My father's death

My father's condition had further deteriorated over the summer vacation, he had lost his appetite and had become far too thin. I didn't understand it, as I had really kept hope and faith in the Indian tea I gave him. But now, through one of my brother's accounting clients, the herbalist Bruce Kyle in Aarhus, I found out that it was the wrong tea I had tracked down in the US. A Canadian woman had sold it under the pretense that it was Rennee Caisse's original recipe, but then lost a copyright lawsuit while she herself had died of cancer, which was not the best advertisement for the product. Bruce put me in touch with a Danish importer of the real Essiac, Sara Damskier in Brovst (tel. 98-230977 if you have family members suffering from cancer). I immediately became good friends with her and have promised to create a website for her. I now headed over to West Jutland to once again look after my father and carefully cook the new herbs for him. And it may well be that it quickly made a difference. His former huge appetite immediately returned and I could almost immediately start reducing his painkillers without causing him any more pain. Unfortunately, we never found out if it also slowed down the spread of the tumors because other complications arose, but it kept me hopeful to the end that “this little millennial crisis” would be overcome.
 

Of course, I had my doubts when I went on nightly visits to my own old doctor Munck, who has battled cancer himself and told me that there was no hope for my father. “But it can't hurt what you're doing,” he added, with most doctors' lack of faith in alternative treatment. However, the American Bruce was also a doctor, and with our great shared hope, Steen and I now set Bruce on a major analysis of my father's immune system abroad so that we could get a better basis to see what alternative treatment would be best. After the shock of seeing Dad's deteriorating condition when we returned from summer vacation and the joy of how quickly the real Indian seemed to turn things around, there was no end to our optimism.
 

Still, we were not a little surprised when my father said one day that he wanted to go to my brother, Niels Jørgen's daughter, Cecilie's confirmation in Copenhagen in September. It had meant a lot to him that his final church act in the spring was to baptize Cecilie, partly because it was in Grundtvig Church, where he had started as a pastor, but mostly because she had finally received a baptism at all. As priests' children, Niels Jørgen and I had rebelled in different ways, I guess by demanding that Christianity be taken to its extreme with my painted Grundtvig quotes on his church on Easter morning and Niels Jørgen by turning against the whole church as such. That's why Cecilie had never been baptized, but now she rebelled against her own father by seeking closer to her beloved grandfather. Every generation needs its rebellion, I think, and those who forget to rebel often end up paying for it for the rest of their lives by constantly rebelling against their loved ones through their sidebones.

That's why Cecilie's adult baptism - and in a way a great family reconciliation - was a great experience for all of us in March, while my father could still walk. But now, only six months later, it was a major operation to get my father to Copenhagen. And he had to rest in Inge's apartment for several days before and after the confirmation. The trip had been so exhausting that I thought he was dead when Inge called me in tears to come and help him out of bed on the day itself. His face was white and I could barely drag him to the bathroom and carry him while he washed himself. I was shocked to see his legs wobbling beneath him with all my faith in the power of tea. But he wanted to go to the confirmation, so I called Vibeke to borrow a wheelchair from her father's nursing home, and in it we managed to wheel him one last time into the beautiful church that had meant so much to him in his youth. Of course, I myself was quite moved by the situation as I sat with him in the wheelchair right next to the baptismal font where he himself had once baptized me.

And when I rolled him up the aisle for what I sensed would be his irrevocably last communion - but our first together as privates - and knelt down next to his wheelchair, well, the tears whipped down my cheeks. He was so exhausted after those few minutes in church that he had to be put in a bed behind the table after the first fish dish at the confirmation dinner, where he slept through all the songs and never got to hear the verses that Vibeke and I had written about him. Strangely enough, he woke up immediately when we put cognac in front of him at Niels Jørgen's house. But the next day he didn't wake up for most of the day. And in a way I was a little sad about that, because it would have meant a lot to him if he had been well enough to be present.
 

Because that very day, by a twist of fate, I had a performance in TK's youth center, where my father, as a newly ordained priest, had done tremendous work for the youth of Bispebjerg and - I now found out - where he had taken care of the most marginalized working class youth. It's still a very troubled area. The last time I had lectured at a nearby school, several immigrants in my audience were arrested for stealing cars under cover of darkness during my “boring” lecture. But perhaps because they now got to hear about my father's work in TK, this time they sat in deep silence during the entire show. During the set-up, I had other things on my mind when they called from Vibeke's work and told me that Vibeke had been hospitalized. I immediately went to Rigshospitalets emergency room, where she was crying and in slight shock after a new concussion. Having slipped with her bike on a rain-soaked iron plate, she was now terrified that this would trigger the epilepsy she suffered after her last fall 3 years ago, but which has otherwise been under control since. The shock was worse than the concussion this time though, even though the blow was right on top of where she walks with a bone stump inside her brain. By the time I got home from the TK performance, she had already been discharged and the apartment was a sea of flowers, not least from the staff at her recently completed festival. The fact that the concussion, just like 3 years ago, came on her first day of vacation and now forced her to stay in bed, is one of life's injustices. I had to cancel the tickets I had booked for our fall vacation in Turkey.
 

