Dear rex,

I've made a new piece for the exhibition tomorrow. It's different from the ones I've done the last years. But I like it. It's very personal. It's a print of a jetty leading out to the lake Svärdsjön in Sweden. In this lake I learned to swim as a child. It's one of the most important places in the world to me. It's one of those places where I can feel truly calm and at peace. The jetty in the picture is quite new, it replaced the one before, that replaced the one before, that replaced the one before that my grandfather built. At this spot my grandmother used to take her morning baths during the summer. She spent the last 30 years of her life alone after my grandfather died in an heart attack. I never met him, but my mother says we would have liked each other very much.

The print is beautiful but the significant part of the work for me is the sound that you listen to on headphones. In a soft whispering voice I tell you this:

I don't remember if she was strong enough to take her morning baths the last summer. I don't even remember if she could stay at the cottage at all.



My mum kept me updated during the last part, called me from the hospital. I was in Helsinki at the time. But just the week before she passed away I went home, to Sweden. I went home to sell things at my school's Christmas market. The business was good and I earned quite a lot of money, and when the weekend was over I returned to Finland.

I didn't change my plans, even though I understood that this would be my last chance to see her, to say goodbye in person. I kept my focus on all the good times we had spent together, all those hours we spoke on the phone. I treasured them, felt gratitude for them, and felt in a way content. I think I had started to say goodbye long before it was actually time.

But I forgot to look at the situation from her perspective. It didn't even occur to me that maybe she needed to say goodbye, that she might have wanted to see me one last time. That it would have meant something to her. That it would have meant something if I had changed my plans just to give her one more hug and to tell her that I loved her.

I worked late the night she died. I remember going to the toilet and when sitting there thinking that now, just now, might be the time when she falls into her eternal sleep.

My mom called me one hour later to tell me she was gone. She died in the hospital. Two of her children were with her in the room. The only thing I could feel was pain.

The insight that I had been blind to her perspective, only having eyes for what I thought was best for me, came much later.

It's one of the things I will always regret and wish I would have done different.

I cried many tears when writing this. It's a bit scary to share it, I feel ashamed, but sometimes it can be good to do things that are embarrassing and frightening. I'm trying to lean on the saying that “sharing is caring” and hope for the best.

I hope all is well with you and that your life is filled with love.

All the best,
Johanna