You can barely see me. I am holding the key to the church of my ancestors. Inside this church, built in 1100 A.D. my grandfather was baptized in 1901 and sat with his parents as the church shook in an earthquake. The bones of my great-great grandparents, their parents… are buried next to the giant ash that grows by the entry gate.
When Chuck and I owned a house in Sweden I spent hours resting against this tree, the “Yggsdrasil” which in Nordic spirituality/mythology represents the world tree. The golden gauze of a summer afternoon would ease me into the grass, the earth below that held a thousand years of my families DNA. The house and farm to the south of the church was the birthing place for forebearers whose bones have become earth. Such a swirl of images, like a gentle centrifuge, separating me from time’s hold; free to explore an expanding and concentrating sense of self.
In late 1965 my grandfather, Einar, arranged to bring me to Sweden to meet his mother, Gustava. I had been writing her letters for at least five years. She died the winter before the picture above was taken. My grandfather, the first of twelve children, dearly loved his mother. Only now do I realize how much grief he carried while I, oblivious, was thrilled to meet my great aunts and uncles, second cousins…I didn’t sense the poignancy of his returning home until now, as I ruminate and compose this blog.
Lung cancer was reasserting its hold on his body during this visit. He died in early spring of 1968. How I yearn to talk to him now. He brought me to visit his living aunts and uncles. Often I was the only child with people close to one hundred years old. After the buttery treats and raspberry flavored water I wanted to swim, but was instructed to be polite. Only in my forties did family history fascinate me. Now I’d like to tap into that cave of brain cells that hold the information from that six week passage of time with my dying grandfather. I am grateful for this link back to a time before he was born, but want to know what Huldah, my great-grandfather’s sister said on a June afternoon forty-five years ago.
The last time I saw my grandfather was at the 1966 Christmas Eve Service of the Norwood Park Methodist Church. My mother and I sang solo’s. I see my tough grandfather watching my mother sing as tears trickled down his cheeks. Then I learned something about the secret and abundant nature of love. In the new year he entered the hospital where he received colbalt treatments. My mother who went every single day to take my grandmother to visit him and pick her up, an hour each trip, did not want me to see this once powerful man burned by the treatment for what ravaged his body.
When he died his round trip tickets to China were returned. My grandfather did not like Rome or Paris, he preferred the hair pin turns of the Atlas mountains in Morocco, the small villages where the common folk made their lives. He preferred the back roads. I am glad to follow him.