But I probably would have had to cancel them anyway. My father's stubborn insistence on coming to Cecilie's confirmation had completely taken the wind out of his sails and ended up killing him too. After returning home, he had practically dozed off for a week and I started to worry that my tea wasn't helping him after all. Fortunately, I had my last show before the fall break at Vibe Efterskole, after which I would be able to go home and take care of him again. And I'll never forget this show, even though I'm a fixture in every single one of this school's classes with perhaps the most gifted students in Denmark. Not only was there press throughout the show from Fyns Morgenposten (whose enthusiastic article meant that I have received a myriad of Funen schools in the coming time). No, the wonderful principal couple, Birger and Groa, began without my knowledge by having us all sing “Nu falmer skoven trindt om land”. But this happened to be the hymn from which my father in our childhood always used a verse as a table song:
 

Him we all thank with song
For all that he has given,
For what he has made grow,
For the word and for life.
 

The melody alone, hammered into my little head from early childhood, once again made me cry like a child with the fears I was feeling inside right now. So when I had to start immediately afterwards, I was still so teary-eyed that I couldn't help but start telling the students about my father. Show business has never made me so professional that I can put my emotions - including my lack of diplomacy - aside on stage. But as an entertainer, you also get used to dramatizing a bit and during the story about my father, I unconsciously used the phrase “my dying father.” Suddenly it was as if my own runaway words made me “face” the truth I hadn't wanted to face before, that my father was really dying. Which of course freaked me out even more. I saved the situation by spontaneously changing the subject. As my lecture is about oppression, I had prepared in advance to talk about what was happening in Serbia at that very moment. In those very afternoon hours, a crowd of thousands was on its way to Belgrade to “throw off the yoke of death.” Somehow I managed to weave it together so that in these crowds I clung to the hope that was beginning to fade for my father. If these people could defeat the cancer under Milosevic, my father could defeat his. Every fifteen minutes during the slideshow I rushed to the car radio and became more and more excited.... the police roadblocks that blocked the advancing masses.... the increasing numbers who joined them.... the rush into Belgrade.... The parliament building, which was soon set on fire.... the hated TV station, which also went up in flames shortly afterwards, all without a shot being fired.... yes, my excitement never ended because I could clearly see that victory was now home.... victory for democracy, victory for the Bosnian refugees I had accommodated, victory over the death and destruction I had witnessed during my visit to Kosovo.....and yes, with a victory over such unconquerable forces, it was not inconceivable that my father could also conquer death. So there was no end to my excitement when, at the end of the show, I went up in front of the students and vividly told them about one oppression that - during the 5 hours they had sat through my show - had now been irrevocably brought to an end. And afterwards I sat and toasted the victory under the black smoke clouds of TV news from Belgrade in the living room of Birger and Groa.
 

Then I rushed home from Funen to my father, about whom Inge could now tell that he had suddenly felt better that day. He was now able to get out of bed and sneak in and watch the TV news with me. I wanted so much for him to experience the victory in Serbia. I have always felt terribly sorry for those who died in the summer of 1989 and went to their graves unaware of the fall of the wall. The great victories of humanity help give us all new life. And as my father sat there with me and watched the liberating black clouds of smoke from Belgrade pouring out of the television, he got more and more color in his fading cheeks. Inge and I had ordered a feast from the hotel that Friday evening to celebrate his new courage and we had a wonderful evening together before he went to sleep on his “Jægersborg fence”. And when he seemed to feel even better the next day, Inge started talking about “a true miracle.” We both agreed that the Essiac was finally starting to work, that things were going the right way.
 

