Grandma 106 years

Grandma has hobbled past one-hundred years, but is still sharp, following everything going on around her. Living through early poverty on a rural farm, her long life has spanned all the historical events as they unfolded over the years. With her calm chuckling laugh, she always gives Disa a sense of well-being.

Electric mixer? I don't have one

Grandma opened the door with a big smile. She accepted the offered flowers as Disa bent forward to put her arms around her huggable grandmother, who responded to Disa's hug with a warm embrace. The aroma of coffee was in the air and Disa breathed the lovely smell in through her nostrils. She had not heard steps from inside the apartment when she came, so Grandma had probably been standing beside the door waiting for Disa to knock. Grandma lived in a secluded retirement home with terraced houses, which all had their own apartment on the ground level with a patch of grass at the back. It was a nice, quiet green area. She could hear the faint sound of birds from the park forest beyond the terrace. This is how Disa would like to live when she was old. She hung her handbag on a hook in the hallway. It was a little cumbersome to get past Grandma's walking frame and old umbrella stand that stood in the way. She cast a glance at the worn leather rack which she remembered stood for years in the hall of Grandma and Grandpa's old home.
'So great to see you, it has really been too long since we last saw each other,' Disa said.
'Yes, you're absolutely right, dear. And what beautiful flowers you have brought. You shouldn't have,' Grandma said but looked satisfied. 'And lilies, which I love!'
'Unfortunately there were no pink ones, but I hope you also like these?' said Disa.
'Yes, indeed. All flowers and all colours are so beautiful and especially lilies. Look how beautiful they are, have you ever seen such a beautiful bouquet?' said Grandma, holding the flowers up to Disa's face, right in front of her nose.
'Yes, I see,' said Disa and laughed.
'But come in, come in, we can't stand in the hall and talk. Come and sit down and get some coffee in you.'
Grandma led her the few steps into the kitchen to a table set with her finest china coffee sets. Store bought buns in a few varieties lay crowded on a cookie platter.
'How nice you have made it. And your best coffee set, I'm very honoured,' said Disa.
She looked at the lovely fancy coffee cups. They had a wide band of gold leaf around the top edge and were beautifully decorated with painted flowers in pink and pale red on both the outside and the inside of the cups. Disa had never seen a set also decorated on the inside of the cups like this. The saucers and dessert plates had wide wavy gold leaf bands around the edge as well, with an equally beautiful sugar bowl and cream jug. Years ago, Grandma had shown her a cigarette box that was part of the same set, too, but which she never used anymore.
Nowadays people only smoke outdoors. So there's no need for beautifully matching ashtray on the coffee table. But things were different in Grandma's time, when you would smoke indoors with your coffee. In fact, they still smoked indoors when Disa was young.

'Oh, that old set is not much to celebrate. I was given it as a wedding present for god knows how many years ago. But you can still feel honoured, it's so nice you are here!' said grandma.
Right when Disa arrived at Grandma's place she felt a harmonious calm. Even at the door, it smelt of Grandma, which felt so relaxing. It was like stepping into a bubble where time slowed down and dragged a bit.
Grandma picked up a beautiful glass vase as Disa followed her gentle movements through the procedure of putting the flowers in water - removing the cellophane, adding water that had to be just warm enough, and trimming the stems. With each step, Disa felt herself more relaxed. Grandma was more stress-relieving than tranquillisers.
The radio was on and Grandma turned it off. 'Can you help me whip the cream?' she asked. 'I don't have the same strength in my arms I used to.'
'Yes,' replied Disa obligingly. 'Where is your mixer?'
'Electric mixer? I don't have one. It's always so easy to whip a little cream. You don't need an electric mixer for it.' Grandma rummaged around in the kitchen drawers. 'Here, you see, here's my whisk,' she said enthusiastically, and handed Disa a hand whisk.
The bowl with cream was ready on the counter, so Disa could only start whisking. As far as she could remember, she had never whisked cream by hand, but she set to and whisked with all her strength. She looked again at the beautiful wedding service.
'When did you actually get married, you and Grandpa?'
'In 1936. So we were married these many years before he was taken away from me five years ago,' said Grandma sadly. 'But we had a lot of good years together, which I am grateful for. And it ended with him going first, but me soon after,' said Grandma as if it was an undisputed fact in a carefree almost wistful voice.
Disa did not think to disagree. When you were as old as Grandma, passed hundred, you had probably resigned yourself to death and hopefully done everything you wanted in life. Even so, Disa would miss Grandma when she was gone, and she selfishly hoped that Grandma would be with them for some time still. It had been so sad when Grandpa died. She missed him still.
'Is everything well with you otherwise?' asked Disa with warmth in her voice.
'Oh yeah, head up and feet down,' said Grandma, chuckling. 'I've got a few aches and pains but it would be strange if I didn't.' Grandma was not much to talk about illnesses and quickly switched the topic with a counter question. 'What about you, dear child?'
'I'm fine. It's a bit stressful at work, since it's that time of the month, but otherwise things are good,' replied Disa and changed the arm she was whisking with.
'Yes, you have to be responsible for so many figures, it must be stressful. You're the economist?' asked Grandma with interest.
'You could say that,' said Disa and thought that her long title wouldn't explain more to Grandma what she did at this point.
'And you sit in front of one of those computer machines?' asked Grandma curiously.
'Yes, exactly.' Disa didn't want to go into too much detail explaining what she did. She knew Grandma wouldn't understand most of her vocabulary and technical terms, so she tried a short version with a few simple words. 'It is a business system that I make entries and do bookkeeping in, but there are also many meetings during the day and many emails to write.'
'Yes, see those things I don't understand. You are clever to understand them,' said Grandma with admiration in her voice.
'Thank you, but it is not as difficult as it may sound. If a customer orders a product someone enters it on the computer instead writing it down on paper of as before. And then it has to be recorded, and that is also done directly in the system by computer instead of on paper,' Disa tried to explain pedagogically. She switched whisking arm again.
'Right. And everything is typed on the computer machine? It is like a typewriter, then?' asked Grandma curiously.
'Yes, you could say that. The keyboard you use to type in the letters looks like a typewriter. But on a typewriter you have to put in the paper. On a PC, you have a monitor instead, like a TV, so you can see everything you write directly on the screen. If you still want it on paper, you can print it on your printer.'
She tried to explain with simple words, but this was hard. She tried to keep in mind not to resort to English words, because she knew Grandma did not understand any English and when at the last moment she used the Swedish word skrivare instead of printer, it didn't make things much better. For Grandma, it must have sounded foreign and very cryptic: email, keyboard, screen, printer. It wasn't every day you had to explain what a computer looked like. Most people had seen one these days. Next time she could bring her laptop and show it instead.
'Yes, can you imagine. The things they come up with,' Grandma said impressed. 'Is the cream ready soon? It usually goes quick to whip a little cream.'
'Well, now I think it's ready. A little loose perhaps,' said Disa, her arms feeling tired after all the whipping. Quick and easy to whip by hand it surely wasn't, at least not compared to using an electric mixer. But it was a matter of habit, she supposed, everything had to be done quickly nowadays.
The boiled coffee had been left to stand and draw a few moments and Grandma took the coffee pot from the stove and poured the steaming coffee into the antique cup.
'Dip now. Take some cream for the cake,' Grandma said, walking with a limp to take a spoon from the cupboard and putting it in the bowl.' The home service helped me buy some coffee cakes. They are so kind. I don't go shopping myself anymore, I stopped that a few years ago. That's when I stopped cooking, so they come two times a day. When you are over a hundred, it's not strange if you can't be bothered to cook anymore, is it? Still, I did cook all my life.'
'You're still fit as a fiddle, aren't you! But it was about time you stopped doing household chores. I don't understand how you managed so long,' said Disa.
'To think that I have survived my hundredth birthday. I would never have believed it. That I would live so long. For over one hundred years. Can you imagine. That I would be this old.' Grandma pushed quite hard on her wrinkled cheek so that the skin pressed in and laughed. When she removed the curved index finger it left a pit behind.
'Yes, it's just amazing that you managed it, did you ever think you would when you were younger?'
'Nah, I would never have believed it. That I would be so old. Can you imagine. Take another now, don't be shy,' insisted Grandma.
'I'll take some of the chocolate cake then, it looks really good. But really, I shouldn't eat so much sweets!' said Disa a little reproachfully, mainly meant for herself.
'You are so slim, of course you should have cake with your coffee. Take a bun too!' said Grandma.
'I could stand to lose a couple of kilos, but mostly I think about trying to be healthy. But maybe a small bun can do no harm.'
'No, definitely not. They're good, and we are not poor any longer. We can afford it now. Can't we? We're not poor any more, are we.'
'You're right about that,' said Disa and smiled. 'But it's not that we can't afford it, perhaps, but that it's not so healthy. We should not eat so much unhealthy things as we do today.'
'No indeed. Do you think I should stop eating buns then?' said Grandma with a grumpy look.
Disa wasn't sure if she was joking or not, but laughed a little uneasily. 'No, I don't think so. Not you, but maybe I should think about it.'
'So you think I can continue eating sweets then?' said Grandma and waited defiantly for an answer.
'Yes, absolutely! You don't have to stop doing anything at your age, whether eating or anything else. If you have managed this far, you will certainly be fine for a little longer!'
'Really, you think so. Well then, I'll go on with it,' said Grandma contentedly.
'Please do!' said Disa laughing.
The pendulum clock loudly struck the half-hour. The sound echoed out into the room and then only its hands were heard ticking time forward slowly but surely.
Disa always noticed it was so quiet at Grandma's. The only thing to be heard was the clock ticking. Every half hour it struck once and every hour it struck the right number of times for the hour. It was the only thing that could be heard in the silence. So relaxing. Maybe she could buy a pendulum clock. Do they stop time, if only momentarily every second? Or was it the whole atmosphere here at Grandma's that made her so totally destressed?
'You were poor, weren't you, when you grew up?' asked Disa. Grandma had never told anything about her childhood.
'Yes, oh, yes. Life was hard,' said Grandma reluctantly. 'It was hard, poor, and hard to make ends meet, and it was a grind from morning to night.'
Disa knew that Grandma preferred to talk about current events rather than her childhood. She read the newspaper carefully, with a magnifying glass at the ready, for a few hours each morning and was well up to date with what was happening in the world. In the past she discussed everything with Grandpa, but after he had passed away she'd have had all that time alone and with no-one at all to discuss with. Now there was no one who could always be there to talk to her about all things imaginable. It would be nice to hear more about old times, but Grandma always avoided the subject.
'It sounds tough. Can't you tell me?' said Disa and sat back more comfortably.
'Well...,' said Grandma doubtfully. 'Can it really be something worth listening to, an old lady's story.'
Disa nodded. 'If you want to tell me, I'd love to listen. It would be interesting to hear a bit about the old times.'
'Oh well, if you say so. Well, what should I tell you. You already know that we lived on a farm, like most other people at that time. Lövbacken. Sweden was a farming society. We were eight children in the household, a large family, but so were all families. The older children helped with caring for the younger ones. I was born at Lövbacken and was number five of the siblings.'
Disa felt so incredibly thankful for being born in what she considered the right time. Eight children. She could hardly cope with one. And when could the next child be scheduled? She couldn't understand how you could keep up with eight. Admittedly Great Grandma did not have a job to go to. Being away from home 11 hours a day and then doing everything else - family, household, shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning, washing, showering, bills, commitments in the kindergarten and now in school, parents' meetings, activities with the job and friends - all in the remaining five hours if we were to get eight hours of sleep, which in itself seemed impossible. And then the house projects which came on top of everything. But still. A farm and a family of ten. She pictured just the washing, the huge pile of linen it must have been. At that time, there were hardly any washing machines. With endless small children in the household they must have gone through a lot of nappies, not plastic nappies which could just be discarded immediately, but ones that had to be properly washed. By hand.
'What a pain it must have been for Great Grandma to take care of such a large family. I am thinking just of the laundry. Did you even have piped water?'
'In the beginning we didn't. We had to draw water from the well in the yard and it had to be enough for cooking, washing, and the animals. Later they brought water into the house and we had a hand pump above the sink. Eventually, there was also a pump outside for the cows. Mum did laundry under a roof out in the yard with a washing mill and tubs. And the well was next to it.' Grandma paused in her storytelling putting a sugar cube on her tongue. She brought her lips to the coffee cup and slurped a little coffee.
'Washing mill, you said? What kind of a thing is that?' asked Disa curiously.
'Washing mill, yes. It's like a kind of tub that you put the laundry in and then heated. Are you eating your buns now then? I don't want to have to save anything, so it's good if you eat it up,' said Grandma pointedly. Disa looked at the overflowing platter with all the buns and cookies. There was no way everything would be eaten.

