"The very last time I saw my father, he gave me a boat motor.

As I was driving away from the courtyard, he called after me, telling me that it was my motor and that I was responsible for it. On the other hand, he’d already decided that my son Ludvig would get to drive the boat and use the motor by himself. It was important that I not forget this.

That was the last time I saw him alive.

Three days later, I heard his voice on my answering machine. He called to find out how we were doing at our country place near the ocean. After dinner, I dialed the number to my parents’ house. After that, nothing was ever the same. From the receiver, I could hear one of my parents’ friends saying that my mother was on the way to hospital with my father, in an ambulance. Their clumsy attempt to explain the course of events in a mitigating way betrayed something much worse. My body, which seemed to immediately understand the seriousness of the situation, was unfortunately right, and that night I received the news that my father was gone forever.

Three weeks later, we left my mother to begin her new life alone and we made our way back to our country home. We returned to a sad place, one we had left in complete chaos. What had always been our own little paradise suddenly felt empty and deserted, and I, for one, rattled around the house with a huge emptiness inside of me.

The next day, we hooked up Dad’s, or rather, my boat motor and went out on our maiden voyage. It was one of those beautiful late summer Swedish evenings, with a perfectly pink sunset. Far out in the ocean, we had to put more gasoline in our little motor. As we lay there quietly on the waves, a huge seal appeared right next to the railing. From the animal’s gaze and gestures, it felt as if dad was right there with us. Our inaugural boat ride became a wonderful excursion that comforted us in our sorrow, and it once again became meaningful to begin doing things again.

The next day, Ludvig spent several hours on the boat, going back and forth along the coastline. He was so proud and happy when he passed by in his bright yellow life jacket in the little purple boat that he and grandfather had painted together.
Later in the afternoon he and a friend went out with the boat. They drove by and, as they disappeared from view, it became quiet. I didn’t think more about them until the two boys, later, came walking along the beach. Their heavy heads told me immediately that something bad had happened. When Ludvig told me that the motor had suddenly popped off the boat, it was as if it had knocked the wind knocked out of me. My father’s death had left me with an immense sadness, but I had felt free of guilt and anxiety. At that precise moment, all those feelings came back, bowling me over.

The fact that I couldn’t live up to my father’s last measure of confidence and his gift to me completely destroyed me. Feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, senselessness and sorrow enveloped me and I felt adrift.

The ocean represented a dream place to my father, a place where he sailed both in real life and in his thoughts. We had been a sailing family for many years and once dad and I even did some long-distance sailing together; it was a special experience that we shared. Obviously, all of these memories played a part in my somewhat exaggerated reaction to the sunken motor.

My father’s death was quick and violent. Since I wasn’t there when it happened, it was retold to me and I had to imagine it instead. I think this contributed to my continual replaying of the course of events in an effort to understand his death. The episode with the motor came to occupy the same place in how I viewed the world. This meaningless image, of a motor that, on its own, spun around and down into the waters’ depths and slowly disappeared, replayed itself over and over again inside of me. Once again, I became completely caught up in imagining a series of events told to me by someone else.

That evening, Ludvig and I rowed out in the rain to find the place where the motor had hopped off the boat and to determine the water’s depth. We realized rather quickly, out there in the rain, it would be too difficult to pinpoint the exact spot and that the water was far too deep. Besides, the idea of bringing up the motor began to seem meaningless. For us, the events surrounding the lost motor seemed like yet another greeting from our father and grandfather.

Now, that spot out in the ocean is the second place we said our farewells, and the motor will be allowed to rest in the water’s depths in peace and quiet."