This has been a difficult couple of weeks. About ten days ago, I found out that my Great Aunt Inga in Sweden passed on at the age of 98. Last week, one of our cats, Naomi, who was about 15 years old, had a sudden seizure. There was nothing for the vet to do but to end her misery. From the way her eyes moved, the vet said that it was likely a brain tumor. Just four days before that, I had written an article here featuring her. A few days ago, we found out that a great uncle of my spouse through marriage also passed. I only met him once, but he is the last of that generation to go in both of our families. My Great Uncle Bengt in Sweden passed a few months ago at the age of 84, and my spouse’s Great Aunt Gerry passed earlier this year as well.

As anyone who has read this blog would probably know, I was very close to my grandmother, who passed about three years ago. Mormor was the fourth of five children, but Inga and Bengt were her closest siblings in age and in her heart. Inga was five years older than her, and Bengt was nine years younger. They both visited us in the United States several times.  I also got to see them in Sweden when my grandmother took me there at the age of 17 to celebrate my great-grandmother’s 95th birthday. To be honest, though, I knew them the best through my grandmother’s stories.

Mormor would talk about her childhood all of the time, and Inga and Bengt were frequent characters in her stories. Apparently, Inga more well behaved than Mormor was. Mormor would talk about how her father liked Inga better because Inga was always so good, but her mother liked Mormor better because she was mischievous like her. When Mormor was growing up in a little rural town in Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden, she attended a one room schoolhouse with one teacher. According to Mormor, their teacher always asked her why couldn’t she be more like Inga.

She had many, many more stories of her rivalry with her older sister, but you could tell how much she loved her. She would talk on the phone with Inga frequently, even when international long distance calls were very expensive. She would tell her sister about her problems and would seek her advice. Inga was one of the few people she would actually listen to.

My Great Uncle Bengt was Mormor’s baby brother. Up until the day she died, she called him Lilla (Little) Bengt with a big smile on her face. I always enjoyed when he would come to visit us. He was a lot of fun. One time he visited my grandmother when he was in his 60’s, while she was still living on the North Side of Chicago. He took the bus to the Museum of Science and Industry, which was about 15 miles away on the South Side of the city. Going back, he decided to take a stroll along Lake Michigan. It was a nice day, apparently. This stroll ended up with him walking all the way back to Mormor’s house!

There was something sure and solid about that generation. I always seemed to connect better with them than I did with my parent’s generation or even my own. They lived through a world with many changes. Whenever a new invention would come out, Mormor would talk about how she remembered when they invented toilet paper and Scotch tape. With the last of them gone in my family, it feels like a dependable rock or pillar has been shaken loose. A firm foundation has cracked, and the world has become more precarious and uncertain without them.