I began to sense that my “Serbian victory over death” had actually been a rebel priest's son's rewritten form of a silent prayer to God and that it had been heard. So I went up to Agerbæk hotel and ordered an even bigger feast than the night before and we set the table in the living room and even my father drank some of the red wine and ate almost with his old appetite. We joked and enjoyed ourselves and at one point I even teased my father about all his wives. Suddenly he stood up without a word and I whispered to Inge: “Well, now he's probably offended.” But my father immediately replied: “No, I just need to go to the toilet.” And then - without any walking support or help - he went to the toilet himself. Now Inge and I sat speechless and talked about how a miracle had truly happened. Later, we sat around his bed in his bedroom and enjoyed ourselves while he - for the first time in a long time - started reading his latest book, John Iversen's memoirs. When he fell asleep, Inge stayed by his side all night, as was his long-standing habit - although suddenly it no longer seemed necessary.
 

But our happiness was not to last long. The next morning, my father had gone to the toilet again on his own, but it took far too long and Inge went in and immediately called me. My father had collapsed on the toilet and Inge suddenly couldn't move him. When I tried and felt his sudden dead weight and saw the corner of his mouth hanging to one side, I knew he had had a stroke. With incredible difficulty I lifted him into bed, where we saw that his entire left side was paralyzed. His eyes were open and following us and we could see his fear and that he was fully aware of his situation. After all, he had been a priest at enough of these types of hospital beds himself. We tried to revive the fingers on his left side, but there was no hope. Instead, he responded to Inge's little squeezes on his right side with his own little squeezes as they had done in their happier moments of love and could even open his mouth for kisses when she kissed him. We had first talked about how we would be able to take care of him together in this new state and slowly get him rehabilitated and discussed it on the phone with Vibeke's mother, who trains aphasia patients. We had already experienced the incredible home care help that came almost around the clock. But when it turned out that my father could no longer swallow his food, we realized in the morning that there was nothing we could do but get him to the hospital. I'll never forget the moment he was pushed into the ambulance - still with his eyes wide open and staring at me. I knew at that moment that I would never see him truly alive again and shoulder to shoulder Inge and I stood and cried as the ambulance drove off, crushing the miraculous hope we had had on that happy last night before. Ever since, I have had nightmares and guilt every time I see the back doors of an ambulance.
 

After that, Inge and I made a mistake we will probably never forgive ourselves for. When we visited Dad at Varde Hospital in the afternoon, he was still conscious but breathing strangely and had a lot of fear in his eyes. He could still respond to Inge's caresses and when he was fed by the nurses and spilled something, he could even utter a weak “I'm sorry”. We stayed there late into the night when it was clear that he was anxious.

But we hadn't given it a second thought that you can spend the night in there and had also prepared ourselves for the fact that a blood clot is something you stay with for a long time. However, the next day we were told that he had been awake and very restless and anxious all night, but in the morning he had fallen into a deep coma. And now he had come down with pneumonia, which - we figured - he had undoubtedly contracted in the cold during his confirmation trip to Copenhagen. The next three to four days would be crucial to his survival, the doctor said. Inge and I moved into the hospital with a bed, computer, books, etc. to be by his side around the clock. My brothers rushed there. I myself sat by my father's side for four days, editing his memoirs on my computer. He had never finished them, but it seemed to me to be the most meaningful thing I could do with my time. Inge couldn't read, but sat around the clock stroking his hand. It was difficult to concentrate with the noise the mucus in his lungs was making. There was a strange incongruity in this arrangement, however, as reading my father's memoirs suddenly made him vivid and youthful to me, while his life by my side slowly faded away. Again and again, passages in the text made me suddenly want to ask him about something in his life, why he hadn't told me before, and so on, and then in the next moment I realized that now it was irrevocably too late. It warmed me that it was one of his old confirmands and a grandson of Kristoffer Jørgensen, one of his best friends in my childhood, who took loving care of him as a nurse and turned him every hour when his death rattle became too unbearable. Steen brought us food every evening after work in Aarhus and stayed there until late.


 

On Thursday night, Steen and I had gone home to my father's house to sleep, when Inge called shortly afterwards, crying and said: “Your father has just died.” She had - as she had done for months - held his hand when he expired at 1am. We rushed into the hospital and waited with Inge outside while the nurses prepared him. After four days of slow preparation, we were resigned and resigned to the way things were going. But when we got to Dad's room, our composure ended when we had to kiss him goodbye. Two candles were lit by his side and in this light he looked so incredibly beautiful and youthful. We prayed the Lord's Prayer, but it was Inge who had to pray, as Steen and I could not remember or find the words that my father had recited with us at the bedside from our earliest childhood. Likewise, not much had been passed down to us from my father's skills as a lead singer as we squeakily tried to sing our old family hymn “Befal du dine veje” - unable to read the words as tears poured out. Then we had to pack all the little furniture we had collected in this, my father's last little home and drove quietly home in the night rain around 3 am - unable to fall asleep at home.