Reality was not black and white, not even a hundred years ago

With her eyes, Disa followed the clock pendulum swinging back and forth as the smaller hand neared the hour mark and, although she saw with her own eyes that time was ticking by as usual, the device seemed designed to prevent time from working here with Grandma. She felt like time stood still, or at least that seconds lasted longer inside Grandma's door than outside. Tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...
The hour arrived, the grandfather clock struck.
Peacefully, the sound spread through the room.

Disa sipped on her coffee and listened to Grandma describing her childhood. She told about her able father who had built all the buildings on the farm: a storehouse for the grain and where he had a workbench. A large carriage house for wagons, spring wagon, and hay cart, all pulled by horses. A smithy with its own forge and wrought anvils, where he made things needed for the farm and sometimes for neighbours as well. Where sometimes Grandma had to give a helping hand. A woodshed, chicken house, and pigsty, a barn building with stables, barn, and hay loft, and geese and outdoor lavatories in the yard. In the stable were the horses, Vera and Blenda, in the lower garden were six or seven cows. The chaff was stored in the barn and the hay in the hayloft. Her father was used to working hard. In his youth at the end of the 19th century, he had been a navvy on the Roslagsbana rail line. The railway opened in 1901. He earned 10 cents an hour and had a ten-hour working day. At most, he earned up to fifteen cents an hour.
'He was not always easy to deal with, my father. Sometimes he was mean and barked at us children even though we hadn't done anything. I remember once getting a dressing-down and a half. People used to buy milk from him and he had a milk diary to keep track of it. He had been sitting there doodling with his ink pen, but blamed me for doing it. I ran to Thea for comfort. She was my favourite cow. She had a white mark on her forehead, which looked just like a big old-fashioned T and that's why she was called Thea. The cow lay her head down with the muzzle on the floor and I put my arms around her neck and wept. And the tears flowed from Thea as well. We cried together.' Grandma's eyes glittered. Over ninety years later, she was still moved by the memory. Grandma stood up. 'Nimble as an elephant,' she groaned and went stumbling on stiff legs to the kitchen counter and picked up the coffee pot. 'More?'
'I could have got the coffee so you could stay sitting,' objected Disa. 'But yes, thank you, I could take a small cup since you are already up.'
'Well, I sit still all day. It's only good to move the limbs a bit, so they don't freeze solid completely,' said Grandma and poured more coffee into the delicate cup and then put the coffee pot back on the stove. 'Now take a cookie for the second cup,' said Grandma.
'OK, the last one, but that will be enough,' said Disa as though telling herself.
Grandma went on talking about everything that had to be done on a farm. 'The cows were milked by hand every morning, and the animals mucked out. The grain was harvested and taken to the mill. The rye and wheat was shelled by machine, the hulls going to the hens, and the rest ground for bread. For the pigs, we made groats.' That was a word Disa had never heard before and when Grandma realized this she spelled it out aloud, 'g r o a t s' and seeing Disa's confused expression, she explained it was made of potatoes, barley and oats. 'The calves were brought up on whole milk for eight weeks and then sold to the slaughterhouse. Butcher Andersson just had to take a look at the white meat to see if they were raised on whole milk. All farms had pigs and a butcher went around to everyone and slaughtered the pigs at each. From the neck of the pig, blood ran directly into a bowl and mum stood with a wooden spoon and stirred in rye flour so the blood would not clot. Then we made blood bread cakes from it, to be hung up on a pole in the kitchen to dry. The ham was reserved for smoking. All food had to be prepared and whole days could be spent on cooking and preserving. Firewood was carried to the wood stove in the kitchen used for cooking and to heat part of the house. Above the wood stove, wet socks and gloves were often hung to dry. A couple of beehives provided honey. Fruit and berries around the house could be picked: apples, raspberries, strawberries and currants. An underground cellar kept the food chilled, since there were no refrigerators at the time,' said Grandma with a slight twinkle and smiled.
You could call it self-sufficiency, thought Disa, Michael would have liked it.
'Everything else was bought from two different stores, which were a few kilometres away. One in Stenhagen, where the poor house, which is now a museum, was.'
Grandma seemed to want to finish her story quickly so that they could then start talking about other things. But Disa was not ready to give way. She didn't want to pass up the chance, now that Grandma had started talking about it.
'I understand what you mean by saying it was tough in the past,' said Disa. 'And how much time it took just to put food on the table.'
'Life was hard,' said Grandma. 'But mum was used to it. Already at the age of nine she went to her cousins to work as a farm maid. There, she got to go to school every other day. After that, she moved from one family to another. One of them, the Bergmans in Åkersbro, let her go and attend school up there with Pastor Lindén. She learned to sew with Mrs. Bergman, who worked as a seamstress while still helping with all the regular household work. She earned 12 kronor a month. The family was also in charge of the telephone exchange and she got to help with that as well. There were eighteen subscribers.'
Eighteen, thought Disa, only eighteen subscribers. She pictured how an operator connected callers together as she had seen in a black and white documentary on TV some time ago. She tried to imagine the same scene with her Great Grandma. The film's distorted voice that sounded so polite, brisk, and restrained made her think of her own Great Grandma's probably pretty normal voice. And in colour. Reality was not black and white, not even a hundred years ago.
'Then she ended up here when she married in 1902.' Grandma placed another sugar cube on her tongue and produced a loud slurping sound that started just before her lips touched the coffee cup. She smacked her lips contentedly as the sugar cube dissolved in her mouth and continued. 'Mum told me that on their wedding day Grandpa took them by horse and cart to the priest, who married them with two maids employed in the rectory as witnesses. Grandpa went into Stenhagen's store and bought some buns and coffee. When they got up to go to their homes, my grandmother said to my mother: 'I have nothing more to give you than God's blessing dear child and hope that you will be satisfied and happy with your marriage and never forget God in difficult moments, because He is the only thing you have to turn to in times of trouble.' It was my Grandma and Grandpa on the photograph that you took with you the last time you were here.'
Once, Grandma had come with the black and white photograph and asked if Disa wanted it. The photo was fitted behind a thick glass pane and on the back it had an elaborate copper frame ingeniously put together and attached to the glass. Rustic art.
'I put the picture in the cabinet where I have my valuables. It has been given a place of honour,' said Disa.
'Oh my, is it there, in the cabinet?' said Grandma.
Disa nodded.
'In the place of honour?'
Disa nodded again.
'Oh my,' said Grandma.
They sat silent for a short while. Disa drank some coffee and Grandma ate a cookie carefully with one side of her dentures. They didn't always want to stay in place when she used the front teeth. Disa wanted to hear more about Grandma's life and asked about her school days.
'I started school when I was six years old, and went for six years, Monday through Saturday. All the children would sit two by two, boy and girl. It was probably so to keep the girls from sitting and giggling together, I think. It was about four kilometres to school, we had to walk back and forth every day. I had the company of two or three other girls and my brothers went by themselves. In winter, it was extra hard to trudge through the snow along the long road, when it was only ploughed by horse. When we arrived, our feet were always wet. Once I was told: 'Little Gerda made it, but the big boys had turned back in the snow.' My teacher, Miss Johansson, was wonderfully kind and she didn't hit you for punishment - just a few slaps of course.'
'Slaps?' asked Disa surprised.
'Yes, slaps, yes,' said Grandma with over-explicit articulation. She had interpreted Disa's surprised question to mean that she had not heard. Not that there was anything strange about 'slaps'. 'Later, when I was in grade five or six at a larger school with Mr Nykvist, there was a boy who got such a slap in the face that he hit his head hard on the desk cover. The boy had opened the desk cover and Nykvist probably thought that he was cheating or something. But otherwise there were no beatings for punishment, even though it was allowed.'
They drank the last coffee from their cups. Disa felt privileged to be the one who got to listen to this story of days gone by. To think that she knew a person who was so old and could tell her about what it was actually like living in those times. Disa sharpened her ears and wanted to soak up everything Grandma said. She had never managed to get this much out of her before.

