My mom hated cameras, and this was precisely what she was telling me, and in no uncertain terms, in this picture. But the picture is also so much Lisbeth in a nutshell, that I cannot help but sharing it—which she would also have a thing or two to say about.
Lisbeth passed away yesterday. She was 81 years old.
It was a fast, and, as far as I understand, painless death. And it was a good thing, for she had spent her last many years in bed, unable to read or watch television (and how she used to love those soaps), unable to follow a radio program—in essence confined to a prison of flesh and blood that would not let her get up and “get going” the way she always, before her first stroke, had done.
She lived three lives.
She was born into her first life to an unwed mother in a small northern Swedish village called Mellansel, where her mom Olga, and her aunt Ebba would then share parental duties—her father was an itinerant worker who did not stay around to watch the upshot of his romance.
The last time I saw her (summer of 2010) she reminisced a lot about those days, tending the cows, picking nettles for soup, getting the best grades in school in the entire county; “In the entire county,” she’d stress, and often.
When I later did well in school myself, she’d always remind me from whom I’d gotten my brains, and it was certainly was not from my dad, she’d say (though he’d beg to differ).
Then she got pregnant (with me), and things changed. My dad Kjell (who at one point, tact personified, did inform me that of course I was an accident) did the honorable thing and married her (and, to hear him tell it, rescued her from the witches—Olga and Ebba).
As marriages go, theirs was probably not a happy one. They were very unlike, Lisbeth and Kjell. Very.
She was rebellious, and would rarely sit still. He was the happiest when left alone—and very still—on in the sofa with a Donald Duck magazine (I kid you not). She was vivacious, he was reticent (unless a little inebriated, when he cheered up, as a rule).
And as I saw it through growing-up eyes, she was young, he was old. And much like I still do myself, she simply refused to grow up.
I was 18, and had left home, when they divorced. My two sisters, Lili-Ann and Pia, went with Lisbeth, while Kjell remained in the house they had built (where my sister Lili-Ann actually lives now) to lick his wounds, though soon to rebound into a disastrous second marriage, before finally settling down (third time lucky) with his childhood sweetheart Anna, to whom he stayed married for the rest of his days. Anna and Kjell are both gone now, but I think my dad was as happy as I’d ever seen him during that last portion of his life.
Lisbeth began her second life once Lili-Ann and Pia were old enough to fend for themselves, and like fledglings were kicked out of the nest (though they were always, always welcome back—especially around dinner-time).
Her second life took place at sea.
Unable, as I’ve mentioned, to ever sit still for long, she joined the merchant marine and spent the next many years as a cook on various freighters and other sundry boats.
On night she calls me with the news that she (along with the rest of the crew) had just been rescued from a sinking ship in the middle of the north sea. Talk about adventure. About not sitting still.
And now she got to see all the warm places she must have liked the looks of.
For she always liked the sun, and would, like a cat, bask in it the way we’d gulp down water; and now she got to travel to those parts of the world where the sun not only was no stranger (Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, you name it) but perhaps even (for us mere mortals) a too insistent a visitor. Well, that suited Lisbeth to a tee.
All during this second life she spent part of the year at sea and part of the year on land (in her little red house), and when on land she’d often work at a local hotel, again as the cook.
And when it comes to cooking, she was lethal. Lethal, as in irresistible, and as in having no clue as to where to draw any kind of lines or limits. Let me illustrate:
When my then wife and I visited her on our honeymoon, she woke us up one morning with a huge tray laden with what struck us as a three-course breakfast, along with buns and cookies, and a pot of great coffee. We both ate so much, in bed, that we fell asleep again, the coffee notwithstanding.
Only to be called, not an hour later, from outside our window, to get up, and come out now, for breakfast. We looked at each other, not comprehending: what was she talking about? We just ate ourselves unconscious on the breakfast she had trayed in.
Turns out, that feast was just to tide us over until breakfast, the real one. That’s my mom in the kitchen. She could not feed you enough.
Yes, she loved food, and that was both her great joy and her biggest problem. For she grew quite heavy with the years, and she plain wore out her feet, for she refused to sit down. She insisted on always making and paying her own way, and if that meant working on her feet for 10 hours a day, well, then that’s what she’d do, feet be damned.
Also, she did not keep too close an eye on calories or cholesterol, and that is what precipitated her third life.
Which began some years back with her first stroke. It was bad enough to effectively put and end to all of her not sitting still. This stroke was soon followed by a heart attack and a second stroke, and it was not long before she faded to just a shadow of her former self, memory scurrying for the hills, temper volatile, not very happy.
And so, she lived her third life in twilight. Memory grew ever worse. She’d not remember what you told her just a minute ago. Then when you told her again, she’d be irritated at you for repeating yourself. Then she’d forget that you had said anything at all.
It was not an easy life.
With age she also grew more and more tired, and the days when she didn’t even make it out of bed at all, grew greater in number and closer together.
I visited Sweden in 2010 for a full month, and saw her every day. Each day before I left her, I would give her a big hug, and she would hug me back, whether lying down or sitting up, patting me on my back and mumbling something about how sweet I was. And I felt that this was probably the best communication I could offer—the warmth of touch.
About a week after I returned to the US I called her and asked her if she remembered that I had been there to visit her, and had given her all those hugs. Then, and this was the last time I heard her so lucid, she said, “I’ll never forget that.”
Though, by the next time I called, she had forgotten. Oh, well.
Leaving her that last of my Swedish days in July of 2010, I did think to myself that this was probably the last time I saw her. We sense these things.
Yesterday, sitting up at a table among friends, she was suddenly sick, fell over, and simply died.
So ended her third life.
I am proud to be her son, and I will honor her memory by living as good a life as I can for the time I have left (for I, too, have entered my third life).
She was a rebel, and rebels teach you many lessons.
Ulf Wolf