 

The next morning, I was up at the bakery at 7 o'clock and I didn't understand how, but already on the way back people came out of their houses to offer their condolences. And even before Inge got up at 9 o'clock, all the flags in the street were at half-mast - and soon after that in the neighboring towns - which was good, as otherwise we would have forgotten to put ours up ourselves. The attention made me realize that we had to act quickly. Steen had to go back to work, so it was up to me and Inge to prepare the funeral. Fortunately, as a pastor's son, I had acquired a lot of knowledge about this. I knew, for example, that the first person you book an appointment with is not the priest, undertaker etc. No, it's the inn. Because if the inn isn't available for coffee on the day of the funeral, well, everything has to be moved anyway. And since I wanted the funeral to be on a Saturday so that my father's many friends from far away could attend, there would inevitably be a conflict with weddings. But the miracle happened - I got Fåborg Inn in place already before 9 that morning. Now I discovered what I had always studied in my father, that the more you throw yourself into practical organization, the easier it is to hold back your emotions. I had never understood how he could bury his own mother and wife without shedding a tear while the rest of us sat in tears.
 

But from that moment on, it was as if I suddenly inherited his learned strength and therefore went about the funeral preparations as if they were his - even though I normally hate that kind of practical work. My father had left arrangements for his funeral, but it was unclear which of his two former assistant priests he wanted - probably because he himself was in doubt. I asked around town - one preferred Søe, the other Wentzel - which did not make me any wiser. I didn't want to offend anyone and since I was sure that Søe and Wentzel would participate as speakers in any case, I solved the Gordian knot by choosing the priest my father had grown fond of at his last, Agerbæk's own priest, Rosenkrants. However, this was not an easy choice either, as the priest who has taken over my childhood home in the neighboring town, the Norwegian Pastor Bye, has become my very good friend and has arranged a show for me in the rectory and invited me to “get my childhood room back anytime”. So he could also be a little offended as the funeral was to take place in Fåborg church, which is his. But I managed to solve this little knot as well. As I walked up to the vicarage, I got talking to the gravedigger and his wife - my father's old friends - who said that with all the people who would come to my father's funeral, we would never be able to be in Fåborg church, which only seats 150. Well, I remembered how they had stood far out in the cemetery when he buried his ex-wife, Ragna, who he would now lie next to. This immediately gave me the idea that I could move the ceremony to Agerbæk Church, even though the burial would take place at Fåborg Church. This way, Pastor Bye wouldn't be offended either, as he could then perform the burial. But then the third Gordian knot arose: by only involving two of my father's three old churches, the congregation in Årre church might feel a little left out. So the idea arose - with the fantastic diplomatic empathy I'm known for (?) - that the funeral should take place from all three of my father's church congregations - quite naturally. A decision I later received a lot of praise for from all sides, but which in reality arose because I have never in my life been able to make a choice. And not out of any desire for my father to have an almost majestic funeral. The fact that it actually ended up being a bit majestic by accident didn't bother me at all - despite my father's own modesty - as a funeral should be for the bereaved and not for the deceased.
 

Now I began to feel that I could actually master a bit of the art of practical organization that my father was known for. So when Bente Rosenkrants arrived later that morning to discuss the practicalities, for the first time in my life, I felt worthy to take my place in the executive chair behind the big desk. I have always avoided this seat in deep reverence for my father. Even when I looked after him this summer while he was lying on the sofa in the office, I sat in the living room to work rather than at his desk. Throughout my childhood, I had sat and curled up on the wrong side of this desk and received one admonishing speech after another from my father with his deeply furrowed brow and almost paternal authority: “You need to get a grip on yourself....is that wise....what will become of you....” etc. His words still vibrate in my head and make me crawl into a mouse hole and feel like my whole life has failed. But now the roles had to be reversed! With my new authority, I made sure that Pastor Rosenkrants got as low a stool as possible “on the wrong side of the desk” - a bit like Hitler and Mussolini in Chaplin's “The Dictator”. She's already small and much younger than me. And you have no idea what a joy it was to experience the sweet hour of revenge, talking down to the trembling, shaking little boy I envisioned. And I must really have had some authority over me, because Bente immersed herself so completely in the role with a self-effacing humility - Inge is my witness - that I finally had to make her aware of what was happening - for fear that she would walk away having suffered irreparable damage to her soul. So when she heard how much it meant to me to finally “be able to talk down to a priest”, we all had a liberating laugh, and we've actually been best friends ever since.


