OCTOBER 13, 2023 – Mother the devout Episcopalian had said, “Funerals are for the living.” Her perspective resonated with me as I joined my sisters in a meeting with the Episcopal rector about the funeral service. I gave them all the latitude they desired in choosing the hymns and readings. The liturgy was the realm of the rector and the Common Book of Prayer. Apart from my physical presence in the rector’s chambers, my participation in the planning session was limited to “uh-hus” of affirmation.
My role in the actual service was the same I’d assumed at Dad’s seven years before. On that occasion, however, I’d had much to say. I’d geared it to my sons and nieces, particularly the three adoptees in the family. Dad had engaged in extensive genealogical work on his side, which was the core of his view of “inheritance.” The centerpiece of his documentation was a three-ring binder (in multiple copies, a master copy and one for each of my sisters and me) with a large cover photo of one of the sentinel white pine in the yard of the cabin at Björnholm—what he labeled, the “family tree.” The “tree” went back many generations with an exhaustive index. As an adoptive parent/uncle, I’d always been sensitive to our adoptee’s reactions—conscious and subconscious—to their grandpa’s obsession with lineage. My view of genealogy was more expansive than Dad’s. It was more a matter of “clan” influences than of genetics. But from an even broader perspective, thanks largely to my travels and lifelong immersion in the study of history, I’d come to view “family” as encompassing humanity as much as the converse.
To acknowledge our “clan” connections (and with a nod to Dad’s genealogical obsession), but to highlight our broader interconnectedness as human beings, when I rose to give the eulogy, I introduced myself comprehensively:
I am Eric, the father of Corydon and Byron, and I am the son of Raymond, who was the son of Ragnar, who was the son of Johan, who was the son of Nils, who was the son of “Gamle Pelle[1],” who was . . . the direct descendant of . . . Adam and Eve.
When Dad died, my reaction was, “Why did you have to leave us?” In Mother’s case, my response was, “Why did you have to suffer with yourself for so long?”
In considering what I would say about Mother at her funeral, I had the better sense than to mention her mental disorders, and I certainly wasn’t about to disclose that she’d died “without her inheritance.” After all, I didn’t want to chase anyone away from the reception that was to follow in the church fellowship hall. To prepare, I skimmed the surface of the ephemeral record of her life. The process reminded me of the fleeting nature of life itself—but also its resilience. “Life is short even when it’s long,” I wrote in my journal entry two days after Mother’s death. My review of memorabilia from Anoka was extensive:
[I looked through boxes of] photos, letters, and so forth in search of items for her service potentially, but most immediately for a photo for inclusion in her obituary. Little Illiana [our granddaughter] was at my side, curious as ever and wanting to pull things out of boxes. She is such a darling. In the process, though, of reviewing the life of a person who had lived into nine decades, [I saw that life juxtaposed to] the sprouting life of a toddler just halfway into her second year. [I saw] just how fast life moves; how fast and inexorably the world turns.
I then grappled with the changes that a person undergoes in life, especially an extraordinarily long life. In Mother’s case, who was she, exactly?
The last seven years of Mother’s life were a struggle; her compromised psychological state had turned her into a person she had not been before. [. . .] Each of us is programmed at the outset of life, but as our lives progress, our personalities assume added dimensions; take on facets built upon a combination of that initial programming and all the influences that mingle with and modify that basic structure. The physiology of aging also affects the outcome, and this factor increases in significance as one crosses the threshold of “really old.” The problem is that with a person like Mother, this “past the threshold” period lasted so long it eclipsed all the brilliance that had illuminated her life up to that time.
For more material and ideas, I reviewed an email I’d sent to Nina seven years before. At that time I was deep into the Great Archeological Dig at our parents’ Anoka house. The email provided insights into Mother’s life but also a perspective that reached beyond Mother:
Thank you for your recent letter, Nina. Whenever I think about Dad, which is often, and whenever I work on the “dig” in Anoka, which is a solid three or four times a week, I think about you and how difficult a time you too are probably experiencing, being so far from “ground zero.” But honestly, I don’t know what is the bigger blessing—or greater curse: to be standing “knee deep” in the past at “ground zero” or to be living “high and dry,” a million miles away.
Not including drive times, I figure I’ve spent over 40 hours in the attic. I’ve spent considerably more than that in the den, for it is that room that served as the main repository for so many hidden treasures buried amidst the accumulations of half a century.
