Happy Birthday, Moster Boel!
I like Swedish birthdays. As far back as my memories go, every birthday morning I'd lie in bed awake, my stomach churning with excitement, as I listened to the clinking kitchen preparations going on for me. We were expected to pretend to be asleep when the family burst in to the bedroom, singing, "Ja, Ma Hon Leva Ut i Hundrade Ar," the Swedish birthday song, which means: "Yes, may she live for a hundred years"). The family came in, carrying a tray laden with candles, cake, flowers, breakfast, and gifts. What a great feeling-- everyone gathered around the bed, celebrating with messed up hair and pajamas on, kind of like Americans' Christmas morning.
We carry this tradition on faithfully. But other Swedish traditions we have dropped. For example, when adult Swedes have a decade-birthday, (30, 40, 50, 60, 70, etc.) they bake their own birthday cake and produce a table full of food and then wait, hoping/assuming friends and family will show up to eat. No invitations. No set time of day. There is no way the birthday person can know if he/she over- or under-prepared for the party, no way to know if anyone remembered the birthday, no way of knowing what time the food should be ready to serve. The Swedish notion of visitor hospitality, run amok!
I'm thinking about this because I called my aunt, Moster Boel, yesterday on her birthday. It was her 70th birthday-- my only living Swedish aunt. Back pains that keep her homebound now, and she was a bit of a hermit even before her back troubles, so she wasn't expecting anyone on her birthday. Her parents have passed on, and her only sibling-- my mom-- moved to America years and years ago.
Moster Boel had not baked a cake. Still, her neighbor, Harriet, came, bringing shrimp sandwiches, Napoleon bakelse (her favorite pastry) and a present-- a dark purple tunic dress, which my aunt loved.
My aunt and I laughed as we talked. She is always laughing. I said I can't believe she's 70. She said she can't believe I am a day over 9. (We lock in memories of people and they stick, don't we?) Our conversation turned from aging to dying, and we talked about Peter, our dear relative (her young cousin) who died last week, while napping on the couch, and we talked about Soren, her husband, my uncle, who died years ago.
She's not Mormon, or any religion, really, but we both said we hope that in heaven, we get to relive the happy times-- And oh, gloriously happy times we had when my siblings and I were little kids running wild all over the forests around their "sommarstuga" (cabin) every summer!--- and we won't remember any bad memories, but leave bad times from earth life behind. We talked about how very real people feel to us, when they have passed on. (They feel real because they are real.) We talked about angels and ghosts. She told me again the story of how Soren, her husband, came to her in a dream and sat on the edge of her bed after he died. She said she wasn't sure if it was a dream, or real. I said of course I think it's real. Our relatives want us to know that they love us, when they pass on, and they want to reassure us that they are still very real-- only separated from their bodies, but not far from us.
Mormor Lotta, my grandmother, her mom, was not officially a believer, either, yet she told us a story that we talked about again yesterday. One night, Mormor Lotta saw someone in her apartment, late at night, like a ghost or a being, who wanted to come close and communicate with her. But Mormor Lotta was afraid, and willed the being to stay away, which it (reluctantly) did. The next morning, Mormor Lotta got a phone call that her dear sister had passed away. She thought afterward that she had been afraid of what might have been the kind spirit of her sister. I believe it completely.
Some people think faith is the same thing as superstition. Not me. Faith is based on reality. Superstition is based on fiction. There's a Swedish superstition --at least, I think it is nothing more than a superstition-- (Moster Boel told me this one, just yesterday, on the phone) --that if a painting falls off a wall, someone's died. She believes in that one. I don't; it's too weird and pointless. But she said that a painting did fall off the wall one day, many years ago, before I was born, and the next day they found out that her grandparent had died. Who knows?
I think that fear of death is an instinct given to us by God so that we'll stay put on earth, rather than flee to the next world. Why else would we fear it, especially those of us who do actively believe in God and heaven? I fear, more than anything, being separated from loved ones. Even though earth life is a blip on the map of eternity, the idea of spending years and years and years away from my loved ones is intolerable, terrifying, nightmarish, to me.
My mother always reminds us that things are seen in the opposite way up in heaven: here, we rejoice at a newborn and mourn at a death. There, they rejoice at the reunion that happens when someone from earth dies and returns to their loved ones, while they wave sad goodbyes when releasing a loved one to earth to be born. My mother also likes to remind us of the sailboat analogy: a sailboat seems to have vanished when it passes beyond view into the horizon, but it's not gone. It's very much real, and suddenly very visible to others, standing on the other shore.
Still, death is sad. It's sad because of love. It's meant to be sad. Remember that verse: "
Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die, and more especially for those that have not hope of a glorious resurrection." -Doctrine and Covenants 42:45. I pray
all the time that God will protect and preserve me and my dear ones, both physically and spiritually, because I want us to be together, always. I know it's in God's plan that we die; we can't die all holding hands together, because someone has to stay to take care of the next generation still on earth. But still, my heart runs out ahead of me in fear and dread of it sometimes, and my soul is full of sympathy for people who lose loved ones.
I read a beautiful perspective on this separation from Elder Scott, one of the Apostles, today. He was speaking about his wife, who has passed on. I'll put the link here.
http://lds.org/study/prophets-speak-today/unto-all-the-world/sure-witness-elder-scott?lang=eng
I am pasting my favorite parts next, because they brought a tear to my eye and I want to remember them. My own dear husband found this article today, and emailed the link to me. He said this is how he wants us to be. Me too!
Elder Richard G. Scott on the death of his wife, Jeanene
Elder Scott: First of all, . . . I didn’t lose her. She’s on the other side of the veil. We’ve been sealed in that holy ordinance of the temple, and we’ll be together forever. And at critical times in my life when I need help, I can feel impressions come through the veil in such a real way that often I just [think,] “Thank you, Jeanene.” So there isn’t that loss. The second is that when you get it right the first time, you don’t want to mess it up with a second time. We are so close and love each other so very much that I don’t have any feeling of need to remarry. I recognize that for some men there’s a very strong support they require from a wife, and so they remarry, and I don’t question that for them. Jeanene and I prepared each other in all the ways we could think of for being able to survive well when one of us passed through the veil, and I wish she hadn’t been the first one, but that’s the way it worked out.
On his eternal marriage to Jeanene
[My marriage has] touched every important element of my life—wanting to be a better person, wanting to live more righteously and do things that were more elevating and worthwhile. I don’t believe that the temple ordinance guarantees that we’ll be together forever. There will be a time before that sealing of the Holy Spirit of Promise that makes it eternal where we’ll be in the presence of the Savior, as individuals, and there will be a choice whether we continue with the sealing or not. And I want to do everything in my power to qualify so that she’ll choose for that sealing to be eternal.
Mazariner. 
I could never have imagined, four years ago, as a divorced single mother, that I would ever be this happily married. --And to have this wonderful little brand new baby, too! My blessings runneth over. I see myself as being unfairly, overly blessed and I feel I owe God so much thanks. 