 

And so this whole strange next day - after the night's death - was filled with a mixture of crying and laughter, with tears creeping in every time you didn't do anything practical. But the incredible thing happened, before noon the inn, two priests involved, three churches with bell ringers and gravediggers and the undertaker were already in place. I was recommended the undertaker Henry Puggård from many quarters, who was probably the greatest experience of the funeral for us of all involved. Both he and his wife had been baptized, confirmed and married by my father, so it meant a lot to him to be there. And vice versa for me to have someone who had been deeply influenced by my father. He had often had long discussions about my father's sermons with his father-in-law, who was one of the most prominent missionaries of the year. But during the conversation with him in Varde, this almost led to a crisis with Inge when Henry told her how it was his custom to let the relatives dress the deceased themselves along with children and grandchildren. Inge firmly put her foot down. She had never heard it said that children should be involved. But I could immediately see the idea and the therapeutic aspect of it, and I almost crushed her with all the visions this immediately gave me. “You're from my father's generation. I just read in his memoirs how he wasn't even present at my birth and I almost feel insulted. But in this day and age, no father would dream of not helping to drag their children into this world unless they belong to some backward country's culture. But Henry here, who was deeply influenced by my father growing up, is one of the first to create a new revolution, where it will be just as natural for us to drag our relatives into the clothes for their final journey out of this world. Can't you see that your attitude is turning the role of the undertaker into something despicable - a kind of scavenger who is paid to do the dirty work. But how can this work be considered dirty when it is what you yourself have gained dignity from over the past months, having to dress dad every day and when you cuddled and kissed him as much in death as in life?” Well, there was no limit to the visions I could suddenly envision, which I don't think even Henry himself had thought of. But I left the matter for the time being and instead prepared to persuade the rest of the family, who were coming in the evening to “put the lid on the coffin”, as they say. Suddenly, I couldn't believe that generation after generation had resigned themselves to saying goodbye to their loved ones by letting an undertaker put a lid on the coffin for them after half an hour of neutral gazing at the deceased. But as we all know, the poor who couldn't afford a funeral director didn't do that in the old days either.

In the evening, the whole family came from near and far and Inge and I had ordered a feast from the hotel, because it was to be “like the feast on the last happy evening we had with Dad.” The three cousins had been crying non-stop for two days now and when I got up the courage to try to get the rest of the family on my side in the matter of Dad's attire the next day during dinner - well, the cousins burst into tears at the thought of having to dress Grandpa and go to the bathroom. Fortunately, my brothers are quite progressive, so it didn't prove difficult. In fact, even Inge could allow herself to object, as Henry Puggård is no stranger to her reaction and therefore leaves the family members who don't want to join us outside in the adjoining chapel with a door half open. And as he had said, what always ends up happening when they hear the others - first crying, then laughter and then a big mix of everything around the deceased - is that they all end up joining in the process.

And that's exactly what happened the next day - except that we were all present from the beginning around Dad's naked body, covered only by a shroud. At first we stood for half an hour at a respectful distance and cried. We had plenty of time as Henry would stay with us well into the night if necessary. Naturally, those who had had the most contact with Dad in his last dying week and had best gotten used to his new desouled state approached him first and began to stroke, kiss and hug him. First Inge, then me and then Steen. Henry, who stood discreetly in the background the whole time, then gave a wonderful little liberating lecture about why the skin now looked ugly, about the fluids in the body, etc. If anyone should have a Nobel Prize as a funeral director, all of us who have been under his gentle, calm care will no doubt nominate him.

Then we started to dress dad. I think it was me who put underpants on him, while Lalou and Kamilla put socks on him. I tried to get 6-year-old Christian to tickle grandpa's toes, but he didn't dare. Of course, we had all imagined a dead body as completely rigid and were therefore afraid that dad's cold arms would break when we struggled to get his white T-shirt on and over his white shirt. But Henry reassured us that there was no danger. Now everyone started to loosen up, to make little jokes in the midst of crying, this whole strange process of processing grief. That's what this whole process was about and about having a natural relationship with death. Henry had told me that this process had been particularly important for parents who had just lost a teenage son, for example. One mother had written to him that without this therapeutic help, she would never have been able to process her grief over the loss of her son. More importantly, as we stood there doing the undertaker's dirty work, it seemed to all of us - not least Inge, who had first reacted against the idea - as the most natural thing in the world. My father's cold skin finally felt so nice and delicious and almost irresistible.

The big moment came when he had to put on his cassock and we all had to lift him from the stretcher into the coffin. On that occasion, Daniel took a picture that looked almost Rembrandt-like, with the father floating on the hands of his three sons.

