Travelers: Epilogue

Epilogue

The morning of Midsommars Afton Gisela and I had a small memorial, just the two of us, celebrating Martin and Ulla in the Svanholms Parken gazebo. We spread his ashes there in the gazebo that was so central to his life. I said to Gisela, "Do you know that this is where he first met Ulla and where he proposed to her?"

"Yes, I know. Every Midsommars Afton he would come down here from sunset to sunrise and I would look down from my window at him. I once asked him why he was talking to himself down there and he answered me that he only does it once a year. When I said to him you only talk to yourself once a year? He answered me that he only talks out loud to Ulla once a year but he thinks about her every day."

Gisela smiled at me as her eyes filled with tears and then she took my hand and said, "Life is for the living and today is Midsommars Afton and tonight there will be a bonfire here in the park and and before that I am having friends of the Villa Vegeta for dinner so let's dry our tears and prepare for a party. Martin would want that."

That evening several guests asked where Martin was because over the years he had never missed one of Gisela's Midsommars Afton parties and his late night rendezvous with the memories of Ulla and their time together in the Gazebo below the villa.

One of the guests that asked about Martin and was shocked to hear of his passing was an Englishman named Torsten. When I asked him if that was an English name he told me that his mother was Swedish and his father was American and the name's actual meaning was Thor's Stone.

"It's actually a pretty common name in Sweden because it is about nine months from Midsommars Afton," he told me with a big smile.

"I don't understand," I responded.

"In Sweden we are often named by the name's day calendar and on Midsommars Afton a lot of children are conceived and about nine months from this night the calendar name...."

I started laughing when he told me that and then he said, "But actually I'm not English and I go by Trevor."

"But you have an English accent."

"Yes, that's true but actually I'm Manx."

"What is that?"

"It's a Crown Dependency."

"Is that so, I always thought it was a tailless cat" I said with a laugh and then, "where is Manx?"

"There is no such place as Manx," he answered with a big smile.

"So how can you be Manx if there is no such place, are you trying to pull my chain?"

"Pull your chain?"

"Yes, are you putting me on?"

"Oh you mean am I trying to wind you up"

At that we both laughed and I told him I had never heard the term 'wind you up' before but it must mean the same as 'putting someone on' or 'pulling their chain'.

"We do speak two different languages, I realized that once in New York when I told an American mate, or friend, of mine that I was going to knock up his sister when I was in Maryland where she lived. He got out of sorts with me over that until I explained in my English that meant look her up not make her pregnant."

Then with a big grin Thorsten or Trevor told me he was from the Isle of Man and that his father had been a friend of Martin and his mother was Ulla's sister.

"So that makes you Martin's nephew?"

"It does," he answered in an exclamatory manner.

"With a Swedish mother and an American father how did you come to be Manx wherever the hell that is?" I asked.

"There is no Manx but there is the Isle of Man and it's between the north of England and Ireland. My father had to move there because of the Mad Dog Club that he started in the 60's here in Stockholm."

"Now I'm really confused," I answered

"Well if you come down to the gazebo with me I will explain all," he said with a laugh taking my hand and leading me down to Svanholms Parken and the Midsommars Afton bonfire.

That night he explained to me that the Mad Dog Club was an international student disco started by his father in the mid 60's and that was where his father met his mother. The club was extremely successful and being an American student at the time he did not pay Swedish taxes and when the Swedish taxing authorities came after him he and his wife decamped to Douglas on The Isle of Man and that was where he was born.

He told me all that while we were sitting in the gazebo amid some of Martin's remaining ashes that had not blown away. Then he asked me how well I knew Martin and I answered, "Not well...but I loved him."

...............................................................................................................................

Trevor and I have been married ten years now. We spend our summers in the apartment on the top floor of the Villa Vegeta and our winters in Florida. Trevor has his own business and can actually work from anywhere. Usually we return to the states earlier but last year we stayed later into the fall then we usually do in Sweden and one bright crisp morning our nine year old son woke us up saying over and over again, "Do you hear that, do you hear that?"

And then we heard it, one of the most beautiful sounds on this earth that only a very few people ever get to hear and we were thrilled that our son Martin could finally hear nature's wind chimes.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the International Graduate School of the University of Stockholm for starting me on this journey and Ulla, wherever you are, I want to thank you for your inspiration. Gisela I haven't seen since we had too much pomme in our fondue and barely made our way back through the Bernese Oberland to Freiburg but thank you for your smiling kindness. The Mad Dog Club did exist and will always exist in my memories as will the Villa Vegeta.