.

‘May I sit down here,’ the man said.

‘Sure,’ Victoria answered, using the English word.

‘Huh?’ the old man said at the same time as he raised his bushy eyebrows.

‘Sure, of course,’ Victoria clarified.

‘Huh?’ the man said and fiddled with his hearing aid.

‘Yes, that’s fine,’ Victoria said in a clear voice and pointed at the chair and all three of them laughed.

‘I’m bad of hearing, but if you speak clearly it’s usually fine, and there’s nothing wrong with what’s in here,’ the old man said and tapped his head. ‘When the body runs out of strength the brain has to make up for it.’ He gave a rumbling, warm and powerful laughter, sat down slowly, fiddled with his hearing aid again and turned to Victoria. ‘What’s your opinion of politicians? Do they deserve their high salaries you think?’

‘I’ll leave you two to talk,’ Disa said and stood up and pushed her chair in.

‘Thanks for coming and telling me about your grandma,’ Victoria said. ‘Maybe we’ll see each other some other time.’

Disa started walking away. She agreed with Grandma, the girl really was precious, and just now Grandma’s choice of word – precious – which Disa had first found old fashioned, felt truly fitting.

She didn’t head straight out but instead snuck past the table by the window full of that older crowd. She was curious what they were talking about this time. Had they made their way to questions of spirituality yet, she wondered smiling to herself. It turned out they still hadn’t got that far. This time the discussion revolved around a dance evening the senior citizens’ association had arranged last night and there was much laughter when they talked about the tough job the few men who came had had to swing the many ladies around the dance floor. The women had competed for attention and nabbed the men from one another. 

One of the old folks sat folding the piece of paper with the words “religion and spirituality” on it. ‘Yes, these are good times,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been this sought after before, ever. It’s darned well the best time of my life. Let’s drink to that.’

He laughed and raised his coffee cup and was met with smiles from all around. Everyone grabbed their cups and raised them in a toast. ‘It would have been nice with some coffee karsk. But I guess we’ll have to do with just coffee here. We’re really just missing the karsk,’ he said and laughed heartily at his own joke. ‘Had I gotten my karsk as well, life couldn’t get much better.’ He took a sip, closed his eyes and revelled in the taste of the freshly brewed coffee. Then he put the cup down, took the paper plane he had folded from the sign, and threw it at one of the ladies at the table, winking at her.

Outside the municipal building, Disa took the opportunity to go up to the enormous granite block outside the entrance. It was Grandma who noticed it was the mythical Hugin and Munin at the top. The beautifully carved ravens appeared to be watching over the surroundings.

She arrived at the church and parked her car. She met up with her siblings and parents outside the church and they went inside together. Their steps echoed on the stones as they walked down the aisle of the architecturally building. They sat down close to the front in the same pew. The coffin was there in front covered in wreaths and flowers. It was hard to understand that Grandma actually lay within it. It felt slightly bizarre, and still quite beautiful. The church building breathed calm which spread to everyone there. She took an unobtrusive peek around to see her uncles, aunts, and cousins. Nodded slightly in greeting to them, but she also didn’t recognise many others. Some were probably Disa’s own distant relatives.

The church bells rang solemnly and loudly. Disa thought of Grandma’s pendulum clock that had echoed in her living room all these years. A peaceful silence fell before the organ began with bellowed tones leading into a psalm as everyone started singing. The priest then began the eulogy with anecdotes about Grandma, which unfortunately didn’t reach all the way out to the audience very well.

All of Grandma’s relatives filed past the coffin to make their final farewells. When it was Disa’s turn, she placed the bouquet of pink lilies and small white flowers along with the others on the coffin. The thought passed through her mind that this time at least she had gotten a hold of pink lilies and she almost heard Grandma’s chuckling voice add: ‘which I love.’ Disa’s eyes filled with tears and she felt a lump forming in her throat. She would never get to meet her Grandma again. Bye Grandma, she thought, I hope you have it good now, with Grandpa. Then she went back to sit in the pew again.

There was something beautiful about the long winding line of people on their way to say a last personal farewell and give Grandma a few last heartfelt words on her way. Some mumbled them audibly, others more pensively contemplative. The church echoed from all the heels striking the floor. Just imagine if you had been able to see this Grandma. How much you meant to so many people.

Where are you now? Physically you are in the coffin. But is your consciousness locked in there as well? An electric light blinked to life and a cool breeze blew past, making the gilded candlesticks with their live candles flicker. The door to the church had opened.

The funeral ceremony came to a close and an evocative silence fell over the proceedings for a few seconds. They hear birds chirping outside the church walls. Everyone rose and slowly drifted out along the small aisle. When Disa came out, she was a bit surprised by the snow still covering the ground. The birdsong had brought back the spring feeling she’d gotten from the sunny warmth of the weekend. Seems the birds wouldn’t let themselves be bothered by a bit of snow and cold. Their annual mating ceremonies went ahead regardless. The sun shone from a clear blue sky and the white snow on the cemetery was blinding and she had to turn her eyes away and squint. Disa, her siblings, and parents joined the procession along the snow-covered path through the cemetery, which also lead them past a runestone. The stone had the runes, by now familiar to Disa, and a carved cross. The heathen and Christian conjoined. They turned off towards the prepared lot for Grandma’s grave, her last resting place next to Grandpa.