Then we held a small devotion in the chapel, where the cousins continued to stroke grandpa's hair, now again with tears running at the thought of the temporary farewell of a week while grandpa was in the fridge. We had again ordered food from the hotel, as we did not know how long the dressing and saying goodbye to dad would take. I picked up the food again at the hotel from the innkeeper, who had asked the night before: “Well, what about the food for the 80 tomorrow? Are you coming for that too?” And on that occasion we realized that this was the day when Dad and Inge should have celebrated their combined 150th birthday, which we now ended up celebrating by putting the coffin lid over one half. I apologized profusely that in the confusion we had forgotten to cancel the 150th birthday party.
 

I was now back in Copenhagen for a week, working flat out to getmy father's memories printedand posted on the Internet. But scanning and selecting tons of pictures from his life turned out to be a bigger task than I expected. However, I did get a demonstration copy printed. There was also a lot of work with ads, obituaries etc. in various newspapers. I was very careful to write “Provost Jacob Holdt” everywhere. Even so, several of Politiken's readers were shocked to see that I was dead at first sight and called me up. This gave me a wonderful little taste of how people would react to my own death.


 

The funeral was, of course, as it should be. Although the viewing from Varde Chapel was not announced for fear of traffic chaos, a large group of my father's best friends had found their way in anyway. Teacher Bennedsen performed the singing out very beautifully, the speech can be seen on the Internet. After the powerful experience of dressing my father the week before, it now felt “like no big deal” to put the lid on his own father. Beforehand, however, we gave him all the gifts for the trip, letters, drawings, etc. Vibeke returned his last Christmas present, a book by Ålbæk Jensen, which she had struggled to get through. I had made a large picture of Dad and Inge together, which I gave to him. I was most sad that his deanery secretary for many years, Inger Jørgensen, who had been such a strong support to him (and us) during the difficult years with my mother, could not be there due to a long trip abroad. In memory of her, I had brought a bottle of whiskey that she had given him during his illness this summer, but which he could not drink at the time. I now gave it to him in the coffin. But at the last minute I was annoyed that my father had to have the whole bottle for himself and spontaneously unscrewed the lid and took a big swig with the words: “I know it will be a hard day to get through for all of us, Dad, so I need something to strengthen me just like you now get it from Mrs. Jørgensen on your long journey.”
(However, this was a stopgap solution on the edge of the grave. In reality, I had tried to get this sip to man up for the farewell on the whole drive to the chapel, but had sat next to my mother-in-law in the car and therefore did not dare to open the bottle).
 

The others later said that for a moment it had looked like I was going to pour the whole bottle over dad, but I'm not that crazy. On the other hand, I had learned how important humor is for processing grief and this made it a little easier for all of us to irrevocably put a lid on dad immediately afterwards. During the long funeral procession, which got longer and longer as people joined in, I sat in the front of the hearse with Puggård. We both had cell phones to direct various ringers in the towers of the various churches and the like. I had laid out and measured the route around Gunderup so that we could enter Årre from the right side. I didn't want anyone to feel cheated and go off half-cocked or lay out spruce branches in vain. I wanted my father to have the opportunity to say goodbye to all three church congregations that had meant so much to him. As soon as we drove into Årre town, we heard the church bells and the whole long road up to the church was covered with yellow flowers. Here I drove the hearse up to the memorial service in front of the church on the hill, where the large congregation stood in line in front with bowed heads during the ringing while the now long cortege had to stay below. It was a beautiful farewell and as always, it was me who broke the ceremony by jumping around in confusion to photograph it all. Photography - standing at a distance from the action - is a great way to hold back the tears. Once everyone was in the cars, we drove on towards Fåborg.

Here, all the carriages with the family drove up to the vicarage along the long elm avenue, which was beautifully covered with yellow flowers. Out on the road itself, my childhood friend from the age of 3, Jens, had laid a spruce and flower carpet. This is where he and Niels Jørgen and I as boys were always told by our father to lay out a spruce blanket every time there was a funeral for someone in town. The much heavier traffic these days has meant that people now put flower carpets inside their driveways instead. In the middle of the courtyard, Pastor Bye and his wife had made a huge round flower arrangement that we now circled the wagons around as we said goodbye to our childhood home. This was one of the many times during the day when I and - I think - both my brothers had to burst into tears, because the vicarage had not only been the setting for our childhood, but also for the incredible popular work my father had created around it and in it. At Fåborg church, we stopped again to pick up neighbors, including Marius' parents, Niels and Frida. In Agerbæk, I parted in the hearse from the now mile-long cortege - officially to let my father say goodbye to his last home on Debelvej, which was now like a long flower carpet - unofficially because we had discovered in the chapel that in the confusion we had forgotten the Knight's Cross, which is part of a funeral in these parts. Although my father's death had given me a strange freedom to suddenly rummage through all his drawers, I never imagined that - before he was even buried - I would end up ripping out so many drawers as quickly as I did to find his knight's cross. But I succeeded and my new friend, Henry, quickly put it on the coffin so we could reach the church in dignified and exalted calm, where all 300 people were now waiting in front of the church.