Too poor to vote

Grandma stood by the kitchen window lifting the airy crocheted curtain slightly. When she saw Disa coming, she let the curtains go and they swayed to hang again. She fiddled with the lock, opened the door and the two hugged a greeting. The grandfather clock out in the living room gave out a click and the pendulum struck eleven long ringing strikes. By the kitchen sink a frozen cake stood thawing, despite Disa having said that she would just have a cup of coffee now that the visit had been planned in such haste. On the counter, Grandma had laid an old worn grey book labelled with "Poesie." The front cover showed a captain and a beautiful woman in a turquoise dress and hat. They held each other in their arms under a lit stone archway with the sea in the background. The backside was a dull cornflower blue faded by the years and had an emblem at its centre. Disa had never seen the poetry book before. Grandma put on her distinctly seventies-looking glasses and started leafing through the book. Many a "Memory!" zipped past, written in varying handwriting with many different types of pens. Grandma leafed through the poetry book to the first page and handed the book over to Disa, who took it gingerly in her hands. Grandma took off her glasses and started reciting from memory. Disa followed along in the text, reading silently the letters written beautifully in old cursive handwriting.

'Isn't it beautiful? Contemplate and reflect.' Grandma read the whole text without her glasses on. 'And look at that pretty bookmarker,' she said pointing distractedly at the faded angel glued in one corner of the page. She didn't look at it herself. The bookmarker was already etched in her memory, where it had been for ninety years. She didn't need to see it with her eyes to know what it looked like.
Grandma then related that the lamp to be kept faithfully referred to their old kerosene lamp. They hadn't had electricity in those days. Kerosene for the lamp had to be refilled and the wick that sucked up the fuel mustn't become too short. A short verse of a few lines could say so much about the time it was written in. This was confirmed for Disa when she turned to the next page. A folded newspaper cut-out fell out and the yellowing poetry page was mostly taken up by a bookmark representing a suffragette. One of the poems was dated to the same year and month when Grandma had received the poetry book as a birthday present and was written by grandma's teacher. She must have been one of the first to get to write in grandma's poetry book and had chosen the second page, directly after grandma's mother's verse. Was it a conscious choice? The poem breathed the cause of women's rights and drive for equality. "Become a thinking woman..." it started. Had she felt it important to instil these meaningful words in her young pupil to carry with her through life? Teachers were impressive, high status figures to a seven-year-old, her advice to think for yourself and fight for your rights could definitely have meant a lot to Grandma and partly shaped her as a person. If Disa knew her grandmother, she probably knew this verse by heart as well.
Grandma continued relating: Those who had fought for women's right to vote had been called suffragettes, often disparagingly, both by men and other women. Disa thought it seemed absurd that other women as well were against their own right to vote. The teacher, who was a working woman, probably dreamt of equal pay for equal work and women's right to vote. Many had fought for equal treatment for both sexes, some loudly, others more quietly, each in their own way helping to form society into what it was today. Maybe grandma's teacher had been one of the suffragettes, who Disa had to thank for living in more equal times.
Grandma was nine years old when women got the right to vote and it was a great day when both her mother and father had dressed in their best to go and vote for the first time. Her father hadn't been able to vote either because he had indebted himself to buy the farm at Lövbacken. Just like her grandmother and grandfather who had been too poor to vote. Men had gotten the right to vote twelve years earlier, but there had still been many exceptions. Before that only the wealthy could vote. Overnight, two million people gained the right to vote. That was when democracy in Sweden began for real, but still it was the last of the Scandinavian countries to adopt universal suffrage. The very same day her mother, finally reached the age of majority. As usual, Grandma delivered the information in an everyday manner, as if it anything special at all. It was just the story of her own life. Her mother was forty years old at the time, and had given birth to eight children, but her husband had been her legal guardian all those years. She hadn't been the age of majority until she was 40 years old.
Disa unfolded the over one-hundred-year old brown newspaper clip, revealing the headline "Issues of our time. Statements from people knowledgeable in various subjects. For and against women's suffrage." The arguments were recounted, three reasons for women's suffrage and eight against, and the newspaper had taken a clear stance against. She glanced through the article, which was from 1913 and witnessed to what was the great debate of the times, and read aloud to Grandma a few parts that stood out to her. At times Disa couldn't believe her eyes and wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. The strange formulations of the solemn old fashioned Swedish mixed with the incredible relief of knowing that those times were past and she wouldn't have to fight for such obvious things as the right to vote. "The worth of a human soul can be equal, whether its flesh and blood housing is male or female... Women's impulsivity and tendency to follow along with the mainstream - Note their slavish obedience to fashion trends!... women's indisputably highest duty to the country, to bear children and strive to raise the next generation to its highest possible physical, spiritual, and moral heights."
'Indisputably,' Disa repeated and laughed. 'It wasn't open to discussion, an irrefutable fact, that women were meant to rear children. Things sure are different from today.' It wasn't difficult to see what the newspaper's opinion was even if they hadn't written it in the introduction to the article. Disa looked surprised at grandma. 'This is written in complete seriousness just a hundred years ago, just your life time really.' Disa said.
Grandma stood up slowly and started taking out coffee cups and dessert plates. 'They were worried about the way society was going, they didn't mean anything bad by it really, that was the spirit of the times.'
Disa put the newspaper clipping back in the poetry book and placed the book back on the table. 'Well, I guess the spirit of the times is what decides what's fashionable. Just look at how the view of actors has changed. In the middle ages they were jesters or fools. Today they walk the red carpet and are awarded fine prices across the globe.'
Grandma changed the subject. It seemed like she had been mulling something and couldn't hold it in any longer.
'Just think, I read in the news that many young people today feel terrible. Why is that? Now that we aren't poor anymore, and there isn't any war,' she said with an uncomprehending expression on her face. 'When I was young, life was hard. We were very poor. My aunt emigrated to America looking for a better life. That's different from today. Now we aren't poor anymore. Are we?'
Disa shook her head slightly. She wondered at how fast it had gone from poverty to wealth. A hundred years ago, which wasn't that long, people headed across the Atlantic to seek their fortunes because life back home in Sweden was so poor and bare. And it all happened within grandma's lifetime. And now society flourished and Sweden was one of the richest countries in the world. Past generations had fought to make it so. But despite our material wealth, many are unhappy.
'But why do so many young people feel bad then?' Grandma asked impatiently and waited for Disa to have an explanation for her.
'I don't really know,' Disa answered irresolutely. 'But it feels like we live in a harsh society overall. There are high expectations of both adults and children. Everyone must perform at their best at all times. Children need to stay in school for a long time to be able to get a job on today's tough job market.
'And still our schools have become so bad in comparison to the rest of the world. Finland's are the best, I read about it this morning,' Grandma said and pointed to the folded newspaper, which lay beneath a large magnifying glass and the glasses from the seventies she still used. 'We have fallen several positions. Why is that?'
Grandma took a lump of sugar from the sugar bowl, laid it between her lips and loudly slurped coffee through it. She still hungered for knowledge, especially regarding social issues, despite being over one hundred years old. The inevitable end was probably very near, Disa couldn't avoid being aware of it despite trying not to think about it. And still Grandma kept being so genuinely interested and curious.

I wasn't born all wrinkly

For Grandma, the days were probably getting long. Hopefully, she would have the strength to come and visit them in connection with the event at the town hall the municipality was organising that she wanted to attend. She had already been there once, and in the fall there would be at least one more event like it. Disa found out about the event in the local newspaper. The project was called 'Old and young 'united'' mixing the Swedish 'Old and young' with the English 'United'. But it was described as something to benefit both generations. Disa had thought of Grandma right away, and sent her the page with information about the event, with a handwritten note. Just a few lines, starting with the familiar 'Hi, Grandma!', which always gave her the same feeling she'd had as a child when writing to Grandma. Disa had briefly written that Grandma was welcome to visit them. Then, Disa would be able to drive her to the town hall, stop just outside the main entrance and help her in and then drive her home afterwards. Grandma had called Disa after the letter arrived and the first thing she asked about was what 'uni-ted' meant reading the English word with a Swedish pronunciation. Grandma was probably not alone in not understanding what the project name was trying to convey. Using that word in the name had likely been chosen by someone who did not quite understand that older folks hadn't learned English in school. But the important thing was organising the event.
Grandma had embraced Disa's idea, arriving in a taxi. And they'd gone to the municipal building together. Disa and Grandma slowly walked up the steps arm in arm, Grandma taking one stumbling step at a time. 

