Across the Fjord

He leans in close, like he’s going to share a secret.

I stay quiet, giving him time and space to tell me.
These days, there’s no predicting what my father will say.

Maybe he’ll tell the story about the moment he first saw my mother across the room
at the church mixer, laughing with a friend over a slice of chocolate cake,
and knew he’d love her forever.

Or maybe he’ll ask, for the hundredth time that day, why he is here in this hospital bed.

He takes a deep breath, eyes wide and unblinking, and tells me his dream.

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I wish I had my father’s eyes.

They are the crystal blue of a high alpine lake and just as clear, even at 90.

His hands quiver but his gaze is steady over bifocals perched on his peaked Viking nose.

That look, that quiet steady look was his parenting superpower. He needed no words to make a daughter squirm a bit and think about all the ways she could and should be a better person.

For most of his life my father was a planner, always looking forward.

Then my mother died, and his eyes could no longer see the future. He survived

moment to moment, a solo parent shepherding three daughters into adulthood.

These days his eyes focus on fond memories, his vision retreating to a time before I knew him.

I do not have my father’s eyes but I did get his eyebrows, and that is no small thing. Unwieldy, unpredictable, untamable. On my father’s brow they look fierce,

somewhere between the Old Testament God and Santa Claus.

On his daughter they simply look unkept, if not for regular trimming and plucking.

****************************************

“I keep having this dream,” he tells me as he leans in, giving me the look.

I raise my dad-given eyebrows, signaling that I am listening.

In his dream he’s standing at the edge of a Norwegian fjord, looking across
the still water to the mountains. It’s breathtaking, he says. Misty wisps of cool fog,
a spectrum of grasses and stones up the hill, the water surface a deep blue mirror.

Across the fjord he sees a person.

He’s pretty sure he’s looking at himself, standing on the other shore. He’s not sure which version of himself is real. Behind this other self a path winds up

into the mountains. The path is lined with rocks, and the rocks are glowing red.

Pulsing like a heart, he says. My own heart begins to race and I hold my breath.

“It sounds beautiful,” I say.
“Does this mean I’m checking out?” He sounds so vulnerable.

It’s a question for which I am wildly unprepared.

****************************************

A short list of things a modern Viking, or a modern Viking’s daughter, should know about death:

First, know that there will be an afterlife, beyond joining angels in heaven or demons in hell. The old Norse gods Odin, Freya, Ran and Hel each rule their own afterworlds.

When a Viking dies, these gods gather to consult. They’ll consider which realm is the best fit for this fallen mortal. One of the gods will claim that soul and spirit it off to their afterworld. Everyone fits in somewhere.

Odin, top dog among the Norse deities, is the god of war and ruler of Valhalla.

In Valhalla, battles rage all day, wounds heal by nightfall, and the after-parties are wild and indulgent. Heroes and strong fighters head up his draft pick.

Freya, goddess of love and beauty, seems to lean toward those who die righteous deaths, on or off the battlefield. Her realm is called Folkvangr, the field of the people. There will be epic battles but also poetry, and tenderness.

Those who die at sea join the giant goddess Ran. Hers is a murky and mysterious underwater afterworld. Sailors tossed overboard by a North Sea squall spend eternity drifting through kelp forests with narwhal and giant squid for company. Peaceful, with its own beauty, but lonely and cold.

Then there are the poor souls whose lives end by unglamorous, unrighteous means. Deaths by infections gone septic, by tripping off a cliff, by murder, by apathy. Hel sorts those souls into one of her nine underworlds, depending on how they lived their lives. Hel gives you what you deserve.

After death, the best send-off for a Viking’s soul involves the body laid on a bed of tinder in a small wooden boat, drifting down a lazy river. The tinder is lit, possibly by a flaming arrow, so the smoke and ash can carry the spirit off to the realms of the gods.

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My father leans back on his pillow, eyes closed. I think about where the red pulsing path across the fjord might lead. Not to Valhalla, I pray. He has survived his share of battles in this lifetime already, most leaving scars invisible to the rest of the world. The glory of the fight brings him no joy.

Let Freya choose him, I pray.

Let him go over the hillside to join a gathering of friends in the Folkvangr.

Let him glimpse my mother through the crowd, where she’s been waiting for him. Let her turn to him and smile, because she’s missed those eyes of blue, and would he like to join her for a slice of chocolate cake?

I watch him sleep, his snore a low rumble, hands twitching as he dreams, and I know more battles lie ahead for this gentle Viking.

Let them be followed by tenderness, I pray, and poetry, and love.