THE STORY THAT MADE THEM CRY: CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

REMEMBERANCE

505 RICE STREET, ANOKA, MN – APRIL 20, 2011 / BJÖRNHOLM, GRINDSTONE LAKE, NW WI – A WEEK LATER

After a year of evenings and weekends clearing out the house, the property was ready for sale. Included was Björn’s house and kennel, overgrown with vegetation but otherwise undisturbed since Dad had led the lame dog out for the last time—thirty-two years before.

Closing was set for 2:00 p.m., April 20, 2011, at the title company in downtown Anoka. After all the closing papers were signed and funds accounted for, I shook hands with the buyers, Rick and Barbara, and handed them the keys.

“By chance,” I said, “are you heading over to the house now?”

“No, not for a while,” said Rick. “We’re going to pick up some stuff at Home Depot . . . why?”

“I forgot a couple of boxes on the counter in the breakfast nook.”

“Here,” Rick said, pulling a house key off one of the key rings. “Take this and let yourself in. You can leave it on the counter. We’ve got things to drop off after the Home Depot run, so we’ll be there later this afternoon.”

“Thanks, Rick.”

Five minutes later I pulled into the driveway of the house that was no longer in the family. I’d fully intended to dart inside, grab the two boxes and leave, but once I’d crossed the threshold of the front doorway, I felt a rush of emotions. I realized that even if I lived to be 100, this could well be my last time inside the house that Mother and Dad had designed, built, and maintained for over half a century; the home where my sisters and I grew up; the place where our parents lived the majority of their years; the repository of so many possessions—furniture and furnishings, of course, but also things taking up shelf and counter space and filling desk drawers and packed into boxes stored in closets, attic, and basement. Now the house was totally vacant, except for the two boxes I’d come to retrieve. My footsteps echoed across the living room floor, and when I called out “Anybody home?” to test the acoustics further, my voice bounced off the naked oak, birch, and drywall. I took one more walk around the rooms upstairs, resisting memories that beckoned me to linger.

A minute later, with my arms around the last two boxes I’d come to retrieve, I exited the house through the back door and stepped into the attached cavernous garage. That space too had been cleared of everything it had housed for decades. It looked completely unfamiliar in its hollow state. Gone were the ancient bicycles off to the side by the windows; the snow sleds and saucers hanging on the back wall; the coiled hoses, sprinklers, and ladders on hooks mounted in front of Dad’s parking spot; snow shovels, and ice choppers in one corner; an odd lot of containers in another; and by the back doorway, a table bearing Mother’s gardening supplies and newspapers destined for recycling.

One lone item remained—impossible to overlook, now that everything else had been cleared from the garage: Björn’s leash draped over the wall-mounted can opener by the rear doorway to the back stoop. Dad had to have placed the dog chain there upon his return from that fateful trip to Doc Andberg’s clinic in July 1979.

I set the boxes down to retrieve the leash. Secured by cobwebs, the chain hung doubly looped symetrically over the top of the old can opener—a reminder of the grace and finesse that Dad assigned to everything he did, whether writing a loving letter to one of us away at school or working his chain saw in his beloved woods of Björnholm. I gently lifted the leash off its resting place and pulled it free from the spider silk.

In doing so I noticed the round tag attached to the choke chain clipped to the leash. Because collar and tag had been hidden in Björn’s thick white mane all his years, I’d long forgotten what exactly had been inscribed on the tag. I held it up to the light filtering through the panes of the back door window, which framed a view of the kennel across the backyard. Above our address I saw the etched lettering, “My Name is Björn.” Along the perimeter of the round tag were the words, “Return me to Raymond Nilsson.”

Dad had ordered the tag after I’d gone off to school in Vermont and he’d become Björn’s best friend—despite his initial categorical rejection of young Jenny’s desire for a pet collie and early regret for having caved to her written entreaty.

Relieved that I’d discovered the leash—and grateful that by forgetting the two boxes I’d inadvertently created the chance—I left Anoka for the last time.[1]

*               *                 *

On the trip to the lake a week later, I took the leash. After unloading our car at the Red Cabin, I lifted the leash from a corner of the trunk, fetched a hammer and nail, and hiked the shoreline to the east end of Björnholm.

I stopped short of the old cabin on its glorious perch overlooking the lake. Under a patch of ferns on the slope facing westward, I found the cairn.  The lake view was gorgeous—trees silhouetted against sky and water colored in pastels by the day’s reclining light. As I rested one foot atop the stones, I fingered the tag on Björn’s leash. Like a kind of genie from a lamp, a string of pleasant memories arose inside my head—recollections of Dad and the dog in those very surroundings . . . named by Dad after the dog.

I walked around to the back steps of the cabin and before letting myself in, glanced at the Björnholm sign over the doorway. As I passed through the back porch, I recalled Björn springing to attention whenever one of us entered that space. Inside the cabin proper I punched the wall switch for the wagon-wheel lights suspended over the living room and proceeded out to the front porch. With the leash draped over one arm, I tapped the nail into the log siding just below Mother’s portrait of Björn—the painting that true to his word, Dad had framed and hung next to the front door.

And there the portrait, the leash—and the words, “My Name is Björn” and “Return me to Raymond Nilsson”—are enduring reminders of “the story that made them cry.”

SLUTET[2]

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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson

[1] To date anyway, over a dozen years later.

[2] “The End” in Swedish (the definite article (-et) is in the form of a suffix)—in memory of the “Gentle Swede” and his dog with the Swedish name.