Christmas is a time of reflection of things in the past. While I am still preparing photos from both Portugal and the Faroe Islands, I went back a few years in time to a journey I undertook a couple of cold February days in Sweden to visit my parents grave and a cousin of mine. The photos are all taken with my iPhone but still describes the wintry Swedish landscape.
My first visit was to my older cousin Sture in Kinna, a few miles south of Borås and inland from Gothenburg. It would be the last we saw of each other. Unfortunately, he passed away not long thereafter. We had lunch at a little restaurant that looked as charming and old-fashioned Swedish as they could be. And I visited the church in Kinna.
Sture always called me every Christmas as long as I can remember. He was quite frail in her body the last time we met, but his mind was crystal sharp.
My parents lived there last years in Tranemo, not that far from where Sture was based, and I drove the snow-covered small roads between those villages. We moved there in 1966 and my mother passed away in 2002, so she spent quite a lot of her life in Tranemo. My father passed away earlier. But I was already at a “gymnasium” (A-level studies) and never settled down or got any close friends in the small village of Tranemo. My friends were either from the “gymnasie” schools or the university cities, where I would later study and teach.
My parents are buried in the churchyard at Tranemo Church, which has a very unusual hexagonal form. I don’t have a close connection to the parish, as I never really lived in Tranemo. But I had a very close connection to my parents as I was the only child and for that reason I like to come back and remember all the good times we shared as friends as much as parents and child.