They made new tracks in the wet snow up to the grave site. Grandpa’s relatively new gravestone where Grandma’s name was now to be engraved, too, waited for them. Grandma’s closest relatives lay in the nearby grave. Grandma’s grandfather’s whole name was written out in gold and under it stood ‘His wife Wilhelmina’ in the same beautiful gold lettering. How nice. She pictured the black and white photograph of them Grandma had given her and that now stood in a display cabinet back home. Here they lay together in peace. Judging from the dates, they had been dead now for longer than they had been alive. Time on earth was only a short breath from the world’s perspective. Furthest down on the gravestone Grandma’s parent’s names were engraved and at its top was a five pointed gold star.

A person she didn’t recognise, maybe a few years older than Disa, came up to stand next to her. ‘So this is where Gerda will lie,’ she said.

‘Yes, next to Grandpa,’ Disa replied.

‘So she was your grandmother? Gerda was my grandmother’s sister. My grandmother’s name was May. I’m Elisabet,’ she said and extended a hand and they greeted.

They started talking about their grandmothers, who were both dead now and that they seemed to have had a close relation-ship. Both were kind and sympathetic people. Disa told of the hard life and harsh conditions on the farm where their grand-mothers grew up, where their common great-grandmother had raised eight children on a farmstead with no electricity or running water. Who had to draw water from a well to wash all their clothes and nappies in a wash boiler out on the yard. Who had cared for all her children while they were ill with the Spanish flu as the first world war raged. Who had written the beautiful verse in grandma’s poetry book. Who had reached the age of majority first when she was forty. The one they both called great-grandma and who was their common ancestor. Elisabet described that great-grandma had nine children. One of them died just a month after being born. Which Disa had been unaware of.

And they had the same ancestor too, old great-grandpa, who had been so handy and had built all the buildings on the farm. Who never had believed that the world was round. Who as recently as the seventies had insisted that it was obvious to anyone who used their eyes that the world was flat. The same great-grandpa who Grandma had sometimes thought was mean and had run away from to the barn to cry with her favourite cow Thea.

Disa also told of their grandmothers’ poor grandparents who had not even been able to afford to give their daughter a wedding present when she got married.

They compared ages and came to the conclusion that they had met once before in life. Disa had been at her Grandma’s over a holiday and Elisabet had been visiting hers at the same time and followed along to Grandma’s for a party. When they counted the years back they realised it had been over thirty years since then. Grandma stopped celebrating her birthdays soon after that, which in time became more than one hundred. ‘May you live to a hundred years’ had fit well for Grandma and she even beat that mark.

They didn’t know each other at all, but had the same ancestors and the blood ties bonded them together somewhat, or maybe it was just the idea of it that did it.

‘Have you considered that our great-grandma’s mother is only given by her first name and then related to someone else in the possessive form?’ Elisabet said and pointed to the gravestone.

Disa looked at her with raised eyebrows, then at the stone where the golden lettering read: ‘His wife Wilhelmina,’ and realised that she was right.

‘I don’t think I thought of it in that way,’ Disa said.

‘How would it feel to not be considered a person in your own right but just as an extension of someone else?’ Elisabet said.

Disa and Elisabet started walking towards the beautiful 18th century building where coffee would be served. Disa’s siblings and parents had already gone ahead.

They stepped into the worn old building where the tables had been set with white linen cloths and coffee cups and seven kinds of cakes. Candelabras with white candles stood lighting up the tables.

The two had been seated at different tables, so they went their separate ways. Disa sat next to her siblings and parents at the long tables and nearby sat an uncle, a cousin, and a several more distant relatives. Some telegrams were read out. The weather was discussed. It was a common topic of discussion at this time of year, when every day was a surprise. The same thing happened every year and everyone still seemed to be equally surprised by it. The weather was always a good topic of conversation, maybe especially at a solemn occasion like this to lighten the mood, when you didn’t know each other very well, but still belonged together in some way.

In the car on the way home, Disa thought of the transience of life. Life hung by a brittle thread that could be cut at any moment. One generation was gone with Grandma’s death and as for herself, she had been moved one peg closer to the inevitable end. She had met several relatives she hadn’t even known she had, and probably wouldn’t meet again. That was the way of funerals she supposed, a time when everyone joined together from different directions to say their final farewell.

Disa parked the car on the driveway. When she opened the front door, the pendulum clock loudly struck the half-hour. The sound echoed out into the house and only its hands were heard ticking time forward. Tick, tock, tick, tock.