Thursday
Once again I needed some kind of perspective and left my blogging. Once again I realized why I need some way to process my thoughts.
I am at home, in Sweden. It is sunny and I have been doing the normal chores at home as I usually do during the summers. Getting a bit mundane to be honest, but I will not be staying here for too long.
My neighbor died a couple of weeks ago. He was a real story teller. He emigrated to Sweden from Austria 65 years ago and has done absolutely everything, according to himself at least.
When I was a kid, I usually biked by his house and listened to him telling the most amazing stories from his youth. Tales about marathons, amazing sunsets, funky people, cars, when he first used a telephone are memories that I feel that he told me about yesterday. I could sit there for hours. He smoked a lot, and when I was 10 he got some problems with his blood circulation. He started to go for walks, and I walked with him every evening. When there were school breaks I went to his house every morning to play cards.
He was a gardener, and once he had sown new grass on a patch of his yard. I biked by, and he was sitting there on his knees, cutting the grass with a normal pair of scissors. He did mean a lot to me when I grew up, but as I did grow up I also grew away from him.
Since I moved away from home I have not seen him that much. I remember that he got really ill around Christmas. Two weeks ago my parents biked by his house, and his wife was sitting outside in tears, telling them that her husband had gotten a brain tumor. He passed a way a couple of hours later.
My sister called me just before I was heading into an interview with my new employer so I couldn't really cry. I wish I had. It was tough sitting there, trying to be all rational and answer questions when all I wanted to do was to talk to someone about all my memories and how amazing this man was. So that is what I am doing now. Most important, I somehow want to express how thankful I am for his presence in my life. I probably had a lot more impact on me than I will ever know.
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