For H and T
Who owe me nothing.
This story is set in Norway where the age of consent is 16, and there is no legal drinking age, but the minimum age for purchasing alcohol is 18. There are a multitude of cultural differences described in this story that readers from other parts of the world might find strange or downright amusing, also family practices that not every Norwegian family would necessarily agree with.
This is a work of fiction, and as such I have modified the ethics of journalism in Norway to fit the story.
This story is edited in UK English. Any mistakes are the author’s own.
Trigger warnings: this story deals with grief after the death of a loved one, but not in a graphic way. There is a brief mention of miscarriage and stillbirths and the devastating effects of this.
This is a story about life and death. Because there has never been anyone else for Jens. He had been with Sofie almost all his life, from the day they met at school when they were fifteen, until the day she took her final breath against his chest. She was always everything to him. As he was to her. He never doubted that. Not for a minute.
This is a story of hope, where Axel Kleve keeps himself too busy to even stop and think. Work, sleep, eat, repeat. He loves his job as a Midwife at Oslo’s University Hospital, He’s good at lecturing and training, and now he has somehow been pushed into running “Ask Axel,” a midwifery blog on PNN.no, the parenting-site everyone in Norway trusts.
This is a tale of second chances. Jens, he doesn't let himself think of Axel. He doesn't think of Axel at all. And Axel needs to stop longing for that one crush he’s never been able to leave behind. It’s just plain ridiculous. He should have got over Jens Sommerfeldt years ago.
A song about family and love and happiness found in small doses. Of trying to parent when you don’t know how. Of finding love where you always knew it lived.
This is the story of a little harbour. The place in your heart you didn’t know was there.
It’s the dream we carry in secret
that something miraculous will happen,
that it must happen -
that time will open
that the heart will open
that doors will open
that the ROCKFACE will open
that springs will gush-
that the dream will open,
that one morning we will glide into
some little harbour we didn’t know was there.
Olav H Hauge
translated by Robin Fulton
Oslo, Norway
Monday, Early March
Jens is numb. That’s the only word he can think of to describe the feelings he carries most of the time.
He hates that word. He hates that word almost as much as he hates the word ‘widower’. He also hates ‘It will get easier’ along with ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ and ‘You are coping so well’. Well, there is not a lot that people can say to him now that doesn’t make him roll his eyes and do that pathetic sigh. All in his head of course. On the outside Jens just gives people a little nod, smiles, then he walks away.
It’s been over a year since Sofie died. He likes using died. Because she is dead. There is nothing anyone can say that will change that fact, however hard people try to dress it up like it was something entirely different that happened. Sofie got sick. She got very sick. And she died. Just like that.
Somehow Jens lived through it. Somehow, he got up every day and fed the children disgusting sugary cereals, and got them dressed, and the children went back to school, and the little ones went to nursery, and the house descended into the messy chaos that they now call home. Then they all got up in the morning on that Sunday, they went to church and they buried their Sofie. The kids buried their mother. And life was never the same again.
Sometimes Jens thinks of it as the day that he broke and it all became real. Before that they had all tiptoed around in a haze of confusion, all waited for Sofie to burst through the front door, throwing her bag on the floor and shouting at the kids to come and hang their jackets on their pegs and put their shoes away, “before someone falls over and breaks their neck.” She was like that. Loud and funny and loving and organising them all. She kept the house tidy. Sorted everything out. Most of all she sorted Jens out. Told him she loved him and shoved him away with the kids, so she could unpack the shopping and start dinner, while Jens would go and curl up on the sofa with the kids and talk about school and cartoons and silly things until dinner was on the table. Then Sofie would do homework. Jens would wash up, with the radio on so he could catch up with the evening talk show.
Bath time was usually Jens and Mikki in the bath, and baby Marthe. Splashing and blowing bubbles and making a mess until Morten would come in and brush his teeth and roll his eyes at them. He was a good kid back then, Jens thinks. He is still a good kid. An angry kid. A twelve-year-old who lost his Mum. And his Dad too. Because Jens is broken into so many little pieces that he doesn’t know if he can ever mend himself back into a human being again.
Instead he is a machine. Gets the kids up. Breakfast. Shouts. Gets them all out of the house on time, leaving the house looking like they have been burgled. Again.
He goes to work. Orders his weekly food shop online. Hopes that he can lose himself in his lectures. Tries to remember things that need doing. Dresses his far too skinny body in clothes he should have binned years ago. Sweeps his hair back in a lame attempt to see through the strands that he should cut more often. Accepts the coffee that Sylvia, his long-suffering administrator, leaves on his desk. Frowns at her concerned looks. Ignores the growing pile of paperwork on the side of his smudged-up keyboard.
He knows. Okay? He knows he looks like death. He knows he needs to eat. He knows sleep would make things easier. He still has a packet of sleeping pills on top of the kitchen units at home. He has never dared to take them.
He thinks that if he let himself sleep he might not ever want to wake up again.
So, he doesn’t sleep. Just dozes through the night, with Marthe on his chest and Mikki curled up against his side, and the inevitable creak of the floorboards when Morten crawls under the covers around 4.15am. He is old enough not come and sleep in his parents’ bed, but Jens can’t bear to say no. Morten belongs with the rest of them in that bed. It’s the only thing they have left of Sofie. Her scent still lingers in the room. The line of perfume bottles on the shelf by the door. Her clothes hanging on the rail in the wardrobe.
Jens knows it’s time to let go. But this is all they have left. The faint scent of the woman who completed them all.
Axel Kleve is doing well. He has lost count of how many babies he has brought into this world. He has lost count of his qualifications. He has seen colleagues come and go. Yet the labour ward at Oslo University Hospital is his home. He does training at other hospitals and spends a few days every month teaching at the Midwife college too, and he runs the Parenting classes for first-time parents-to-be in the evenings. He is busy. In demand. Needed and wanted.
Axel Kleve thinks he needs to get himself a cat. He is not a dog person, in fact he thinks he is pretty much terrified of dogs—especially little ones that yap and move erratically and stare at him like he is a freak. No, a cat would be nice. A nice soft furry thing to cuddle in the evenings when he throws himself on the sofa and inevitably falls asleep still wearing his scrubs and smelling of work and sweat and microwave meals. But then he thinks that the cat would probably have worse social skills than Axel, and the two of them would just sit either end of the sofa and give each other death stares, then the cat would scratch Axel’s sofa and Axel would feed the cat the brand of cat food the cat hated and it would all be a mess. He might as well get a goldfish. At least goldfish don’t meow back when you give them the finger.