Got a text today from my mother that my grandmother had stopped breathing. She's breathing again now, but it's faint and it can't be much longer now. My mother and her sisters had to raise hell to be allowed inside the care home to see her, since visitors are officially not allowed in for two more weeks. She turned 90 last week, I tried to call her but she was unable to speak. I haven't been able to see her since Christmas because 2020, and now I'm 600 km away and will probably not be able to get there in time, I don't even know right now if I'm going to try. Last time I saw her she had forgotten how to read, her greatest joy in life, so together we read poems by Harry Martinson and Stig Dagerman. She only needed me to read a few lines before the rest of the poem came to her from memory. Before I had to leave, she grabbed my hand and recited from memory:

No one can reinvent the world.

Quiet your hurricane soul.

A hand out held may be all you can offer

to help make a broken man whole.

But this, friend, is more than enough –

a star's steady smile through the rain.

One less human heart bound to hunger

is a sister or brother we gain.

Edit: Just after I posted this my father called me to tell me she had passed away.