The municipality really did their part well. As the two entered the town hall, they followed the lovely smell of coffee and fresh baked bread. They came to a room that had a dozen round tables with flowers and red white checkered tablecloths. Above each table stood an unfurled red and white striped parasol. A serving counter at one side of the room was under matching awning suspended from the wall and a matching tablecloth covered with cutlery, fresh coffee in thermoses, juice in a pitcher with ice cubes and a plate of Danish pastries, heated in the microwave. Bread baskets with red and white checkered napkins were stacked onto each other next to a plate of buns. Flower boxes with red Geraniums and Ivy were sitting on pedestals around the room. The whole setup gave of a warm, pleasant impression. A simple but lush indoor garden had been created. The air was warm, a window was wide open and birds could be heard through it. Each table had a handwritten note with different topics around which discussion groups could be formed. Only three children had turned up, but rather more old-timers, who were making their way around the tables. Disa went with Grandma to a table where the subject sheet said 'current events.' A young slightly plump girl, perhaps fourteen years old, sat at the table and looked up at Grandma when she approached with her limping step.
'Sit down and I'll go fetch coffee and something to eat,' said Disa.
Grandma turned to the girl who was sitting there. 'So, you're also interested in current events, are you?' she asked directing a warm friendly gaze at her while she slowly sat down in the chair, sighing heavily, 'And you're punctual also.'
The girl looked closely at Grandma. 'It's good to be on time. Isn't it?' she said with a slightly surly tone.
'Yes, it is, it's very good to be on time,' said Grandma.
Disa interrupted. 'Would you also like something? Coffee or juice?'
'I'll have the same as her,' replied the girl and glanced at Grandma. Disa went to get a basket with a few hot Danish pastries and two coffees. It looked good, but she wouldn't be having anything herself. She had to think about the calories and what's more, the event was not for her after all, as she did not belong to either of the invited groups, old or young. She heard Grandma and the girl continue their conversation in the background and watched them from a distance.
'What do you think about school then? I have been looking forward to hearing what it's like at school these days. I read a lot in the newspaper, you see, and it doesn't sound good at all. But now I have an expert here in front of me, who knows what it's like and can tell me from her own experience. It will be soooo exciting, hear about it,' said Grandma unable to hide her enthusiasm.
The girl had carefully studied Grandma's face while she spoke and seemed to like what she saw. Grandma radiated warmth and humanity and quickly swept everyone up in her engaging energy.
'It's really boring in school,' said the girl depressed. 'All the teachers just nag and it's just a bunch of tests and homework all the time. Really boring.'
'But is there no subject that you think is fun?' asked Grandma in an emphatic voice.
'Well, there is social studies and the current events tests, they make them into games, but the teachers are experts in making any fun topic into a boring lesson. There is always a lot of homework. Yuck. But what do you do with your days now? Do you do anything fun at the old folks' home?'
'Well, I'm not sure how much fun it is really. It was in my youth that I had fun, when I went out and danced on the dance floor in Åkersbro. I had several admirers who wanted to dance with me, if you can believe it. I was not just a weathered, infirm old lady then as I am now. I wasn't born all wrinkly if you can believe it,' said Grandma and pressed hard on her cheek with her index finger so the indentation remained when she took her hand away. She laughed her chuckle. 'I'm over a hundred years old, you know, you end up a bit rumpled.'
Grandma pulled her face together so it wrinkled up even more and Disa suddenly realized what it meant to be as wrinkled as a raisin. Her entire face was filled with wrinkles and only wrinkles. Her eyes and mouth could hardly be seen. Grandma unfurled her face again and laughed at herself with her warm infectious laugh and the corners of the girl's mouth rose a bit for the first time. Disa saw how her shoulders dropped down a little bit in a more relaxed sitting position. Grandma had already softened her.
Disa pushed the two steaming coffee mugs and the bread basket with Danish pastries forward. Then she felt it was time for her to go, despite wanting to sit listened to what looked sure to be an interesting conversation. 'Grandma, I'll go shopping for a bit and be back in about an hour. Is that OK?'
'Well you go and do your shopping, and I will sit and talk a bit with this precious girl here,' said Grandma and gave the girl a smile. Grandma reached immediately into the basket and took a Danish pastry, she wasn't one to hold back when sweets were on offer. 'Where were we, oh yes admirers. You are so pretty you must have many admirers?'
Disa had started walking towards the exit and didn't hear the answer. At the serving counter, she met the person who had arranged it all. She made sure the thermoses had coffee and looked contentedly at her work on the venue. Disa said a few kind words about how nicely it was arranged and the project manager had asked if she wanted a pastry before she left. She hadn't been able to resist and took a sticky pastry on a red and white checkered napkin to eat along the way. She went past another table and heard a few fragments from a boy of around 15 and a very old man who seemed to be talking mopeds. The handwritten tag on the table said 'Cars and technology'. All the other tables had only old-timers sitting at them. One of the three young people who had come had already slipped away. But the old folks seemed to be having a nice time talking to each other over the coffee and cakes anyway.
One of the tables was crowded. She could hear the discussion was in full swing and they were laughing loudly. She looked at the tag as she came closer, it was stained with spilled coffee and one of those sitting there was fingering it. Disa could make out 'Religion and spirituality' on it. But when she walked past, the laughing group, she heard it was certainly not godly topics they were discussed. They had moved on to which liqueur went best with coffee. It was probably the fact that the table was by the window rather than the prompted discussion slip that attracted the crowd. An older man sat holding his nose and showing comically how to down the sickly sweet drink that he actually didn't really like. But what wouldn't you do to get some alcohol down?
An hour later, when Disa came back to fetch Grandma, she had accidentally seen that the girl Grandma was talking to had scarred cuts on one arm as well as a few that looked fresh. The girl had quickly pulled her sleeves down to hide the scars. Disa did not think that Grandma had noticed it. She probably didn't know that this sort of thing even existed. It was probably not like that in her time. It hadn't been in Disa's own time either, it seemed to be a relatively new phenomenon.
That someone could feel so badly as to want physical pain caused by a super sharp razor blade to make things feel better than the psychic pain of anxiety. In the past, you would have had to resolve it some other way. Although Disa had heard of this behaviour, she was still a little shocked to see it close up. There was a difference from knowing that it existed and having a flesh and blood example in front of your eyes, someone who was feeling so poorly that she resorted to cutting herself. Poor girl, she thought compassionately. It fit poorly with the happiness survey she'd seen in the newspaper the same day, which said Sweden was ranked one of the happiest countries in the world. That did not seem to apply to everyone. But the girl looked happy and carefree at the moment and Disa admired the mutual respect she and Grandma showed each other.
Disa took Grandma under her arm and helped her up from the chair. Grandma had taken the girl's hand in hers and put her other soft hand on top.
'It was soooo fun to meet with you. Have a good time now, little friend.' She patted the girl's hand a little with her own wrinkled one.
The girl looked moved. 'You too. Are you coming the next time?'
'Unless my energy runs out, but if you're here I would not miss it for all the world,' Grandma said, chuckling. 'It was sooo fun to meet you.' Grandma always had a kind word for everyone she met. If there was anyone who lived by the motto 'Love thy neighbour,' it was Grandma.
'I will,' said the girl.

Managed without English for a hundred years - perhaps it's time now!

They must think school is fun,' she said firmly. 'Learning new things should be fun. That child I talked with who was so charming told me she hadn't been having an easy time,' she said with empathy in her voice. 'She said she was bored in school. Why do they bore the children so? Can't they make it more fun instead?'
'You mean the girl you met at the municipal event,' Disa said.
'Yes, the precious child. What was the name of the event again? It was some word I can never remember. It is impossible to learn new things with such an old head as mine,' she said and tapped her forehead. As she lowered her hand, a grey lock of hair stuck out tousled. She looked like an absentminded professor, Disa thought and smiled fondly. 'Old and young united,' Grandma said with hint of annoyance in her voice as she pronounced the English word with Swedish pronunciation. 'was it uni-ted?' She looked expectantly at Disa.
'United,' Disa clarified with English pronunciation. 'It's in English. Old and young united.'
'What's that? Joniii-ted?'
'United'
'Joniii-ted,' Grandma mimicked. 'But then why don't they write it in Swedish then, so people can understand. Uni-ted,' she repeated, going back to her original Swedish pronunciation of the word. 'No one understands what it means, do they?'
'No, not any older people anyway. If you don't speak English it must be impossible to understand,' Disa said.
'English,' Grandma said a bit sarcastically. 'Do you think I should learn that?'
Grandma looked at Disa with such a frank expression in her eyes that she couldn't keep from laughing. You could never be sure with Grandma whether she really meant what she said, it was hard to tell just by looking at her.
'No, I suppose not,' Disa said with a smile.
'Well, I've managed without it for a hundred years, but perhaps it's time now then?' Grandma said. She studied Disa closely. 'Do you think I should learn English?' she asked again in a faintly glum voice.
'No, of course not,' Disa said and laughed. 'Unless you really want to that is, but if you haven't needed it for a hundred years, I think you can manage in the future as well.'
'You think so do you. Well,...' grandma said and looked pleased.
'We can just call it the meeting for old and young people instead. We don't have to use the official project name.'
'Meeting for old and young people,' Grandma said doubtfully. 'Well that's much easier of course. So you feel we can keep speaking Swedish then?' she continued with an elusive smile.
'Of course,' Disa repeated.
'Then I'll stick with it I suppose, to avoid any articulatory misunderstandings,' Grandma said, clearly articulating each word and with a satisfied smile. 'But one English word I'll know at least. Joniii-ted,' she said contentedly and screwed up her eyes so her entire face became a maze of laughing wrinkles.

Are there letters and numbers flying through the air?

Disa touched Grandma's number on her phone. She waited for the many signals she knew it took for Grandma to answer the old grey Bakelite rotary phone on the kitchen window sill. As the phone was lifted Disa could hear an echoing sound in the background from the last signal came. Disa didn't know anyone who had a phone like that, except for the novelty ringtone on their mobile. A miracle the old phone still worked! Grandma answered as she always did with her full eight number phone number, one number at a time. '5, 8, 7... 2, 0...' she rattled off. At the start, phone numbers had only had 5 digits, but when the Stockholm and its vicinity were assigned a single common dialling code, eight numbers were needed. Grandma adapted and learned the whole long number by heart, but sometimes she forgot and just said the five digit one she had used for over 60 years. Answering by reading out her number was simply a remnant of the past it seemed to Disa. Back in the day, you needed to know what number you had been connected to, so you knew the switchboard operator had connected you to the right person.
They greeted each other, with Disa mentioning she was sitting in her office at their home as not disturb Michael sleeping.
'Is the cord on your phone that long?' Grandma asked.
'No, I'm calling from my mobile phone, it doesn't need a cord, you know.'
'No cord you say. That's right. The things they come up with. No cord.'
Disa pictured Grandma sitting by the kitchen table with her grey Bakelite phone with cord that didn't reach farther than the kitchen counter. That's where she had been stuck all these years when she used the phone.
'The things they come up with,' Grandma repeated herself. 'If I hadn't been sitting here talking to you on one of those cellular phones right now, I would never have believed you. It can't possibly work. Not without a cord. It sounds like some kind of science fiction,' she said, pronouncing science fiction in a Swedish accent. 'Are you saying that our voices aren't coming over a cord but going through the air?'
'You can also send text messages these days,' Disa said.
'You meant texts as in letters? That there are letters and numbers flying through the air?' Grandma sounded doubtful as always and Disa laughed. 'How does that work?' Grandma wondered.
'They are like radio signals, in the same way your radio or TV works. You have an antenna on your radio that takes in signals from the air.'
'Yes, I suppose your right, that is the same thing isn't it? You're right in that. Well, the things they come up with,' Grandma concluded with admiration in her voice. 'Can you imagine?'
Disa went to get the laptop from the hat shelf. 'Grandma, we talked about computers earlier, remember?'
'Yes, you talked about working by writing on one of those computer machines,' Grandma said.
'Exactly. And today I brought my own computer to show you what it looks like. I figured it's easier to show than to describe it.'
'Did you bring a computer machine? Here?' Grandma looked incredulous.
'Yes, I brought my small laptop to show you.' Disa placed the laptop on the table and turned it on. 'This is what it looks like. This is the keyboard, sort of like a typewriter,' Disa said while the computer hummed to life. 'And here's the screen that shows you what you're writing.'
'Well, you don't say. Can you imagine,' Grandma said impressed.
Disa paged through the pictures and showed the four buildings that symbolised the four elements with the atrium in the middle, the open plan office where she sat in the Water building and the many floors looking up the bright and airy atrium from the entrance.
'Well, can you imagine. The things they come up with. Photographs inside a typing machine. Or whatever they are called, a computer machine it was,' Grandma corrected herself.