And funerals are a strange thing, because even if you, like me, feel that you've had ample opportunity to cry out during the long course of his illness and personally thank your father at his bedside, - well, the ceremony and the atmosphere still makes you burst into tears when you have to carry your father past all these people with all their different feelings towards him from a long life together. One reason I had chosen Bente Rosenkrants was that she has a lovely, light and smiling way of preaching (her beautiful speech is on the Internet) and when it came to an 80-year-old I wanted it to be a celebration. Yet my tears kept betraying this celebratory mood. I also knew almost exactly when it would happen - like when we had to carry the coffin out of the church to the tune of “Så rejse vi til vort fædreland” - the hymn we had hung with pictures illustrating each verse up the stairs to my room in the vicarage. But shortly afterwards you are able to function normally again - like when I saw that many outside the church did not have a car, not least the 80-year-old teacher Jessen, who was also the father of Ingrid, my girlfriend in high school - and got them a car. Now the whole long cortege had to drive back to Fåborg church, where I and my brothers and Daniel and my father's two best neighbor friends carried the coffin across the cemetery with the two ordained priests in front of us and numerous neighboring priests behind us.

As I slowly read the names on the gravestones, I couldn't help but wonder how many people would have attended the funeral if it had been 10-15 years ago. Because here was my father's entire generation - the pillars of my childhood - Brosbøl, Søndergård, Abrahamsen, etc. as well as many of my own schoolmates like Henning, Bruno, Bjarne, Finn, Lise, “kjøn Erik”, Peter Ludvig, etc. After the burial, which is the moment I hate most at funerals, all the participants filed past and greeted us in the family, all as one with sad faces. But as the line was half an hour long, it was hard even to maintain an appropriate grimace towards the end. I hadn't seen many people in years and it was embarrassing to have to ask them who they were, but luckily Niels Jørgen was ahead of me so I could listen in when he made a fool of himself. Others, like my father's good friend, Ivar Hansen, I had plenty of opportunity to see again during the summer's illness.
 

Finally came the highlight of it all, the grave coffee at the inn. I won't try to describe this phase, where the boil has passed and everyone is in high spirits, with the traditions associated with it in West Jutland, as my father has done much better in his memoirs, which you can see on the Internet. I had been down to the inn myself in the morning to decorate and set up a small memorial where people could sign up for his book of remembrance. I'm also going to put all the speeches on my father's memorial site on the Internet when I get time. It was mostly the many pastors who gave speeches besides us three brothers. Pastor Wentzel suggested that my father's funeral speeches, which were particularly famous, should be published. During Steen's speech, his ex-wife got angry at what he said and walked out and Niels Jørgen spent a lot of time, as usual, berating his older brother and complaining about all the gardening we had had to do in the large rectory garden in our childhood. I didn't know what to say about my father, who in many ways is still a mysterious shadow that follows me everywhere. So I told a little about the unknown aspects of his life that I had just experienced while reading his memoirs. We all thanked Inge for her sacrificial love, while I didn't forget to send a touching greeting from Dad's ex-wife Rie in America, whom I visited later in the year to report on the funeral in person. And not least, we thanked Henry Puggård for giving “us all an experience of a lifetime.” His father-in-law came up afterwards and thanked us for all the kind words. Incidentally, this was a Gordian knot I never managed to solve despite my great diplomatic skills - that Pastor Rosenkrants' own husband, who was present, owned the area's only competing funeral home. Apparently it's easier to distribute a body among many priests than among many undertakers.

 

But now New Year's Eve is approaching and I have to get this job done. Vibeke's much-needed vacation had been ruined by a concussion and death, and I was about to leave for the US. Because of my statements about immigrants on the TV news, the Nazis threatened to kill my family just before departure, so Lalou was a little nervous that the Nazis would crawl in to her via the scaffolding in front of the house that was being painted. Admittedly, I had no shows in the US as the schools had all preferred to postpone until spring, not knowing when my father would die. But there was so much rust in my car over there that it couldn't pass inspection in Massachusetts and had to be registered in New York. I also did research in the major libraries in NY, Washington and Los Angeles, the latter where I was kicked out of a polling station for disparaging Bush.

