The Deal of a Lifetime

by Fredrik Backman

Maybe you will find this to be a strange story, I don’t know. It’s not very long, so at least it will be over quickly in that case.

Every parent will take five minutes in the car outside the house from time to time, just sitting there. Just breathing and gathering the strength to head back inside to all of their responsibilities. The suffocating expectation of being good, coping. Every parent will take ten seconds in the stairwell occasionally, key in hand, not putting it in the lock.

I had a brother. I’ve never told you that. He was dead when we were born. Maybe there was only room for one of us on this earth, and I wanted it more. I clambered over my brother in the womb. I was a winner, even then.

You were always someone who could be happy. You don’t know how much of a blessing that is.

Happy people don’t create anything, their world is one without art and music and skyscrapers, without discoveries and innovations. All leaders, all of your heroes, they’ve been obsessed. Happy people don’t get obsessed, they don’t devote their lives to curing illnesses or making planes take off. The happy leave nothing behind. They live for the sake of living, they’re only on earth as consumers. Not me.

“We’re not meant to feel things. But I’m not . . . just my job. I have . . . interests too. I knit.” She gestured to her grey sweater. I tried to nod appreciatively, because it felt like she expected it.

“Every night, I wondered whether it was possible to change a person.” “What did you conclude?” “That we are who we are.”

“You’re not scared. You’re just grieving. No one tells you humans that your sorrow feels like fear.”