When I mention the “dig” to acquaintances and qualify it only very generally as “tons of stuff in a very large house,” I am usually greeted with advice or responses revealing no understanding—and often no imagination—about the nature of the project. “Can’t you just hire someone to go in and clean up?” they’ll say. Or, “Yeah, we moved my mom out of her house last year. Boy did we get rid of a lot of junk!” Or, “So aren’t there estate sales people who will just go in and do that sort of thing for you—you know, sort and sell and send you a check?” They have no clue.
The “dig” at 505 is no ordinary house-cleaning project. It is a journey of self-discovery and introspection like no other travels I have taken, literally or figuratively. Each session reveals wonderful surprises at the same time it casts a pall over my psyche. On all too many drives home—usually quite late at night—I slip into melancholy, staying there a good part of the next day.
There are, of course, two aspects to the “dig.” One is purely practical and mechanical—taking inventory, sorting, discarding (which so far, involves very little as a percentage of total volume of “stuff”). The other, more interesting aspect is the review of what can best be described as “treasures”—letters, diaries, stories, articles, photographs. A veritable documentation of our lives. At the current rate, it will take hundreds of hours more to “clear” everything that fills that house.
Today I was on site from 8:00 to 2:00. Elsa joined me for a good chunk of that time. Apart from her review of Grandpa’s old sheet music (to which she has devoted untold hours), this was her first real foray into the “dig.” The experience that unfolded was very similar to my own. She spent a good deal of time poring over the randomly assembled contents of a single scrapbook. Of course, she discovered many gems and delighted in doing so.
As Elsa observed today, each of us has a different perspective on that house. For Mother, of course, it was the result of years of planning and effort—and then “home” for half a century. You were all of 11 when the ground-breaking occurred and lived there through your entire high school career. Elsa, of course, was younger when the house was built . . . and she left for greener pastures at 16. If I had even less time there, Jenny had quite a different experience—being much younger upon moving in and spending a full four years there as an “only child” before moving on.
As I sift through the strata of cards, letters, datebook entries, diary discourses, I am struck by a number of themes. The over-arching one, of course, is that we come from a family of writers. I must say that there exists considerable evidence that the Swedes were extraordinary writers. Emma, Alfred, Anton—all could (and did) write up a storm. But Mother was no slouch either (and as I can attest, neither was Grandpa, for years ago while I was cleaning out the billiard room at 42 Lincoln, I stumbled across a binder filled with his speeches—all of which I have to assume he wrote himself—delivered at one convention or another, and I was immediately impressed by his remarkable command of the language). All of which suggests that our proclivity for writing is something as genetic as abilities musical.
Another theme is Mother’s involvement in the community—her very real achievements in a wide range of activities. She seems to have had Grandpa Holman’s capacity, as well as his ability. But there are also the reminders of her neurological overloads, manifested in crazed writing, and her penchant for scribbling down names, numbers on fragments of paper and stuffing them into envelopes, folders, drawers, nooks and crannies of all sorts.
Yet another theme is Dad’s obsession with recording details. I can’t tell you how many notebooks, large and small, that I’ve found in which he recorded singularly impressive volumes of data—expenditures, dimensions, distances—all so very carefully written and organized. And as much as it all smacks of “OCD” to an extreme, all of it had a very real practical application of one sort or another.
And then there are the “themes of personality” and evidence of how early our basic personalities-for-life were revealed. Jenny’s cards, poems, letters, all show an enormous heart and worshipful appreciation for Mother. There is far less documentation of Elsa, but what does exists confirms how exacting she was—and is. Your “documentary trail” is a splendid display of a wide-ranging intellect and imagination. As I mentioned in a previous email, my stuff exposes a rather bizarre way of looking at things.
Then there are the pieces that make one fall to pieces. For example, last Monday evening I found (yet another) small datebook. I thumbed through it and discovered that most of it was blank. But then some writing appeared. “November 22, 1973. Thanksgiving Day. Dad passed away quietly at 10:45 p.m. at Mercy Hospital. May God bless his spirit!” That was all. I don’t know why, but when I read that I came completely unglued—first time since Dad himself “passed away quietly.” I think what struck me was how that laconic entry spoke to me now in a way that it could never have conveyed before. Oh how I wanted to say to Dad, “I’m so sorry!” But of course, life isn’t put together that way.
Another “den session” a couple of weeks ago uncovered letters from Grandpa Nilsson to Mom and Dad while he, Grandpa, was up at the cabin the summer after Ga died. How overcome by grief he was, and how little, of course, I could have understood at the time.
