_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [41]
Later that afternoon, at Expo, I spoke with the ten-person team that regularly worked with us. They still didn’t want to see the therapist I’d mentioned to them, and said they all had someone close to them to see them through.
AS THE days went by, I tried to take care of our outstanding bills at home but couldn’t do the math in my head, the way I always did, and I needed a calculator. When I looked at the numbers, they jumped around, wouldn’t stay still. The “animal me” clearly didn’t need to know how to count!
I also attempted to read Carl Laurin’s essay on Carl Larsson, the illustrator and painter who was a beloved figure in the Swedish Arts and Crafts movement. All I could do, though, was trail after the letters as they went by, and I kept having to start sentences over again, trying to understand what I’d just read. At the end of the fifth page, I just quit. The animal didn’t want to read, either. Would I ever be able to go back to work again?
SVANTE WEYLER phoned me on November 26 and suggested during our conversation that the legal department at Norstedts should look into the inheritance situation, since they were the ones in the best position to do so. “The important thing is to arrive at a morally acceptable solution,” I told him. On Wednesday, December 1, Eva Gedin, an editor with Norstedts, called to tell me that Stieg’s book was fantastic, that they were considering several designs for the cover, and she invited me to come have a look at them. She added that they’d felt Stieg had grown quite close to them even though they knew almost nothing about him, and I said I hoped the memorial service, commemoration, and following reception would offer a full appreciation of Stieg’s life.
Goodbyes
December 10, 2004
I WOKE up very early that morning. When I try to remember that day and the ones that followed, I can find only scraps of memories lost in a fog. I wrote nothing down in my diary; it was as if I hadn’t been there. The burial service in a small chapel was only for relatives and close friends, whereas the commemoration was a more formal, public event.
It was a lovely December day, sunny, without any snow. The breeze was gentle and mild. Police were discreetly stationed everywhere. In Sweden, the law requires that the dates and hours of funerals be made available to the public online. We were afraid that right-wing extremists might disrupt the ceremony, so the funeral director and the Expo staff did their best to provide adequate security.
Erland flew in with his companion, and Joakim came with his wife Maj and their two children. When they saw the fifty or so guests at the chapel service they were astonished, having thought that only people close to Stieg and me would attend. I explained that they were right—that everyone there was a close friend, and that a great many of our friends were even missing because not all of them could come, especially not from abroad.
The commemoration would be held in central Stockholm at the headquarters of the Workers’ Educational Association. I’d chosen eighteen speakers who would talk about Stieg, including Graeme Atkinson from Searchlight and Mikael Ekman from Expo.
Since I was supposed to speak as well, I’d tried to write out a little speech the day before, but the words hadn’t come. Yet I had to say something. So I’d decided to show how tender and affectionate Stieg was by reading the letter he’d written me in 1977 from his hospital bed in Addis Ababa, where he had almost died. He’d told me how much he loved me and that when he returned, he wanted us to build a new life together. But I couldn’t find that letter. I spent the entire afternoon searching the whole apartment, until late that evening, after going through every closet, I found a big cardboard box in one of our storerooms, and inside it was a small box crammed full of letters. On one manila envelope