Mommo

Note: This post has moved from blog to blog twice, and lost the images associated since then. Sorry!

Last night, my mother wandered into my room looking sad. She carried with her two cards, both mine. One was from an old friend who periodically used to vanish offline, but who now erratically pops up online once in a blue moon. The other was this: 

For the curious, the little poem says something sweet and airy. The original rhymes. My apologies for the dreadful translation. 

Our beautiful seasons 

In the winter, in the winter when everything is the best, 
then we shall have fun and play the most. 
Both iceskating and skiing we shall try, 
and we shall turn round and go around in the ring.

I don’t remember seeing the front. But I remember seeing the back. Like the envelope with Christmas money, my grandmother’s handwriting was disconcertingly wobbly. To misquote Terry Pratchett, it was the handwriting of a spider on a trampoline in the middle of an earthquake. It scared me. 
For all my life, my grandmother never missed sending a card to everyone for Christmas, easter, New Year’s. She remembered everyone’s birthdays. She remembered everyone’s namedays. Heck, I don’t even know when mine is - I don’t know how she kept track of everyone else’s. All these postcards arrived either on the day or one day beforehand. Her timing was impeccable. And never once did she make a mistake when writing in her careful, slanted, curly old-fashioned Scandinavian scrawl. But now… It was far less precise, the a’s on my street were missing their dots (ä), and the postcode was wrong. 

It was a great big stinking sign, and I should have been able to guess. 

February 14th, 2006, I had gotten no sleep and I could not sleep. I was miserable, restless, stressed, and I didn’t know why. Then my family phoned me, and I found out. 

Last night, after my mother brought me my postcards, I dreamt of my grandmother. My mother, father, and I were on vacation, and my mother received a strange phonecall. It slew her smile. Her mother was dead. She slept, and wanted to do nothing other than sleep. I kept her company. Then they rang again. They told her that they were wrong - she hadn’t died… … . . but that now she was dead for real. I woke up and felt afraid of losing my mommo. And then I remembered she has already been gone for almost exactly 11 months. 

It’s a little odd how I can get used to not having someone around for so long, and yet at the same time fail to realize that they’re dead and I’ll never see them again. Not in this world anyway. And to be perfectly honest, the only afterlife I believe in is in other peoples’ memories and in the digestive tract of worms and their ilk. 

So, tomorrow’s my birthday. I keep forgetting. If I were someone else, I would have forgotten to buy me a gift. I’m getting properly into my 20’s now. I’m no longer barely into my second decade now. Sure, I’m still on the light side, but. How did this happen? 

I remember when I met my brother for the first time. My first memory. He was inside this funny-looking aquarium filled with light. I poked him and gurgled at him and was disappointed. He was boring. He didn’t want to do anything. He just lay there. 

I remember when I was 4 and I had my first crush on a boy. He was my knight in shining armor who always rescued me from the bullying, harassing evil Mikke. I remember when he left my school. I kissed his cheek, then wrote him a letter which I never mailed, as I didn’t have his address. I remember being in sixth grade, having a tremendous crush on another boy. This one was shorter than me, but he made my heart do backflips. He was fun to talk to, had a quirky sense of humor. You know the drill. 
Now I’m about twice that age and I’m still no wiser. My mommo and ukki are no longer with me. Mummi and mofa are fading fast. Who will vanish first? Betting starts now! 
I miss them. But the fact is, I grew up mostly without them. Every now and then, like today, I long for their presence, miss them, want them to be here, want to see them with their faults and wrinkles and smiles and warm hands and silly old peoples’ worries. I want to hear her humming and see her wobble her hand as she ambles from room to room, slippers whisking and swishing. When I was smaller, I asked her what she was humming. “Was I humming?” Poor old thing. Didn’t even know. But she still made the world’s best meatball-sauce. 

I wish that when I climb that peeling old tree, there were still someone to stand in the window in her ancient apron to gaze at me with fearful old watery eyes, worried that I should fall and hurt myself. 

So happy birthday to me, but here’s to you, mommo. 

Tack för kortet, den är riktigt vacker.