I’m not much of a writer, or more generally, communicator. I’d like to think of myself as a good listener though. Or, at least, a better listener than a writer. So, at times it seems that I’m unable or unworthy of sharing my thoughts with others, whoever that might be, in writing or otherwise. My venture onto the net is making all that easier. I get a lot of inspiration from reading stories, personal or political. Politically, I know where I stand and I often give my opinion when I feel me justified in doing so. Personally, I’m more insure and kind of shy.
Having been reading so many personal stories and been moved by them, I’m inspired to tell you a little more about myself. So here goes.
I am the youngest of four brothers who made it. My parents are from Denmark and they moved to Sweden in search of work just after my eldest brother was born. They travelled around the country and took whatever work they could get. In Dalarna, almost in the smack of the middle of Sweden where my father worked in the forrest with logging, they got their next son. In those days and at such a place there was a lack of medical equipment, and they didn’t catch a colon problem the little guy had in time so he died after a week or so. Next brother who did make it was born a year after that. Time to move again; next stop Småland in the south of Sweden. There my father got work at a small metal/iron manufacturer. No 3 of those of us who made it was born, along with his twin brother. The twin never made it; born blue all over the head and body he died within hours. I, number four of the living, was to become his substitute-twin brother.
Of course, after having giving birth to five baby boys, three of which who made it, my mother was hoping for a girl next. In fact she was so sure that I would be a girl that she accepted a bet. She was so sick when she was pregnant with me, unlike my brothers, that,well, I had to be a girl. The bet she took was from my father’s stepfather. Ok, he said, if this turns out to be a boy after all, may we have the honor of naming him? And so, I got my name from someone who later would disown both my mother and my father.
I was born with a big hole in my forehead, having been disfigured by being displaced in my mothers belly, getting a rib of hers for a pillow. I think I must have been something of a shock for my mother. Coming home from the hospital though, my “twin” brother thought I was a dog. My mother wanted a girl, my “twin” brother wanted me to b a dog. My “twin” brother sort of won; Much of my time napping I shared the dog’s basket with the family dog, a German Shepard. The disfigurement of my youth is long gone but my love of dogs persist.
This is pretty much what I `know’ about my childhood. Having had the story told to me over and over again. Of course there are other bits here and there, like my “twin” brother and I taking our bikes out in the street in the middle of the night to inaugurate the shift from driving on the left to driving on the right at just the right hour.
And we grew up like twin brothers, always waring the same kinds of clothes and so on. One thing he did tease me about though was that I had this little toy-monkey that I was very attached to, even if it was almost in shambles. He didn’t know then that he later would hang on to that monkey of mine as if it was for life.
Although I and my “twin” brother were almost a year apart my parents managed to get us into school at the same time. And we also shared the same classes. One day in the third year when we were on our way home from school my brother went by the woods and I took to the road.
Eventually I and those I was going with had to cross the road. The rest of them hurried over but I decided to wait for a lorry to pass. The driver of the lorry saw us and stopped to let me over also. I started to walk across the road, my eyes on the lorry. More than halfway across
I get hit by a car coming from the other side. The driver of the car that hit me maintained in court he never before had seen any children crossing that road. My brother coming out of the woods just when I was hit by that car was devastated. Our neighbors had to take him in and try to calm him.
Most of this is just words for me.
By ambulance they took me from the crime scene to hospital to hospital. I’m in awe of what was done for me. First they took me to the emergency room in the town adjacent to where I lived. They couldn’t cope with me there, I had to be transported to a major hospital in Stockholm. I’m told that they closed off the highway just to make the ambulance carrying me have the best chance to make it in time. They made it and arriving at Karolinska (a major medical institute and hospital) in Stockholm they hooked me up to a machine. That machine would breath for me for six weeks, without me being aware of it. I was happily asleep and unaware of anything.
The pressure started to build under my skull. One Friday they decided to open up my skull to relieve the pressure for my well-being. They made that decision Friday and was going to perform the operation Monday after the weekend. The day after that Friday, which happened to be Easter Saturday – mind you, I woke up. My parents were already on their way to visit me and when they arrived the nurses and doctors stood smiling at them at the entrance.
I couldn’t talk or move but I could smile at my parents when they came. I remembered peoples’ faces, names and even their phone numbers. What I couldn’t remember was why I was in a hospital, or rather, I hadn’t an inkling I was in a hospital, I didn’t remember I had an accident, I couldn’t remember I had any previous life at all. And all I remembered from the few years I’d yet spent in school before my accident was hard facts. Mathematics was about the only thing that stayed in my head as something of a narrative.
I stayed in hospital most of the spring that year and if the doctors would have had the final say I would have ended up in an institution. My parents wouldn’t have it. They took me home and the first couple of days they carried me around when I had to move between the bedroom, the kitchen and the sofa in front of the television. After these first days my mom wouldn’t have that either. She and my father brought me down on the floor and put some toys in front of me.
And I wouldn’t have that! Protesting of all my lungs’ worth that day, my parents sitting in the kitchen with the door closed, I finally engaged the toys. Next day I wanted down on the floor on my own.
I continued to make progress and soon my father brought me with him to the swimming pool. At one occasion when he’d taken me to the pool a man who turned out to be disabled himself approached us and invited me to join in with a sports organization for the disabled. And on that way it was.
Today I consider myself lucky I can live a somewhat normal life though I have to use a wheelchair. I live in my own house, I manage most on my own and luckily I found what I consider friends on the net and I spend much time here.
As I said before though, up to a point most of this is just words for me.
I have a problem to connect. And I’ve always wondered why. Coming back to my family after that accident, and in further growing up I’ve always had problem to genuinely connect with people – even those in my own family. There has been times when I’ve felt that people talking to me about me have been talking of some other person. Growing up with three brothers, two of them who’ve ended up with not only one but two families each (one current and one ex-) , I’ve often wondered why I haven’t had that urge. For me turning forty wasn’t a life-crises at all but some kind of relief. I’ve come to grips with that I’m a kind of a-sexual guy. And I’ve also come to understand that the folks in my family do not really know me, but that they all these years have gone with a mind-picture of me that originates in my pre-accident years. That was brought home to me, and I think them, when at a family dinner some years ago I was asked by my “twin” brothers new wife if it was a good or a bad thing to not remember the accident I had. I surprised myself, and everyone else I think, by answering that
“That is hard to say. Not remembering the accident might be a good thing but, if I had been able to remember walking, maybe I would have been able to give it more of a fight.”
My “twin” brother said to me: “But then you must have been as newly born when you woke up.” Maybe he’s right, and maybe that’s why I have a problem to connect with people in real life.
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Thanks all for your stories and thanks for listening to mine.