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.

Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.

He puts a hand in the boy’s hair, not ruffling it, just letting his fingers rest there.

The bench is surrounded by trees, because Grandpa loves trees, because trees don’t give a damn what people think.

“Those who hasten to live are in a hurry to miss,”

“The only time you’ve failed is if you don’t try once more.”

Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they’d been able to go back and say better. Our good-bye doesn’t have to be like that, you’ll be able to keep redoing it until it’s perfect. And once it’s perfect, that’s when your feet will touch the ground and I’ll be in space, and there won’t be anything to be afraid of.”

“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.”

Noah’s cheek is resting against the old man’s collarbone.

Grandpa closes his eyes. Breathes in the boy’s hair.

“I . . . she . . . that’s your grandma. She was younger. You never got to meet her young, she has . . . she had the strongest feelings I ever experienced in a person, when she got angry she could empty a full bar of grown men, and when she was happy . . . there was no defending yourself against that, Noahnoah. She was a force of nature. Everything I am came from her, she was my Big Bang.”

“How did you fall in love with her?” the boy asks. Grandpa’s hands land with one palm on his own knee and one on the boy’s. “She got lost in my heart, I think. Couldn’t find her way out. Your grandma always had a terrible sense of direction. She could get lost on an escalator.”

“Noahnoah, promise me something, one very last thing: once your good-bye is perfect, you have to leave me and not look back. Live your life. It’s an awful thing to miss someone who’s still here.”

‘Ted, we’re not going into space because we’re afraid of aliens. We’re going because we’re scared we’re alone. It’s an awfully big universe to be alone in.’ ”

It’s a big universe to be angry at but a long life to have company in.