Hundred-year-old information can hardly be counted as news

Grandma poured the fruit soda in the glasses and sat down at the table again in her favourite chair where she always sat. 'Is it really worth listening to?' asked Grandma sceptically.
Disa nodded.
'An old lady's story, can it really be something to listen to?' She smacked her tongue to straighten her dentures and continued a little hesitantly. 'Well ... When it was potato harvesting time, you were let out from school, because you were needed back home. Everybody had to help. And during the war years, we were very poor. All the school children had to go to the rectory about two kilometres away and help pick pine cones and sticks, for fuel to heat the school.'
'War? Do you mean the second world war, or which war?' said Disa wondering. 'You always hear that Sweden has not been at war for two hundred years.'
'We were not in the war, but we still felt it even here in Sweden. And it was not the Second World War, I was talking about, but the first!' said Grandma.
'First World War?' Disa raised her quizzical eyebrows. She began to realize how old Grandma actually was. World War I she thought, was only something that's written about in history books. She hadn't thought there was anyone still alive who could tell about it as part of their own life.
'Yes, and the Spanish flu ravaging the farms in the area didn't help any either,' added Grandma. 'The flu caused high fevers, and many died. There were more people who died from the Spanish flu than in the rest of the war. So many died from it that coffins were in short supply. And the church bells rang continuously,' she said thoughtfully.
'When was this, do you remember?'
'It was 1918.'
How she kept such good track of the years, Grandma. Disa never stopped being amazed. 'Did you have it, the Spanish flu?'
'Yes. The boy who sat next to my sister May in school fell ill and she caught it as well. She and another girl, Emma, became sick at the same time and were sent home. It was the middle of winter, but they had to sit down several times on the way home in the snow because they were so sick. On the stairs, May was later found by mum and carried in. She infected everyone else at home. My brother Gunnar was the sickest. There was no penicillin then, and the only thing we got was aspirin powder, that got stuck around the mouth as you tried to swallow it. The only one who did not become infected, lucky for all of us, was mum. She kept everything going and she told me later that she had been up at night drinking liquor and eating rye bread to cope. She never drank anything strong otherwise. She coped with everything amazingly.' Grandma looked thoughtful before she continued. 'After the war, everything was better.'
Grandma certainly had a knack for telling startling information as though it was just something casual she was saying. 'You definitely have a way of breaking news, you know,' said Disa amused.
'News,' said Grandma with a quizzical look and a wrinkle on the nose.
'Hundred-year-old information can hardly be counted as news, can it?' continued Grandma with a hint of bluntness.
Disa laughed. 'For me it was news in a way, but maybe history lesson is more appropriate.'
'Then when I was 13, I was taught to milk the cows and was able to help mum with that. My Grandma and Grandpa, the ones that you have a photo of, there in your cabinet in the place of honour,' Grandma continued. 'They went to the poor house every day to get a meal. Their son David took over the Ekhagen farm and built a small house for our parents to live in, but they didn't have much food. There was no pension system at that time. My Grandpa made potato baskets of juniper roots, which he heated in boiling water. He then sold the baskets and earned some extra money...' Grandma fell silent. 'That's what life was like back in the old days!' she concluded, took a deep breath and sighed heavily. 'Can't we talk about something more fun now?' It was clear she thought she had spoken enough about the past.
How lucky that Disa had not given in, and got Grandma to keep talking about what it was like back in the day, otherwise she would have missed this whole story. Grandma was old. Really old. Disa didn't know how long she would still have her around, so it was really time to get this story told. Disa took a sip of fruit soda. Grandma had filled the glass up without her noticing. She clearly was a good hostess, better than Disa herself was.
'Have you read the newspaper today?' asked Grandma, who brightened up and got new energy now that she was talking about her favourite subject: today's events.
'No, I haven't had the time,' replied Disa and thought of the pile of newspapers and the entire week's harvest of letters, laying on the desk at home that she hadn't managed to read yet. She and Michael gave up trying keep up on week nights, keeping a pile of everything that came during the week, only opening them on Saturdays. They should really cancel the newspaper. They were never able to read it anyway. Disa absently picked a grape and ate it. It was easy when it was right in front of her on the table and looked so good.
The two of them talked about world events for a short while. Then Disa let off some steam about the current difficult period with school induction. Disa sighed with a feeling of helplessness. She would wait for the parent meeting on Tuesday, before she contacted the teacher again and possibly even the headmaster. It was nice to talk about her concerns. Grandma was a good listener. A good speaker too for that matter.
'It's as though our daily puzzle is hard to put together. Sometimes it feels like the world is spinning around faster and even though we're running as hard as we can, we just cannot keep up,' said Disa resigned.
'The earth keeps spinning. I remember that my father never believed in 'new-fangled ideas,' as he put it. He did not believe that the earth spun any more than that it was round,' said Grandma. 'As recently as the 1970s, he said: "No one can come and fool me into thinking that the earth is round, I can see that it is flat."'
Disa nodded and smiled. She'd heard about that statement before. He believed more in his own eyes than in science.
'You are clever, to be so committed to the school. It was different in my day. I would never even have thought of the idea of arguing,' Grandma said with admiration in her voice.
'But what if something was wrong, if the child felt unwell,' said Disa still slightly resigned.
'It was never discussed. It was what it was. You wouldn't say anything about it, no, it was not a subject to bring up. You had respect for the authorities,' said Grandma and cut a big piece of cheese for her cracker.
Disa had heard about many older folks who didn't have much appetite, but not Grandma. She was still 'round and jolly'.
'I think you young folks have a more stressful time today than we had in our time,' continued Grandma. 'I was a housewife and grandfather worked. Sure it was hard work, it was. But we all concentrated on doing one thing at a time. I know you young folks don't want it that way today. Mums want to be able to work and fathers want to be able to be at home with their children. But you have so much to do. Working and caring for children and travel abroad and goodness knows what else you have to do on top of it.'
Disa recognised herself in this description.
'Young and young, by the way,' said Disa laughing. 'Thanks, but I'm actually forty-three years old, I'm not that young anymore. 'She took the last of the crackers with brie cheese and poured the last of the fruit soda.
'Just think, how the years go by,' said Grandma. 'My oldest grandchildren are already fifty!'
'Are they already fifty,' said Disa amused. If you are over a hundred, it probably felt that way. The first fifty years went pretty slow and the last fifty years just rushed past. If she looked back at her own last ten years, she felt they were just that: the past ten years of her life. The ten years when you were between five and fifteen included all of your childhood. In her own mind she wondered if she would be as lucid and sharp-minded as Grandma was when she got to be that old. If she managed that far at all. With the stressed life she lived now, it felt like she wasn't going to make it as long as Grandma. But she tried to use the time she had as best as she could. 'I've been here far longer than I planned, but it has been so nice with you. It's so quiet and peaceful and cosy here, it feels like you can stay forever.' Disa stood up to go. She took one last grape, pushed the chair in and put the glass and plate in the sink. She felt suddenly how full she was, stuffed with all the good food Grandma had filled her with.

'Sometimes it gets a bit too quiet,' replied Grandma. 'Not a lot happens during the day. It is good that I have my birds in the garden, have you seen all the waxwings?' She pointed out towards the back and took a few tentative steps into the living room. Inside there was a handmade round rug. Grandma had done a lot of craftwork in her time. Clothes were repaired and resewn. Mittens, socks and scarves with gaping holes were darned. When the garment was so old it was about to fall apart, she cut it into strips and crocheted harmoniously composed rugs, which consisted of loops in light blue, purple, and beige. And Grandma could say that the light blue came from an old summer dress which she was very fond of and which she still liked the colour of. The purple was from one of Grandpa's old shirts and the beige from a summer coat. Everything was used before, nothing went to waste.
Disa followed her into the living room and cast an eye on all the pictures set in frames sitting on the sideboard. There were wedding pictures and portraits of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and even great-great-grandchildren. Another picture of Grandma's other daughter showed members of as many as five generations. Grandma was the oldest generation on both pictures. But on a third monochrome picture, there were four generations lined up with a much younger Grandma where she was the second youngest and had her eldest daughter in her arms. Grandma had been beautiful in her youth. It was hard to recognise that it was her.
Grandma pulled away the white lace curtain so that Disa could see better. In the small garden, there were almost twenty birds, thronged around the feeding box. For Disa it felt wonderfully tranquil with the loud ticking of the pendulum clock and the muffled chirping outside the window. But how long would it feel peaceful, and not turn into tedium? The best would probably be something in between. Could time not be spread more evenly over life? Grandma had time galore and Disa didn't have enough to get by.
'You'll see that the pansies have taken off and are growing there between the slabs. They should be left alone,' said Grandma.
'I'll take care of the dishes before I go?' asked Disa.
'No, don't. I have the whole evening to sort out those cups and dishes. Then I'll have something to do anyway, before I turn on the TV,' said Grandma a bit down and Disa saw sadness cross her face. She felt sad to see Grandma so bored.
Disa walked the few steps to the hat rack in the hall, took her purse from the hook on the hat rack and hung it over her shoulder.
'Imagine that you wanted to come and visit an old lady, that you like old folks that much,' said Grandma with a chuckle.
Disa laughed and gave Grandma a farewell hug. The pendulum clock drew a hoarse, slightly rattling breath and issued a resonant half-hour chime, again echoing through the apartment before slowly fading.
'Be well,' said Disa before she closed the door behind her and hurried away. Outside Grandma's door the time had ticked away as usual, at its regular earthly pace.

The cow Thea with a big old-fashioned T on her forehead

They were sitting with coffee and cookies when Disa asked whether Grandma had any old photos to show them. After some coaxing and assurances from Michael that they really did want to see the old photos, Grandma hobbled to the living room with them to take the worn photo albums out from the welsh dresser. Atop the beautifully curved dresser lay a crocheted table runner with several framed photos of all of Grandma's descendants on it. Both the dresser and the dinner table were made of lacquered mahogany, as was the chiffonier in the kitchen. Probably a set. Grandma put the albums on the dinner table, which had a crocheted table cloth just like the dresser.

'Well, sit down,' Grandma said and flopped into a chair so she sat with her back to the wall and the grandfather clock.
Michael and Disa sat down on the other side of the table. Grandma opened one of the albums and a handful of various sized loose photographs fell out from a yellowed and worn envelope.
'This photo is old all right, it was taken before I was born,' she said about the first photo, which was slightly larger than the others with thicker paper. The black and white photo showed a small square wooden house in the background and a handful of finely dressed people in front. 'That's my mother and father, and those are my older siblings,' she said and pointed at their faces on the card. 'And a few others as well. You can see how they're all dressed up in their best. I don't know what it was they were celebrating, but it must have been something extra to for all of them to be lined up like that in such nice clothes.' She barely looked at the picture herself, but still seemed to know exactly what it looked like.
'I think the photo was taken by a relative of my mother who had one of those old box cameras that only worked in daylight. We didn't have a camera of our own at the time, we only got that later.
'That small house is where they lived when they first moved to Lövbacken, but then when my father built the bigger house, the old one was used as a woodshed,' she said and tapped her index finger at the building that looked no larger than a shack. She pointed at others in the photo. 'That is my sister May. She was always kind to me and took care of me. Gösta was a real ladies man and Sixten was good at helping out around the farm.' Grandma handed the photo over to Disa, who felt she now had a piece of precious history in her hands. 'They're all dead now,' Grandma said.
Disa looked at the photo and then passed it on to Michael.