On a happier note, I also uncovered Grandpa Holman’s diary from his college years. Inside the cover was a nice note from his grandmother who had given him the diary. The entries are brief but telling. Here was a young man who played as hard as he studied—for a laugh, pulling the bolts out of his roommate’s bed; taking many a woman to “the dance”; a loyal UPenn sports fan, careful to record the score of many a game; a keeper of very late hours—sleeping in till 3:30 IN THE AFTERNOON! and understanding full well why his mother was “wild” when he had failed to show (at the train station?) to greet her at an apparently previously agreed upon time of 10:00 a.m. My favorite entry though, describes in considerable detail a large party in the billiard room of 42 Lincoln and lists all the attendees [ . . .]
[. . . ] Meanwhile, Mother is holding her own at Sunrise, though “holding her own” is subject to extensive interpretation. I have learned that the best way to deal with Mother is not to ask any but the most mundane and rudimentary questions. She is 86, she is probably still in a much confused, even depressed, state over Dad’s death (she recently took issue with cause of death and went at it in such a way as to suggest almost that he’s not really dead because the stated cause of death was incorrect), and perhaps most pertinent, she has become a clone of Uncle Bruce (!!!!).
It’s damned near impossible to know what’s really going on with her. One minute she walks like a little old lady, taking tiny footsteps and looking very stiff and mechanical and very much dependent on her cane. The next minute, she’s racing around, spry as can be and forgets altogether where she left her cane. She has an amazing ability to remember names but if you count to five too fast she gets all flustered and tells you to slow down because “my brain can’t process things that fast.” And then there’s the Uncle Bruce-style incongruity of trusting one person blindly and NOT trusting the next person—also blindly. (Just the other night—“Oh so-and-so’s Mother is the top bond person at the bank; she really knows her stuff; she knows everything a person needs to know about running a bank” vs. “Oh, there’s NOBODY at Sunrise who could show me how to get onto the Internet.”
The bottom line with Mother is this: you have to set very low expectations, be civil, be kind, and DON’T GET INTO ARGUMENTS with her. If she insists on dragging you onto the merry-go-round, DON’T GO THERE.
Okay, I’ve babbled on quite enough [. . . ]Know that I’m thinking about you a lot and hoping that vicariously you might get a feel for what it’s like to engage in “time travel.” Rest assured that irrespective of when that house is sold, very little will be tossed or made inaccessible before you have had a full chance to review things—at your own pace.
Yet ultimately, the script I composed and recited from the church pulpit at Mother’s funeral landed at the opposite end of the spectrum from my email to Nina. I distilled Mother’s 93 years of life down to 153 words:
The person whose passing brings our hearts together lived a long, learned and loving life, filled with abundance, accomplishment, and benevolence beyond our capacity to eulogize. And though she was married for 64 years to a very sentimental spouse and reared four very sentimental children, Orrell herself was not sentimental at all, and she was a tribute to the human race because she lacked a basic human trait—pride. She would have disapproved a formal eulogy at her funeral. So none will be given. At the reception that follows, several members of the family will share reflections and memories. We invite friends to share as well. Please join us. In this place, meanwhile, let us find faith, consolation and inspiration in the words of this service, and in the music, recall the words that greeted Mother’s many piano students as they arrived at their lessons: “Music is Love in Search of a Word.”
For the funeral service bulletin, I prepared an abridged version of Mother’s obituary:
ORRELL ETHELYN HOLMAN NILSSON
Birth:
In a taxi on the Lyndhurst – Carlstadt, NJ town line (as legend has it).
Life:
Family: the Holmans, the Huntleys, the Baldwins, the Neguses, the Langes, the Nilssons, the Svenssons, the Winthers, the Van Trans, the Rhodes, the Browns, the Ullerys, the Bogers, the Keillors. Friends: too many to name; wherever she lived, wherever worked; wherever she went. Residence: 65 Lincoln Ave., Rutherford, NJ; 42 Lincoln Ave., Rutherford, NJ; “The Escape Hatch” Oakland Ave., Hamburg Cove, CT; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; 1411 South Sixth St. SE, Minneapolis, MN; Gould Ave., Columbia Heights, MN; 503 Rice St., Anoka, MN; 505 Rice St., Anoka, MN; “Björnholm” – Grindstone Lake, Hayward, WI; 2550 N. Snelling Ave., Roseville, MN; 947 Lydia Ct., Roseville, MN. Travels: 31 states; Ontario; British Columbia; Scotland, England; Sweden; Denmark; Venezuela; Barbados; Guadeloupe; Curaçao; and wherever a good book, film, documentary or conversation would take her. Loves in Life: her God and faith; her family and friends; learning and doing; teaching and sharing; art and artists; math and music (especially Bach!); water and wisdom.
Where she now dwells:
In our hearts and among celestial lights.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] “Old Pelle.”
