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My mother was emailing with my father’s siblings, and they’re not great correspondents, but finally the sister who lives in Norway wrote back. She is a phenomenal letter writer, when she writes them– used to send these long long typewritten ones to her mother, which Gram would then Xerox and send copies of to the other siblings, because they were so beautiful and evocative. I still remember some of her descriptions of things. So Mom forwarded us all her email in response to Mom sending her some photos of Dad’s new gravestone.
My aunt lost her husband a decade or so ago, so she commisserated with my mother about that horrible adjustment from wife to widow, and this paragraph was so great I had to copy and share it here.
It’s hard, and there’s no help for it. As I have the occasion to say more often than I like, life is clearly not for sissies. It reminds me of something one of [Son]’s violin teachers - her name was Susanna - said, a long time ago. She was from East Germany, although that fact is probably not significant. Anyway, she was selected at age fourteen to be sent away from her family to another city to study at a school for promising musicians. She told us, matter-of-factly, “I would practice and practice, many hours. Then I would cry a little. And then I continued practicing.” What else can we do but continue?
(Actually, I think she told that story as a way of saying that Norwegian children lacked self-discipline, but I’ve always felt that she said more about herself than she intended - about holding out, holding on.)
anyway here’s a photo of my dad and this sister of his, in Bergen in 2015 for the occasion of one of her sons’ weddings. [image: DSC_5923] https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/46274677482/in/album-72157703187375891/ (Your picture was not posted)