Grandma held up a sepia coloured photo in a different size from the first one and pointed to their faces as she described them.  'This is my grandmother and grandfather on my mom's side and all their six adult children with my grandfather's brother.' She handed the photograph to Disa. It had faded and was worn from being handled over the years, but the faces were still easy to make out. The grandparents and granduncle sat at a table where she could see coffee cups, a cream jug, and a sugar bowl made of some kind of tin-looking material, and a plate filled to the brim with cakes. Behind them, all the adult children stood lined up. All of them dressed in their best. This could easily have been the first photograph any of them had ever been in.
'There's mother,' she said pointing to one of the faces. 'I don't really know when the photo was taken, but it's probably quite old as well. Both my grandmother and grandfather died in 1926, so it must be from before that,' Grandma said. 'Well, of course,' she laughed her chuckling laugh at herself. 'Here's one of us kids sitting on the pile of stone outside the house, and look, there I am.' Grandma read out the names of her siblings, which were written on the back of the photograph along with the line: "Picture taken at Lövbacken year 1916-1917." I would have been four or five years old then. And the next photo is of the horses.' Grandma turned the photo over and read "mother and daughter, Vera and Blenda. Horses at Lövbacken year 1918." She gave both the cards to Disa, who passed on the one she was holding to Michael. New fingerprints added to the old ones. It was a beautiful black and white photo of the horses in a snowy forested landscape.
'We had two horses, Vera and Blenda, they were mother and daughter. We had many animals. Cows, pigs, hens, and geese. And my favourite cow was called Thea. Sometimes my father could be mean. I remember once getting a dressing-down and a half. People used to buy milk from him and he had a milk diary to keep track of it. He had been sitting there doodling with his ink pen, but blamed me for doing it. I ran to Thea for comfort. She was my favourite cow. She had a white mark on her forehead, which looked just like a big old-fashioned T and that's why she was called Thea. The cow lay her head down with the muzzle on the floor and I put my arms around her neck and wept. And the tears flowed from Thea as well. We cried together.' Grandma's eyes glittered. Over ninety years later, she was still moved by the memory.
Disa had heard the story several times before so was familiar with it. Grandma told it the same way as the first time she'd heard it. It felt homely and relaxed. Disa got the feeling this must've be how it was sitting around a campfire in the old day telling stories. They were told over and over to be passed on to new generations. It felt pleasant, comfortable somehow. Hearing a story you'd already heard before. No unexpected surprises.
'Here's a school photo of me when I went to school in 1921. And the next photo is from 1933. It's from Lövbacken. You didn't take pictures often back then,' Grandma said. The school photo had stiffer material and almost all the people in it had a black ink cross drawn above their head. How sad it must feel to have everyone around you die away until you're the only one left, Disa thought. The other picture of Lövbacken showed their house in the background with Grandma, some of her siblings and their mother standing next to the horses in the foreground. A summer photo this time, taken twelve years later.
Grandma described how the same year, 1921, was the year her mother and father had gone to vote for the first time in their lives and that her mother wasn't considered a legal person in control of her own rights until the age of forty. She put the photos back into the old worn envelope. 'There, you take them, if you want,' she said and handed the envelope to Disa.
Disa thanked her, very pleased to get them. Grandma opened the photo album to its first page.
'In the thirties we took more photographs,' she said.
The pages held black and white photos from a time long gone by, the life on the farm, when it was time to plough and take in the harvest with the help of the horses, Grandma feeding the hens, a few of the children on skis, and someone's confirmation ceremony.

Grandma kept turning the pages of the photo album. 'Here's one I took of myself and Margareta.' She showed a photo of a young girl holding a six-month old baby meant to be Disa's aunt in her lap. 'I had one of those pinhole cameras and had darkened the room as you can see.' Grandma pointed at something that looked like a sheet put up behind the grey and white chequered curtains. 'It needed to be quite dark in the room for the photograph to come out well. Taking photos was quite the enterprise in those days. I remember that it was cold in the house and there was a cold draft around our feet. I had made a fire in the stove in the morning, but the fire was going low and it was time to add more wood to it. But I wanted to get the photo while Margareta was still in a good mood. I didn't want to have a photograph of a crying baby.
'How serious I look, do you see? In those days you were supposed to look like that when you had your picture taken. It was serious, it didn't happen often in life and it wasn't the time to horse around. But these days it's more of a fun thing, full of laughter, right? Look how I dressed up myself and little Margareta. I even remember the smell of the room we were in, it smelled so fresh and clean. Imagine how well you can remember a smell so many years later,' she said in wonder. 'If that isn't strange, I don't know what is.'
The grandfather clock wheezed like it was taking a breath and range loudly once, the noise echoing around the room. Disa eyed the photo closely, it was no more than six by eight centimetres big. Grandma sat in a high-backed chair, dressed nicely in a white blouse and black skirt with a beautiful hairdo typical of the time the photo was taken. In her lap she had Disa's aunt, who wore a dress, wool pantyhose and fine dress shoes. She also noticed the old, oversized water radiator under the window and that the chair the two were sitting on had dark cloth with light flowers on vines in the foreground. The floor was rough worn wood planks and the walls were in a uniform bright colour. A picture can say more than a thousand words if only you take the time to study it closely, Disa thought.
It was hard to imagine Grandma had been a young slender girl once, with her own dreams of the future like everyone else. And here she was sitting next to Disa with the answer to how her life had turned out. Had it been what she imagined it would be? Probably. Children and a family. Full stop. Nowadays there was so much more you needed to succeed with. Children and family. Studies. Career. Friends. Hobbies. The hobbies of your children. Personal development. Achieving happiness. Full stop.
'There was only the one photo, as you can see, from all that effort,' Grandma said.
'But a very good one. You were beautiful in it,' Disa said.
'Well, maybe I was, but I didn't feel I was at the time of course,' she chuckled warmly.
'It's a lucky thing you took the photo when you did, all those years ago. It was worth all the effort it took, so that we could see it now. Imagine that you immortalized that moment. Maybe we could scan it so we have copy.'
'You can have it,' she replied and started working the photo out from its place in the album.
'No, wait, you aren't going to ruin the album are you?' Disa said in surprise and tried to stop her. But the photo was already out and handed to Disa.
'Here you go,' Grandma said smiling.
Disa accepted the photo astonished. 'It's wonderful. I'm glad to have it, but you don't have to spoil your album for it.'
'What does it matter, I'm dead soon anyways,' she said just matter of fact. 'And until then I have the photos in my memory anyways. I know these photos inside out. I have looked at them so many times.'
In the past, photos were only taken on a few special occasions in life. Disa thought of the thousands of photos she herself had, but that she rarely ever revisited. Maybe she would get around to it when she was retired, she thought, maybe then she would have the time for it. And then they would be there waiting for her, in their thousands.
'If there are any more photos you want we can take them out as well,' grandma said.
This time Disa let her do as she pleased getting a handful of photos. The glue that held them in place was decades old and they came loose easily. She wrote what they showed on their backs.
'Then it became a bit easier to take photographs when we got a new camera. You just pushed a button and it was done, we took more of them at that point.'
'On that note, I would like to immortalise this moment,' Disa said and took out her phone from her front pocket. She took a picture of everyone at the table and one of Grandma, so she could have a look.
'Oh, look, I made it onto the picture,' she chuckled. 'But what use is a picture of an old lady. What will you ever do with that, hmm? Taking pictures of an old lady. And to imagine it went so fast to develop it, that you can see the photo right there on the camera. There's no need to develop the film then?' grandma said and looked up with slight surprise in her eyes.
'No, there is no film roll here, there wouldn't be any space, see?' Disa said and showed her how thin the phone was. 'The photo is saved directly in here,' she said and tapped her index finger against the display.
'The things they come up with.' She said turning to Michael. 'Isn't it amazing? The things they come up with.'
'So true,' Michael agreed.
'Have you seen what an old lady there is in there,' she said and pointed with her aging finger at the phone while laughing hoarsely as she did.
'I saw. But you look young for your age, not a day over a hundred,' Michael said and looked amused.
'You think so, hmm?' Grandma said and turned to Disa. 'What a charmer you've got there.'
'Yes, I guess he is,' Disa said and smiled affectionately at Michael. She put the phone back into her pocket.
Grandma kept leafing through the album, showing pictures from her youth. Small black and white photos of everything from visits to the beach to everyday life, with a beautifully handwritten cursive note in ink under each picture. One photo showed Grandma and Grandpa lying in each other's arms on a blanket on the beach. Love existed even in the black and white era.
'Maybe we should get going,' Disa said and started to rise.
She placed the photos taken out for her with the others in the envelope. Michael stood up. Grandma quickly leafed through the last pages in the album, closed it and placed it back on top of the pile of albums.
'And soon it will be Easter too,' Grandma said.
The grandfather clock drew its hoarse breath and sounded two loud clanging rings.
'There's many days until Easter,' Grandma said a bit despondently, as if she was talking to herself. 'Many days to get through without knowing what to do with them. But I'm sure it will turn out alright. At least I have my newspaper and the TV, and the birds of course.' Grandma looked out towards the park forest through the living room window and at her currently deserted bird box. No birds were visible. 'The waxwings don't come until dinnertime, they have their special feeding times,' Grandma said.

Disa placed the photo, which was slightly larger than the others, at the bottom of the pile. At its top now lay the photo of grandma and Margareta, which Grandma had described so closely. Disa was glad she had received such a detailed description of it, otherwise she would probably have passed it over as just another black and white photo out of many. Now she knew that the moment which had been immortalised eighty years ago had come into being through Grandma darkening the room with a sheet over the window. She had had to, in order to at all be able to take a picture with the old camera. Disa even knew how it had smelled. Clean and fresh, and newly washed. Grandma had sat there in the drafty house with a six-month old baby, not knowing anything about the future. And a moment later life had passed her by. Disa returned the photos to the envelope.

