uncle kjell
Mar. 24th, 2006 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Just got a phone call from Dad. His sister Judy's husband Kjell is dead, under mysterious circumstances. Judy could not believe it, until she saw the body; she called my father first, because she had his number and knew he would not be at work. He called me first, in turn, because I have spent more time with that part of the family than my sisters.
Judy moved to Norway in 1973 or so and married Kjell not long afterwards. (Dad was the only of her siblings to come to Norway to attend the wedding. He loved it there.) They have three sons, Andreas, Aleksander (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ganga_), and Marcus. Andreas and Aleksander came to visit a couple of summers ago. I spent one Christmas with them, the year after high school. She, Kjell, and Marcus all live in Bergen, while Andreas is in Oslo and Aleksander in Trondheim. (Andreas is the one who sometimes drunk-Skypes me and subsequently is astonished and amused by the drunk transcripts I type up and post of the things he said.)
Uncle Kjell was a dryly funny fellow, sharply intelligent and dour but not unkind. He taught English for the Norwegian naval academy, sometimes at sea. He was an avid fisherman, and had a quiet fondness for bad old jokes: his pale blue eyes would twinkle and his mouth curve a little behind his blond beard, and he would say something truly dreadful, and you could not help but laugh.
I remember when we were small, at family reunions Uncle Kjell and my father would get into spirited arguments about the viability in the real world of a communist system. Kjell was convinced that a socialist model was the only legitimate government, and my father kept arguing about how human nature inevitably led to such a model's failure-- and these were controversial points then, it being the cold war. And they would drink, and talk all night, and we children would run into their legs, and they would refuse to be distracted-- but of course, they always parted friends.
I don't know what is going on, I don't know what will happen, and I don't know how everyone there is. All the contact info I have for my cousins is email, IM, LJ-- electronic stuff, which is great and instant and free if you're on, but if you're not, it's useless. So I am sitting here wondering what to do. I could only get time off from work if it were immediate family, and at any rate I could never get enough time to go to Norway, and I would only be useless if I were there, but I feel very useless sitting here.
Judy moved to Norway in 1973 or so and married Kjell not long afterwards. (Dad was the only of her siblings to come to Norway to attend the wedding. He loved it there.) They have three sons, Andreas, Aleksander (
ganga_), and Marcus. Andreas and Aleksander came to visit a couple of summers ago. I spent one Christmas with them, the year after high school. She, Kjell, and Marcus all live in Bergen, while Andreas is in Oslo and Aleksander in Trondheim. (Andreas is the one who sometimes drunk-Skypes me and subsequently is astonished and amused by the drunk transcripts I type up and post of the things he said.)Uncle Kjell was a dryly funny fellow, sharply intelligent and dour but not unkind. He taught English for the Norwegian naval academy, sometimes at sea. He was an avid fisherman, and had a quiet fondness for bad old jokes: his pale blue eyes would twinkle and his mouth curve a little behind his blond beard, and he would say something truly dreadful, and you could not help but laugh.
I remember when we were small, at family reunions Uncle Kjell and my father would get into spirited arguments about the viability in the real world of a communist system. Kjell was convinced that a socialist model was the only legitimate government, and my father kept arguing about how human nature inevitably led to such a model's failure-- and these were controversial points then, it being the cold war. And they would drink, and talk all night, and we children would run into their legs, and they would refuse to be distracted-- but of course, they always parted friends.
I don't know what is going on, I don't know what will happen, and I don't know how everyone there is. All the contact info I have for my cousins is email, IM, LJ-- electronic stuff, which is great and instant and free if you're on, but if you're not, it's useless. So I am sitting here wondering what to do. I could only get time off from work if it were immediate family, and at any rate I could never get enough time to go to Norway, and I would only be useless if I were there, but I feel very useless sitting here.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 11:47 pm (UTC)You did do something - a very nice tribute to him here on your LJ. Now a few more people know what a great guy he was.