I did not make it to my father’s funeral. Finnish airlines happened to go to strike, just that day. But I made it the next day with Japan Airlines.
His grave was still new from the ceremony with fresh flowers and spruce twigs laid on top of a kind of cover that was placed on top of the grave. Father was lying silently in frozen ground.
It seemed to add to the strangeness of my first close encounter with death, seeing my father’s coffin ready to be buried in middle of snow like that. We humans can’t imagine how it would feel not to be.
This time my visit was shorter than I expected. But before I departed, I woke up early morning and took a walk in the crisp Finland winter. The night sky opened up magnificent above me. Some of the stars whose tiny light reached me probably didn’t exist anymore.
It was time for me to go.