You can't live forever, even if Grandma had given it a pretty good try

Disa went out to the kitchen. The obituary with grandma's name was fastened on the refrigerator door. She remembered the last time she talked with Grandma on the phone. Grandma had sounded just like she always did then. Or had she? Maybe her voice had sounded more tired than usual. And hadn't she been more abrupt than she used to? Disa had heard the doorbell at grandma's place ring in the background.
'Hold on a moment, they're here with my food now,' Grandma had said and put the Bakelite phone down.
The old phone had crackled loudly, but Disa still managed to make out the conversation between the homecare service person and grandma.
'I want two potatoes, you know that, I have told you people several times already, have you forgotten? I don't recognise you, are you new? What's your name then? Let's see if I have time to get to know you before you are gone again.'
The poor carers seemed used to the old folk's crankiness and answered nicely to grandma's accusatory questions. Disa felt like she was eavesdropping on something she shouldn't hear, but this was a side of Grandma she'd never noticed before.
Grandma took her time, Disa wondered a moment whether she might have forgotten Disa was waiting patiently on the phone. It sounded as if Grandma was bustling about in the kitchen, but finally she picked up the phone again with another loud crackle.
'Hello? Are you still there? I had to put away the groceries and food they brought me, you see. Can't have it standing around going bad. That's what took time. That they never learn that I want two potatoes, is that such a hard thing to remember? It can't be that hard to remember, can it? I can't understand. They are so young as well, they should be able to remember. To think they always forget, I've told them several times already. No, now I can't stay on the line any longer, the food is standing here on the table getting cold. But have a good time and take care,' Grandma finished with a warm and compassionate voice in the middle of all the contrition, and it sounded like she meant it.
A loud thud sounded as Grandma hung the receiver down on the hook. She had probably dropped it a bit too hard in her eagerness to sit down to eat. She had kept her appetite to the end, Disa thought. It had been the last time they spoke. Grandma had probably been more intolerant than usual, but Disa could understand her frustration. Staff being switched at the rate they were must be tough for these old folks. It was hard for them to always be met by new faces whose name they didn't have the time to learn before another replacement came. So they always had to let in different strangers into their private sphere.
It was expected, of course, you can't live forever, even if Grandma had given it a pretty good try. But still, it felt sad when it happened. She knew Grandma had felt satisfied with her long life and also that she hadn't had a very eventful time in her last years, it was her time to go Disa mused. She felt grateful that she would stay in their memories and hearts for a while longer.
A few weeks later Disa had been to Grandma's apartment to collect a few things. It didn't feel at all as pleasant and cared for now that her grandma wasn't there. Before, it always felt like the apartment was bright and airy, full of Grandma's embracing warmth, but now it felt glum and slightly worn. Disa had never thought of that before. That some furniture and paintings had already been removed and left dirty stains behind likely heightened this impression. In the end, Disa had only taken a few things. She also considered taking the grey Bakelite phone that stood on the windowsill in the kitchen and had been Grandma's for so long. But it had turned out to have broken, when you lifted the receiver you could no longer hear a signal. The telephone had gone down together with Grandma. Disa put her index finger in the hole for zero on the dialling pad and pulled it around to the stopper. She repeated the process several times with different numbers and noticed that it was Grandma's phone number she was absently dialling.
The rotary dial got caught slightly each time at the same place. It must have been used to dial thousands of phone numbers over the years it had been around, but never grandma's own number. When she dialled the last digit in grandma's phone number she slowly raised the receiver and put it hesitantly against her ear. She half expected to hear Grandma's raspy voice and lovely chuckle.
'Can you imagine. Now I'm finally here with Grandpa again. I'll tell him you sent your love. Can you imagine!' But the receiver was silent, there wasn't even any crackle from it. It was stone dead.
In the bathroom, there had been a luxury towel in unopened gift wrapping on a shelf. Maybe Grandma had received it as a present at her hundredth birthday. On the mounted towel stand hung a washed out towel. She suspected that Grandma hadn't been able to imagine using the new one, she would have thought it was too fine for everyday use. She could imagine how their conversation would have sounded.
'Oh, the fine one. No, I can't bring myself to use it.'
'But Grandma, you're a hundred and six years old, what are you saving it for?'
'I suppose you're right about that. Well, can you imagine, that I'm so old. But we'll see. We'll see if I can make myself use it.'
She came to think of Grandpa's car, which they had been so careful with. They had put slipcovers on the car seats to protect them. When the old Saab finally gave up after twenty-five years, it had been junked with the slipcovers still attached and the seats still as good as new underneath.
As a poem for the obituary Disa had suggested the verse in grandma's poetry book written by her mother. She took the book gingerly from on top of the microwave, turned to the first page and read the ornate beautiful cursive handwriting in black ink. The last line "Contemplate and reflect" which stood as part of the poem felt more like request or suggestion than as part of the poem, so they had left it out.
If Grandma had been able to see the obituary, she would probably have filled in the last sentence in the stanza herself. She had known the poem by heart and probably saw the last line as part of it as well.

She thought back to the last time visited Grandma.
Grandma had opened the door and stood waiting for them as they took the last steps to it. She had probably been standing waiting for them at the kitchen window for a while and spotted them from behind the crocheted curtains as they approached.
'Well, there you are, how nice of you all to come. To think that you want to come visit an old lady like me,' she chuckled. Disa handed over the flowers. 'Ooh, what pretty lilies. And pink, which I love,' Grandma said holding them out take a close look. Then she stuck her whole nose into the bouquet and breathed in its scent with a long, loud breath. 'Oh, they smell lovely. Thank you so much,' she said and bowed. 'Thank you, thank you.'
Disa embraced her Grandmother. 'It's nice to see you,' she said. Then, she took a hug from Michael as well.
'To think that people hug so much these days,' Grandma said. 'We didn't great each other like that in the old days, not even people very close to you. You only shook hands, that was the closest you'd get. I barely even think I ever got a hug from my own mother, or else I've just forgotten. But I don't think people had time for that then, there was always so much to do. But I've started to like it! Imagine that, getting a hug from a handsome man, I won't say no to that,' Grandma said and peered from under her wrinkled brow at Michael. Her entire mouth formed a smile, revealing the even upper row of her dentures. Michael was nonplussed and just smiled back at her.
'Come in, come in,' she said.
They took the few steps to the kitchen where Grandma had set the table. A plate brimming with buns stood on the counter with coffee cups, glasses, and dessert plates. The table had a bread basket with hotdog buns, mustard, and ketchup, a trivet, plates, and glasses.

Grandma placed the bouquet on the kitchen counter. 'As you're such a big and strong guy, can you move this chair over to the table,' she said to Michael pointing to an extra chair standing by the chiffonier in the kitchen. Michael lifted the chair and placed it in the gap between two others at the table.
'I hope you're hungry, I've already got lunch ready,' she said and picked up a steaming pot from the stove with both her hands and placed it on the trivet. They had just eaten breakfast, but a little lunch would still go down. They were at Grandma's place and Disa knew she would make sure to fatten them up. She couldn't help finding it pleasant to not think about weight and sugar intake for one day.
'I thought we'd have hotdogs,' Grandma continued. 'It's just so tasty, isn't it?' I'd never once had it until I visited one of my grandchildren the other week, Margareta's children,' Grandma said, referring to the children of her oldest daughter, Disa's cousins. 'And it was so fantastically tasty, so good I asked the homecare service to buy some for us as well. I'll get out milk and lemonade and you can choose for yourself what you want to drink. Go ahead and start,' she encouraged. 'Margareta's children just ate with their hands, but I felt that was too much of a bother, so I'll use a knife and fork. How about you?' she asked.
'We'll eat without, that's how we usually do it,' Disa said.
'Reeealy, is that how you usually do it? Well, go ahead then!'
Grandma took out a knife and fork for herself from the cutlery drawer and sat down at the table on the same chair she had been using all these years. Disa prepared a hotdog for herself and passed the fork on to Michael who took one and then passed it on to Grandma, she heaved a sausage out and placed it in her hotdog bun, set it down on her plate and drove her fork through it. She held the hotdog down firmly and started cutting with her knife. The others at the table ate with their hands.
'Disa has told me you lived through two world wars as well as the Spanish flu,' Michael said in an impressed voice as he took a bite.
'I'm one-hundred and six years old, you know, that means I've been alive for over a hundred years,' Grandma said with natural logic. 'That gives time for a lot of things,' she said chuckling.
A loud and shrill ring signal sounded through the room. Grandma jumped up clutching her chest. The sound came from the grey Bakelite phone on the windowsill next to the table. Grandma struggled to stand, slowly. Several signals had time to go off. The person calling was probably used to Grandma taking a some time to reach the phone. She finally lifted the clunky phone and the harsh sound echoed out into the room and faded.
'Two, zero...' Grandma started, but realised that it was the five-digit number she was reading out and stopped. She corrected herself. 'I mean, five, four, zero... two, zero...' she worked her way through the full eight-digit number.
Disa couldn't help smiling. Her grandma could be such a dear.
'Yes, hi Margareta, I can't really talk right now. I have visitors, you see,' she said and lit up as she looked over at Disa. 'Yes, Disa is here with her family. Yes, can you imagine. They've come all the way up here to visit an old lady like me,' she said, letting go another of her familiar and warm chuckles. 'I'll call you back later. Yes, I'll tell them you said hi. Bye now. Yes, bye.' She placed the Bakelite phone back on the hook. 'Margareta says hi. I told her I couldn't talk right now since you folks are here. I'll call her back later,' she informed without needing. After all, they'd heard the entire conversation and already picked up on what had been said.

After lunch they had coffee and cakes. Disa took the opportunity to grab a cake for herself. Something sweet went perfectly with the coffee after the food. The hotdogs had really tasted good. Everything always tasted great at Grandma's. Was it down to the homey kitchen or was it Grandma's positive disposition spreading even to their taste buds. Grandma took a lump of sugar and placed it between her lips and slurped coffee through it.

Dead for longer than they had been alive

Disa woke early. When she went past the living room window she saw that the ground outside was covered in snow. The woods behind the house were transformed into a winter landscape and spruce and fir stood tall with snow-powdered tops, it almost looked as if they had snow in their hair.
Her black clothes lay ready and the beautiful bouquet with pink lilies and white baby's-breath stood ready in Grandma's vase. The wreath she and her siblings had prepared together was already at the church.
Outside the sky was clear blue without a single cloud and the sun was shining brightly. It looked warm and pleasant, but was probably icy cold. Temperatures fell below freezing overnight and she could see car windows were covered in ice. She spotted a pair of birds landing on the bare hedge outside, holding on to the branches with their claws. Then a few more came, one by one and sat down next to the first pair. They were a bit bigger than the small birds that usually visited their garden. The tufts on the top of their heads looked like the birds she had seen at Grandma's apartment - waxwings. Suddenly they all flew away as if heeding some unheard signal.