I also managed to spend a day at Scientology's big propaganda headquarters in the desert with movie studios as big as Hollywood, all financed by the poor people they plunder around the world. The greatest experience was researching in the posh Library of Congress, where, Kasele, one of my old beautiful black students now worked. I will never forget how she stood for a long time after the show, trembling, even shaking all over with movement. And I relived that many years later in a very special way when she led me into the kilometer-long corridors with books, where no ordinary mortals like me are allowed to go. But wherever we went, the black employees recognized me and greeted me “Hello, Mr. Holdt.” I was mildly surprised at their literacy, but it turned out that Kasele had been telling them about me for years and getting them to read my book. Why they also persuaded me to donate more copies, as one of the library's two copies had now disappeared - probably for the same reason. That's why I couldn't get a better assistant for my research than Kasele, who served only one customer during all the days I was there: me. Even though I wrote out stacks of orders for books I needed, she ran around all day long to find them in the three buildings that spanned several of Washington's major avenues. But such long, winding corridors are also ideal for flirting, as Vibeke was the first to realize when I came home and showed her pictures of Kasele's beauty.

In the evenings, I thanked her for her efforts by taking her to concerts or restaurants. The other thing I was researching was a new book Gyldendal has asked me to write about my predecessor Jacob Riis. A project that seems a bit more manageable than my world history, but let's see if I can make it happen. In any case, it will be written as a bit of a self-reckoning, as both Vibeke and I have found far too many unpleasant similarities between Riis and me - mostly in a negative direction. However, I was far from finished, because in the middle of all the fun, Vibeke called one night to say that my ex-wife Annie was dying at home and wanted to see me first. It was a bit too much death in one month. I'd had nightmarish dreams about my father throughout the trip to the US, which still kept me awake. That night, I dropped everything and drove up to New York to catch a flight home the next day. As I drove towards the airport, however, the traffic was so congested that I decided to take a shortcut through the West Indian ghetto in Brooklyn. But here the engine suddenly exploded in smoke and steam and I lost the automatic steering. So instead of ending up with a couple of cold Icelandic stewardesses, I ended up with a couple of hot-blooded Trinidadian mechanics and didn't get home until the next day. I went straight from the airport to the hospital. Annie was completely worn out from diabetes and all sorts of related illnesses and was in terrible pain when I entered. But after some time her condition improved and she seems to be coping. She still has her sense of humor. She thinks it's terrible to end up in a ward when there is such a cozy life with lots of people out in the crowded hospital wards. But she also speaks as a contrast to the lonely life she normally leads in her everyday life in a sheltered accommodation, where she only has my Christmas letters to look forward to, as she says. And then you know that she must be miserable.
 

And so it was Christmas again after a year that - a little too much - was dominated by family. Next year I will try to live a little more outgoing. In March, it's the 25th anniversary of American Images and to mark the occasion, I've launched a new “Millenium” edition in which I try to deal with our own racism in Denmark - a “therapeutic show.” I've also teamed up with the newspaper Politiken, which will use it in its own campaign against racism and, among other things, be behind a big birthday event on March 29 in Diamanten (Det Kgl. Bibliotek). Even if you've seen the old version, I hope to see many of you at this event. But there are more 25th anniversary events you can join us for. On Saturday, June 23, for the first time ever, I'm opening a photo exhibition of my “dead” photos - also from the Third World - in the Round Tower. For many, it's the first day of vacation, so I think you should change your vacation route to Copenhagen and use the occasion for a summer party. You only got three days' notice for the bridge race party, but this time you've been warned six months in advance, so it's harder to find a good excuse for not showing up! Have a very happy new year.


 

With love and best wishes

 

Jacob Holdt
Gernersgade 63, 1319 Copenhagen K
Phone. 33-124412 , Mobile when on tour: 20-324412 (In USA: 212-614-0438)
E-mail: jacobholdt@american-pictures.com
Special web pages under www.american-pictures.com/..... :
Previous Christmas letters: .../Danish/jacob/julebreve.htm (with this year's pictures)
Memorial site for my father:.../Danish/jacob/far/Provst.Holdt.htm
My father's memories:.../Danish/jacob/fars.erindringer.htm
My running in Denmark:.../Danish/jacob/motion.htm
My mentioned genealogy pages: ..../genealogy/saints.htm
List of my lectures, locations and dates: ..../calendar/lectures.htm
 

Remember to email me your email address today!

 

Back to part 1
 

Back to index