My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

by Fredrik Backman

“Changing memories is a good superpower, I suppose.” Granny shrugs. “If you can’t get rid of the bad, you have to top it up with more goody stuff.”

Elsa is the sort of child who learned early in life that it’s easier to make your way if you get to choose your own soundtrack.

Granny’s flat is exactly like Mum’s except much messier, because Granny’s flat is like Granny and Mum’s flat is like Mum.

“Idiots can’t understand that non-idiots are done with a thought and already moving on to the next before they themselves have. That’s why idiots are always so scared and aggressive. Because nothing scares idiots more than a smart girl.”

Then Elsa hears her mum’s voice, and for a moment she wants to run out and throw herself into her arms. But she doesn’t, because she wants her mother to be upset. Elsa knows she has already won, but she wants Mum to know it too. Just to make sure she’s hurting as much as Elsa is about Granny dying.

You could hear a pin drop in the flat for about thirty minutes after that. Because that is how angry Elsa is, so angry that she has to start measuring time in minutes rather than eternities.

“You don’t like talking so much, do you?” “No… but you do. All the time.” And that’s the first time Elsa believes he’s smiling. Or almost, anyway. “Touché.” Elsa grins.

Granny wasn’t a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist, and the only religion she believed in was Do-It-Later-Buddhism.

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”

This gets tricky, from a narrative perspective, because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them. It is very, very difficult to be the one who has to stay behind and live without them.

one and the tenses are one and the same. They laugh until no one can forget that this is what we leave behind when we go: the laughs.

Elsa’s name is written in almost-neat letters on the envelope and it’s apparent that Granny really did her utmost to spell everything correctly. It didn’t go so very well. But the first five words are: “Sorry I have to dye.” And that’s the day Elsa forgives her granny about that.