SEPTEMBER 22, 2023 – UB was the least sentimental person in the family. He never said a word about his youth or “the good ol’ days” except for talking a couple of times in his 80s about army life during the war and the occasion in 2006 when he slowed the car on the bridge over the railroad tracks in Rutherford and mentioned offhandedly, as if to himself, that Gaga would sometimes take him and Mother there as kids to watch the trains go by. He never pined for the past.
From Mother I heard more about her youth but not a whole lot. When she spoke rarely of time on the water with her beloved cousin Robert Holman during summers at Hamburg, there was a hint of nostalgia but mostly of sadness, given Robert’s untimely death in the war. Otherwise, especially in her old age, getting Mother to talk about her past was like dental extraction without prior administration of Novocain.
Dad’s robust sentimentality more than compensated for Mother’s lack of it. Push the start button—or simply wait for Dad to do so—and you’d find yourself listening to a protracted oral history filled with the minutest details. He remembered with fondness things as far back as his first independent footsteps from the release of his father’s hands to the embrace of his Mother’s halfway across the room, and he possessed the romantic’s imagination to share his memories as delicate treasures of the heart.
It was therefore not surprising that Mother and Dad had a dichotomous relationship with Björnholm, the 68-acre retreat with a long stretch of lakeshore that Dad, an only child, had inherited from his parents. It was his Shangri-la, his easel, his kingdom, his paradise, his fountain of so many wonderful memories. He’d told me once that even when he was away from it, he derived “special peace and satisfaction simply from knowing Björnholm existed.” Yet on another occasion, he addressed the other side of the sentimentality coin when out on the front steps of the cabin high above the lake, we were discussing the future of the place. “If I thought for a second,” he said, “that this place would get in the way of relationships among you and your sisters, I’d sell it in a heartbeat.”
Of all the wisdom he imparted to me, what he conveyed in that statement was the second most memorable[1]. I thought about it (and the first most memorable statement) often when dealing with UB.
To Mother, on the other hand, Björnholm was an albatross, especially as she aged. She enjoyed and appreciated, even painted, the natural beauty of the surroundings, but Dad ran a very tight ship with strict rules of order. Packing and unpacking associated with trips back and forth, and all use and maintenance of the cabin were conducted in strict accordance with his (Raymond’s) Rules of Order. In all things, but especially with regard to the old cabin, Dad applied a linear, logical and excruciatingly methodical approach. His highly refined way of doing things was often too much for Mother, who lived in constant fear of screwing things up. When her brain chemistry was shifting in a troubling direction, Dad’s rules threatened to push her over the edge. Yet at the same time his sense of order served as a guardrail for Mother’s mental disorders, usually keeping her a safe distance from the precipice.
Dad’s orderliness vs. Mother’s dissaray was ironic, given his extreme sentimentality fueled by romanticism vs. Mother’s lack of sentimentality coupled with a highly mathematical brain. But then again, Dad displayed no hint of mental illness or any aberrational psychological condition.
* * *
Jenny and her daughter Maia had already settled in at the cabin by the time Mother, Dad, Beth, and I pulled up after dark on the evening of July 31, 2009. Above the back entryway the age-old yellow bug light cast a welcoming familiar glow. As I gave the car a little extra gas to make it up the hill into the yard, Dad, sitting up front, said, “Hi cabin. You didn’t think you’d ever see me again, did you. But here I am!”
Well into 2011 I could flood my eyes at will simply by recalling those words in that moment.
As the weekend unfolded the contrast between Mother and Dad’s respective perceptions of Björnholm was especially acute: Dad achieved nirvana while Mother slid perilously close to full-scale psychosis.
The weekend before our joint expedition I’d discovered that a large oak had fallen across the narrow, quarter-mile dirt road leading to the old cabin. In large part the obstruction was rotten and with a peavey I’d been able to move it far enough for a car to squeeze by. On the morning of August 1, however, Dad was in full project mode to complete the task I’d begun the previous Saturday. He was at the center of his element. By the time of my appearance (Beth and I had stayed at our own “Red Cabin” adjacent to the west end of Björnholm), he’d already assembled an array of tools, including an axe, log chocks, a bowsaw, a peavy, a tape measure, and his chainsaw, and carted everything down to where the 100-year-old fallen oak still encroached on the road.
After donning his safety gear, the 87-year-old lord of the manor pulled the cord on the chainsaw and got to work. I put on work gloves mainly to signal that I was willing and able to assist, though Dad was in such command of his game, my role at best would be that of under-study standing well away from the project center stage.
For two hours Dad worked on the log and the clean-up. Dad never left a job unfinished. Also, what was still solid wood was not to be wasted. I helped load the bolts and cart them in the wheelbarrow up to the wood piles outside the cabin, where Dad manually split them into optimal size for stacking and eventually heating the cabin.
The next morning I found him none the worse for wear. He was sipping his coffee and reading his history book of the week, Vesuvius by Mary Beard. He said he’d slept well, and when I asked him if he was stiff or sore from all his physical efforts the day before, he said, “No, not at all. Why should I be?”
Mother, on the other hand, was a completely different story. She paced around in a near-manic phase. Anxious about everything, she tortured Jenny, Beth, and me with incessant questioning about when we were leaving, how we’d handle the food, packing, closing up, etc., etc.
“Mother,” I said, “you have a full day more to go before we go home.”
“Yes, but I need time to be organized so that when Dad says it’s time to leave, I’ll have everything ready.”
