Whiskey Breakfast: My Swedish Family, My American Life

18. Ashes to Ashes—and Back to Ronneby

265 18 ashes to ashes— and back to ronneby It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be. —SELMA LAGERÖF (1858–1940), Nobel Prize winner for literature, 1909 February 6, 1988 Bloomington, Indiana Dear Richard: We are now in the grip of a severe cold. Below zero the past two nights and although sunny today, the temperature will get no higher than twelve degrees. This is the time of year (a few years back) when your father would say “Let’s take off!” And away we’d go; Florida, Brownsville, Expo ’67, San Diego, Hawaii. Ah memories! Your dad was proud of your accomplishments even though he didn’t talk to you about it, he did so to others; your work record, your education, your writings, et. al. He understood construction better but he appreciated learning. He was never very demonstrative and that too came from childhood training. Boys were not allowed to cry or to fear anything. He said his father would rant at him: “Be a man,” even though he was only a child. But I’ve heard him say that too, to someone or about someone who was showing weakness or emotion. Your comments on the Svenska people are so accurate and similar to my reactions . They take much understanding. You and I have had enough psychology to see through some of it, but that does not help our need for intimacy. I believe that Oscar’s family was trained to restrain their feelings. Your father was a proud, austere man who was much maligned by those who did not understand him—or chose to use him. He felt Helen’s mother was that kind of person. 266 ashes to ashes—and back to ronneby Nor did Oscar understand children. How could he when his own childhood was so barren? But he was surely a wonderful man who overcame great obstacles. All those points are fond memories now and I miss him more than I can explain. I call on him for courage and fortitude many times. And I ask myself: “How would Oscar handle this problem?” It helps me. Keeping busy is my method for fighting the blues. And I read much. Have just finished [ James] Clavell’s “Whirlwind.” What a book! Man’s inhumanity to man has not changed much from the old Bible days. Write soon, and come [down to Indiana] when possible. Marie Lindberg BREAKING AWAY I never saw Marie again after that final day in the Louise Street house, surrounded by crated items of furniture and the last of Oscar’s worldly possessions, all bound for her new apartment in Bloomington. I purposefully resisted all future invitations to drive down and break bread with her, given the accumulated hard feelings surrounding the final settlement of the estate and my brother’s hard feelings. As the years wore on, the money she was accused of taking became less and less important to me than the indifference she had shown to my future at a moment in life I desperately needed some direction and mature parental wisdom. Struggling to exercise the power of forgiveness, I acknowledge that my stepmother satisfied her obligations and made a comfortable life for Oscar in his old age. She had looked past his foibles and flaws of character for a chance to truly love the man, as much as his first wife, Svea, had. In the end, she decided not to take him with her back to Brown County, Indiana. She surrendered the marble urn of cremation ashes to my custody and directed me to return them to the “Garden of Sweden,” fulfilling his last intentions. (“Son, when I am dead, I want you to go to Sweden and learn something of your family.”) It was a task I accepted with great trepidation, but it was a promise I would live up to. How strange and otherworldly the experience in June 1987 of placing Oscar’s remains underneath my coach seat aboard the SAS jetliner bound for Copenhagen, then Stockholm, and my first meeting with the religious side of the Lindberg family. Could he ever have imagined such a day as this, and that this sacred duty would be entrusted to me, of all people. For ashes to ashes—and back to ronneby 267 all of my brother’s transgressions...