And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

by Fredrik Backman

Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying.

“What do I say to Noah? How do I explain that I’m going to be leaving him even before I die?”

Her body stopped working before her brain did. For Grandpa it’s the opposite.

“Why are you holding my hand so tight, Grandpa?” the boy whispers again. “Because all of this is disappearing, Noahnoah. And I want to keep hold of you longest of all.” The boy nods. Holds his grandpa’s hand tighter in return.

“Does it hurt?” he asks. “No, not really,” Grandpa replies. “I mean on the inside. Does it hurt on the inside?” “It hurts less and less. That’s one good thing about forgetting things. You forget the things that hurt too.”

“We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.” “An ordinarily extraordinary life.”

“And I don’t think you need to be scared of forgetting me,” the boy says after a moment’s consideration. “No?” The corners of the boy’s mouth reach his earlobes. “No. Because if you forget me then you’ll just get the chance to get to know me again. And you’ll like that, because I’m actually a pretty cool person to get to know.”