By Sunday morning, her downhill run was in runaway mode. When Mother grew especially agitated, Beth suggested that we go for “a nice walk.” Jenny and I pounced on the idea. Dad, however, turned on a CD recording of a Schubert piano trio and sat in his favorite rocker to savor his favorite composer. He seemed oblivious to Mother’s agitation, but I figured it was as much a matter of his familiarity with it. He was determined to optimize his brief stay in paradise, leaving Mother’s developing crisis to the rest of us.
By the time Jenny, Maia, Beth, and I had shepherded Mother outside and down the stone steps, she was on the descent into depression—yet she maintained elements of mania. Hanging on Beth’s arm, Mother’s feet moved an inch at a time. Her face was crazed with pain, as she babbled nonsense about the cabin belonging to Ga and Grandpa Nilsson; how she felt sorry for creating such a fuss but “couldn’t help it”; how much she worried that Dad—Mr. Punctuality—wouldn’t be ready to leave at the appointed time of 5:00.
In my journal entry for that day, I wrote prophetically that “this trip would be the last time Mother would see [Björnholm], no matter how many more years she might live.” What I didn’t foresee is that it would also be the last time Dad would ever enjoy his paradise on earth.
* * *
Later that month he began to complain of severe back pains. All his adult life Dad had experienced back trouble, which he attributed to a slipped disc from shifting the end of an upright piano when he was in his early 20s. Also, in his 50s he’d undergone back surgery for stenosis. His latest back trouble he ascribed to having lifted a heavy spare tire out of the trunk. For the next two months, we drove him to various appointments with his regular doctor and back specialists. The ultimate determination was that absent risky surgery with an uncertain outcome, little could be done to alleviate Dad’s pain, short of palliative medication.
By Christmas, Dad spent most of his waking hours seated in his den recliner trying stoically to avoid moving in a wrong and excruciatingly painful direction. The extreme pangs had migrated to his ribs. I couldn’t imagine how he was going to cope.
By late March the root cause of his back and rib pain was diagnosed: multiple myeloma, a blood cancer[2]. By the end of April he’d entered hospice, which had been set up in one of the comfortable bedrooms of Jenny and Garrison’s house in St. Paul. The room was furnished with stately and familiar pieces that had once adorned Ga and Grandpa’s house. Accompanying the scene was a steady stream of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.
On May 10, Dad died.
We’d had months to prepare ourselves, but when Jenny phoned me at a little past 2:30 in the morning—openly weeping—to say, “It’s done. He’s gone,” I felt the crushing reality of Dad’s mortality.
Mother grieved inscrutably on her own terms. My sisters and I worried, of course, about her mental balance, but aided by her genetic stoicism, she bore the loss without capsizing. The only major speed bump before the funeral was her resistance to any form of an obituary for fear “they” would create “some form of trouble.” Without adverse effect my sisters and I ignored her protests.
The day before the funeral, two of my sisters, two of my nieces, and I were hard at work assembling a multiplexed display of “memories” from Dad’s full, happy, and productive life. Mother wandered in and out of the spacious dining room of Jenny and Garrison’s house, which was now the post-mortem command post as we awaited the arrival of Nina, her oldest daughter, a Swedish cousin, and the two Vietnamese refugees that Mother and Dad had sponsored back in 1975. In the midst of our activity, UB called Mother.
They talked for a while, and eventually the phone was handed off to me. It was the first time in over two years that I’d talked to UB.
“Hi, Uncle Bruce.”
“Hi there.”
“Hi.” I said again, as if it would reduce the awkwardness of the circumstances.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said with a tone of sincerity, which cleared the air. “I think it’s hard losing a father. I felt that loss when Grandpa died.”
“Yeah. Dad and I were very close.”
“I know. He was a good father.”
“Yeah, he certainly was. We’re all going to miss him.”
“I’m sure. Well, I want you to know I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, Uncle Bruce . . . Here’s Mother. She wants to talk to you some more. Take care of yourself.”
“I will, thanks.”
With that we concluded our unplanned rapprochement.
As I rejoined the group project, I thought about UB’s strained relationship with his father, with Grandpa. There was much unfinished business there when Grandpa died, as exhibited, no doubt, by UB’s uncharacteristic breakdown and the heartfelt note he’d posted on the memory board at the funeral home. By contrast, I had no “unfinished business” with Dad. We disagreed vehemently about politics, but we were able to achieve a lasting truce so as to protect and preserve our otherwise close relationship and shared array of values and interests.
But what about UB? I thought. He and I had a large heap of unfinished business, and later in the year he’d turn 88. Even if he lived to be 100, 100 wasn’t forever.
UB didn’t attend Dad’s funeral, and no one expected him to—after all, UB didn’t “do funerals.” But drawing on Dad’s wisdom, maybe there was a way for me to encourage UB to “do reconciliation.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1]The first most memorable wisdom was “the most important thing in the world.” (Love; See 5/14/19 post.)
[2] When a decade later I experienced back and rib pain but was otherwise in robust health, I’d mentioned to Byron that “Grandpa had back and rib pain that turned out to be terminal cancer.” –“Oh, now Dad,” he said, “let’s not go there.” But sure enough, In January 2022 I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Unlike Dad, I was diagnosed in time and gained access to the best care available anywhere in the world for that disease. After every appointment on the way to survival, I’d say, “I’m doing this for you, Dad, and henceforth, I’m going to make every moment of life count!”