She took the car and the highway brought her all the way to the church. She thought of her grandma during the drive - she'd always had been so loving and took everyone into her warm embrace, even if they had only just met. This weekend Disa had visited the municipalities project "Old and young united." She knew Grandma had wanted to meet the young girl, and Disa had gone to tell her why Grandma wouldn't be showing up. The room was the same as before, as were the slips of paper on the tables. She recognised several of the old folks sitting around the table by the window, which seemed to be their favourite. Disa saw the girl sitting by her usual table for social issues. She went up to her and asked if she could sit down. They shook hands and introduced themselves and she found out that the girl's name was Victoria. Disa told her that her Grandma had died and that's why she wouldn't be coming. Victoria was saddened and she told Disa that she would miss her even if they had only known each other for a short while. Disa believed her. That was exactly how Grandma was, she swept everything and everyone in the world into her warm embrace. It was a loss to the world and to humanity that Grandma was no more. Disa noted that the scars from razor blades on Victoria's arm had faded. She wasn't doing anything to hide them and there seemed to have been no new ones since the last time they met. Disa noticed an old man with a walking stick coming towards their table.
'May I sit down here,' the man said.
'Sure,' Victoria answered, using the English word.
'Huh?' the old man said at the same time as he raised his bushy eyebrows.
'Sure, of course,' Victoria clarified.
'Huh?' the man said and fiddled with his hearing aid.
'Yes, that's fine,' Victoria said in a clear voice and pointed at the chair and all three of them laughed.
'I'm bad of hearing, but if you speak clearly it's usually fine, and there's nothing wrong with what's in here,' the old man said and tapped his head. 'When the body runs out of strength the brain has to make up for it.' He gave a rumbling, warm and powerful laughter, sat down slowly, fiddled with his hearing aid again and turned to Victoria. 'What's your opinion of politicians? Do they deserve their high salaries you think?'
'I'll leave you two to talk,' Disa said and stood up and pushed her chair in.
'Thanks for coming and telling me about your grandma,' Victoria said. 'Maybe we'll see each other some other time.'
Disa started walking away. She agreed with Grandma, the girl really was precious, and just now Grandma's choice of word - precious - which Disa had first found old fashioned, felt truly fitting.
She didn't head straight out but instead snuck past the table by the window full of that older crowd. She was curious what they were talking about this time. Had they made their way to questions of spirituality yet, she wondered smiling to herself. It turned out they still hadn't got that far. This time the discussion revolved around a dance evening the senior citizens' association had arranged last night and there was much laughter when they talked about the tough job the few men who came had had to swing the many ladies around the dance floor. The women had competed for attention and nabbed the men from one another.
One of the old folks sat folding the piece of paper with the words "religion and spirituality" on it. 'Yes, these are good times,' he said. 'I've never been this sought after before, ever. It's darned well the best time of my life. Let's drink to that.'
He laughed and raised his coffee cup and was met with smiles from all around. Everyone grabbed their cups and raised them in a toast. 'It would have been nice with some coffee karsk. But I guess we'll have to do with just coffee here. We're really just missing the karsk,' he said and laughed heartily at his own joke. 'Had I gotten my karsk as well, life couldn't get much better.' He took a sip, closed his eyes and revelled in the taste of the freshly brewed coffee. Then he put the cup down, took the paper plane he had folded from the sign, and threw it at one of the ladies at the table, winking at her.

She arrived at the church and parked her car. She met up with her siblings and parents outside the church and they went inside together. Their steps echoed on the stones as they walked down the aisle of the architecturally building. They sat down close to the front in the same pew. The coffin was there in front covered in wreaths and flowers. It was hard to understand that Grandma actually lay within it. It felt slightly bizarre, and still quite beautiful. The church building breathed calm which spread to everyone there. She took an unobtrusive peek around to see her uncles, aunts, and cousins. Nodded slightly in greeting to them, but she also didn't recognise many others. Some were probably Disa's own distant relatives.
The church bells rang solemnly and loudly. Disa thought of Grandma's pendulum clock that had echoed in her living room all these years. A peaceful silence fell before the organ began with bellowed tones leading into a psalm as everyone started singing. The priest then began the eulogy with anecdotes about Grandma, which unfortunately didn't reach all the way out to the audience very well.
All of Grandma's relatives filed past the coffin to make their final farewells. When it was Disa's turn, she placed the bouquet of pink lilies and small white flowers along with the others on the coffin. The thought passed through her mind that this time at least she had gotten a hold of pink lilies and she almost heard Grandma's chuckling voice add: 'which I love.' Disa's eyes filled with tears and she felt a lump forming in her throat. She would never get to meet her Grandma again. Bye Grandma, she thought, I hope you have it good now, with Grandpa. Then she went back to sit in the pew again.
There was something beautiful about the long winding line of people on their way to say a last personal farewell and give Grandma a few last heartfelt words on her way. Some mumbled them audibly, others more pensively contemplative. The church echoed from all the heels striking the floor. Just imagine if you had been able to see this Grandma. How much you meant to so many people.
Where are you now? Physically you are in the coffin. But is your consciousness locked in there as well? An electric light blinked to life and a cool breeze blew past, making the gilded candlesticks with their live candles flicker. The door to the church had opened.
The funeral ceremony came to a close and an evocative silence fell over the proceedings for a few seconds. They hear birds chirping outside the church walls. Everyone rose and slowly drifted out along the small aisle. When Disa came out, she was a bit surprised by the snow still covering the ground. The birdsong had brought back the spring feeling she'd gotten from the sunny warmth of the weekend. Seems the birds wouldn't let themselves be bothered by a bit of snow and cold. Their annual mating ceremonies went ahead regardless. The sun shone from a clear blue sky and the white snow on the cemetery was blinding and she had to turn her eyes away and squint. Disa, her siblings, and parents joined the procession along the snow-covered path through the cemetery, which also lead them past a runestone. The stone had the runes, by now familiar to Disa, and a carved cross. The heathen and Christian conjoined. They turned off towards the prepared lot for Grandma's grave, her last resting place next to Grandpa.

They made new tracks in the wet snow up to the grave site. Grandpa's relatively new gravestone where Grandma's name was now to be engraved, too, waited for them. Grandma's closest relatives lay in the nearby grave. Grandma's grandfather's whole name was written out in gold and under it stood 'His wife Wilhelmina' in the same beautiful gold lettering. How nice. She pictured the black and white photograph of them Grandma had given her and that now stood in a display cabinet back home. Here they lay together in peace. Judging from the dates, they had been dead now for longer than they had been alive. Time on earth was only a short breath from the world's perspective. Furthest down on the gravestone Grandma's parent's names were engraved and at its top was a five pointed gold star.
A person she didn't recognise, maybe a few years older than Disa, came up to stand next to her. 'So this is where Gerda will lie,' she said.
'Yes, next to Grandpa,' Disa replied.
'So she was your grandmother? Gerda was my grandmother's sister. My grandmother's name was May. I'm Elisabet,' she said and extended a hand and they greeted.
They started talking about their grandmothers, who were both dead now and that they seemed to have had a close relation-ship. Both were kind and sympathetic people. Disa told of the hard life and harsh conditions on the farm where their grand-mothers grew up, where their common great-grandmother had raised eight children on a farmstead with no electricity or running water. Who had to draw water from a well to wash all their clothes and nappies in a wash boiler out on the yard. Who had cared for all her children while they were ill with the Spanish flu as the first world war raged. Who had written the beautiful verse in grandma's poetry book. Who had reached the age of majority first when she was forty. The one they both called great-grandma and who was their common ancestor. Elisabet described that great-grandma had nine children. One of them died just a month after being born. Which Disa had been unaware of.
And they had the same ancestor too, old great-grandpa, who had been so handy and had built all the buildings on the farm. Who never had believed that the world was round. Who as recently as the seventies had insisted that it was obvious to anyone who used their eyes that the world was flat. The same great-grandpa who Grandma had sometimes thought was mean and had run away from to the barn to cry with her favourite cow Thea.
Disa also told of their grandmothers' poor grandparents who had not even been able to afford to give their daughter a wedding present when she got married.
They compared ages and came to the conclusion that they had met once before in life. Disa had been at her Grandma's over a holiday and Elisabet had been visiting hers at the same time and followed along to Grandma's for a party. When they counted the years back they realised it had been over thirty years since then. Grandma stopped celebrating her birthdays soon after that, which in time became more than one hundred. 'May you live to a hundred years' had fit well for Grandma and she even beat that mark.
They didn't know each other at all, but had the same ancestors and the blood ties bonded them together somewhat, or maybe it was just the idea of it that did it.
'Have you considered that our great-grandma's mother is only given by her first name and then related to someone else in the possessive form?' Elisabet said and pointed to the gravestone.
Disa looked at her with raised eyebrows, then at the stone where the golden lettering read: 'His wife Wilhelmina,' and realised that she was right.
'I don't think I thought of it in that way,' Disa said.
'How would it feel to not be considered a person in your own right but just as an extension of someone else?' Elisabet said.
Disa and Elisabet started walking towards the beautiful 18th century building where coffee would be served. Disa's siblings and parents had already gone ahead.
They stepped into the worn old building where the tables had been set with white linen cloths and coffee cups and seven kinds of cakes. Candelabras with white candles stood lighting up the tables.
The two had been seated at different tables, so they went their separate ways. Disa sat next to her siblings and parents at the long tables and nearby sat an uncle, a cousin, and a several more distant relatives. Some telegrams were read out. The weather was discussed. It was a common topic of discussion at this time of year, when every day was a surprise. The same thing happened every year and everyone still seemed to be equally surprised by it. The weather was always a good topic of conversation, maybe especially at a solemn occasion like this to lighten the mood, when you didn't know each other very well, but still belonged together in some way.

In the car on the way home, Disa thought of the transience of life. Life hung by a brittle thread that could be cut at any moment. One generation was gone with Grandma's death and as for herself, she had been moved one peg closer to the inevitable end. She had met several relatives she hadn't even known she had, and probably wouldn't meet again. That was the way of funerals she supposed, a time when everyone joined together from different directions to say their final farewell.

Disa parked the car on the driveway. When she opened the front door, the pendulum clock loudly struck the half-hour. The sound echoed out into the house and only its hands were heard ticking time forward. Tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...