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The Gender Equality Studies and Training Programme (GEST) at the University of Iceland was formally approved as a member of the United Nations University (UNU) network earlier this month.
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May
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Rhubarb Stew
Watch an audio slideshow of how traditional Icelandic rhubarb stew is made. Rhubarb is one of the few vegetables that grows effortlessly in Iceland and for that reason it used to be a highly-valued addition to the traditional diet of fish and lamb.
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14.01.2013 | 12:28
The Lost Generation (JB)
As another week starts to hum its bird song, I was reminded of a day still vivid in my memory. It was a day as perfectly still with clear skies and a luminous light is in the air.
The perfect goodbye.
The grounds are white again, this time with a light fluff of snow arraying the naked grounds with its white powdery cover. The scent is hypnotizing to my puppy Emma, thanks to whom I got up early enough to see the last blue of night pass into the whitish shade of day. She sniffs the air, the snow, even the random leftovers (fireworks, among them) of New Year’s Eve.
It was on a similar day in November 2010, a day on which the air was still from my own sense of loss, that I bid farewell to a grandmother whose life I knew so little of until the very end of her days.
My late grandmother, Júlíana Guðmundsdóttir, was an extraordinary woman whose influences transcended to the core of my existence. She was dearer to me than words can express. She touched the lives of so many.
Those of us who got to know her as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were fortunate to have such a beautiful woman in our lives. She always made us feel special, like we were the most important kid in the world.
As adults she acknowledged that she did not understand our choices sometimes, but as they were not her choices to make, we should live our lives according to the beat of our heart.
She once asked me if my husband made me happy. I told her yes, he made me very happy. In hindsight, I wish I’d asked her if she’d had a happy life with my late grandfather who died in 2003.
For more than 10 years, he lived with the aftermath of a stroke. This strong, quiet man was bound to a wheelchair for more than a decade.
For as long as she could, she looked after him and kept him home. They never had much money and their life often more difficult after the stroke.
They lived in a two-storey apartment building with a big garden. Their apartment was on the top floor and to get to the flat, you had to climb wide, twirling steps to a platform. With my grandfather in a wheelchair, it became increasingly difficult for her to care for him in a house no way suited for a wheelchair-bound man and they sold the property.
While waiting to get a place at the local retirement home’s off-site residential area where they expected to receive assistance from the staff and stay together, they lived in a dim ground-floor apartment of which I shudder to think of as an appropriate home for anyone who has contributed so much to society. It did not have wheelchair access and my grandfather must have been troubled by this life of inhibitions.
When they finally got a place in the retirement home’s off-site residential scheme, our hopes went up. She would receive real assistance and they could be together. As an adult in a loving relationship, I finally understand why they resisted all attempts to move my grandfather to the retirement home at an earlier stage where he would be placed in a room with a stranger as if he were a child with no saying in his own destiny.
They lived together in the small house on the coastal front, where they could watch the waves batter the black stonewall and pull the small peddles to sea where they’d never be seen again.
My grandmother bathed him and looked after him day after day. She got less help than we had expected from the retirement home.
Then, one day, her heart grew weaker and she could no longer care for him in the capacity she had up until that point. He moved to the retirement home’s nursing ward and she stayed behind.
As an individual very much in love with my spouse the thought alone is heart wrenching.
I am ashamed to say, I saw too little of my grandfather, that gentle soul that spent years at sea like so many men of his generation.
When he died, I was living overseas and could not attend the funeral. I wanted to but whether it was money or another form of escape, I did not attend.
I was always very close to my grandmother, both before and after his death. When I came to visit, I would spend hours with her, talking about life, my life mostly because she asked so many questions. She never really understood my choices, but she saw it made me happy and that was enough for her.
When I moved back to Iceland in 2007, I spent a lot of time visiting her the first few months. Then I moved to Reykjavík and saw less of her but used the opportunities I had to see her.
How I wish I’d spend more time driving the half an hour, forty-five minutes to see her every other week.
With her gone, and her generation rapidly fading into oblivion, memories and personal accounts are eternally erased.
A Christian with a humanitarian heart and strong sense of family values, she represents the good in religion and humanity.
I often think of her and her life. She met my grandfather during the war and they got married in the early 1940s. He was a kind man and in my adulthood, their relationship has left an impression on me.
They wanted to be together until the end of their days. Yet they could not. Why is that I ask myself? Did the butterflies bat their wings when he came home from sea?
She lived her life with no regrets and in spite of many obstacles. We can learn so much from the lost generation, if nothing else than to be grateful for life, love and good health.
A woman by the name of Júlíana Guðmundsdóttir taught me that.
Júlíana Björnsdóttir – julianabjornsdottir@gmail.com
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