Whiskey Breakfast: My Swedish Family, My American Life

4. The Shadows of Despair

51 4 the shadows of despair The longest journey of any person is the journey inward. —DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD (1905–1961), Swedish statesman and Secretary General of the United Nations (1953–61) Nearly twelve months to the day that Oscar sailed for America, Elma sent a final urgent appeal for help. Osborn, she wrote, had contracted tuberculosis, known to that generation as consumption. Elma had removed the baby from the Göteborg orphanage after finding it impossible to pay for his care and maintain a life of her own. Elma gave up her little apartment in Göteborg and returned to her family homestead. Osborn was placed in the care of his grandmother and Elma’s brothers. Her family bore my father no personal ill will and generously viewed him as a working-class hero possessed of courage and singular conviction. They believed that were it in his power to do so, Oscar would eventually do right by Elma. She was in the habit of writing one letter a week to Chicago. Her letters reference a photo of the infant Osborn mailed to the Chicago post office box, but many years later it was nowhere to be found. Among his treasured souvenirs and letters from home, there was no image of the baby—my half brother Osborn. When the disease attacked the child’s brain, Elma stoically resigned herself to God’s will. “Why would he not want him to stay in this life?” she asked. “If you only knew how sad I am. When will the sorrows, misery, and tedium end for me?” The end—which marked a turning point in both their lives—came the following January. Hunnebostrand, January 11, 1926 I wanted to write to inform you that our little darling died today. Osborn, my little one. If you knew what despair I feel. Why couldn’t I keep what I loved most in life? But I have to comfort myself with the knowledge that he will be better off where he is 52 the shadows of despair now. My mother has wrapped him in white linen and he lies just like an angel, so kind he was. If only you had been here to share the sadness. I feel so unhappy, Ossee. Think of what I have been through in the last year! I hope you have sent some money. As you see, the financial problems are getting worse. I showed my brother Carl the papers you sent me, but he warned me not to try to emigrate as long as your name is involved. Maybe for your sake, it is lucky that we did not meet again. Now, our connections to each other are being cut off. I am not able to write anymore. I am so tired of staying awake all night, praying and thinking and crying. Kindest greetings and a thousand hot kisses from your own mourning, Elma I never heard how this affected my father, because in all the years I knew him he never mentioned his relationship with Elma or Osborn’s short existence. Although he saved the letters, as they were in Swedish he probably assumed this sad and ignominious chapter of his life would remain his secret. THE CRASH The Depression idled thousands of men and women in Swedetown. Hungry and desperate for a taste of the free bar food—cold, hard-boiled eggs at the end of the bar in Simon’s Tavern on Clark Street—they stood in the doorways and alleys panhandling for change from passersby. As the Depression deepened, and as my father shook his head sadly hearing their pleas for pennies and nickels, his ever-present anxieties were compounded by his fear of job loss. Yet America had opened up new possibilities for Oscar and his two friends from Göteborg, Otto Jacobson and Henry Cederberg. Although each had embarked on a separate path, they would remain steadfast companions , spending much of their free time together. Otto went to work in a jeweler’s shop; Henry moved into a South Side rooming house with his young wife, Signe Maria Andersson Cederberg, who worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy jeweler named Jacobs; and my dad hustled jobs in the building trades. One summer not long after his arrival, my dad enlisted Cederberg, the shadows of despair 53 and two other compatriots in sympathy with left-wing causes, to join him in...