View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

I dreamt of him last night. The dream was so vivid. And sometimes I can feel him. His hand on my cheek to touch the tears as I sit and cry from all the losses in my life. As always, his gentle presence is a comfort to me. Oh, how I would have liked to be able to just put my head on his shoulder. My father. Forever 54.

His birthday would have been today. Hence the vivid memories. It is only natural to dwell on his life today, on his birthday. He would have been 101 today, had he lived. Instead he died 46 years ago from brain cancer. His death came quickly and I grieved deeply. I think a part of me is still grieving.

When we were growing up, I had a mother who was impatient and rash. Eager to pursue a career when most women were content to stay at home. My father, the CFO of a major shipping company, spent almost all his free time, when he had it, being the kind, patient parent who listened and loved.

He grew up in Mandal, a city in Southern Norway. The youngest of three boys. His father had a hardware store. In 1940, he was 18 and left for the University of Oslo to study economics. But there was a war going on and Norway was occupied by the Nazis. Eventually, they closed the university and arrested all the students, because the university was a hotbed for the underground. My father was not at the university that day. He was busy with the secret and highly dangerous work of the underground Norwegian army trying sabotage to get the Nazis out of Norway.

One day he heard a knock on the door. Outside stood a SS officer. My father closed the door in his face, ran to the back of the house and jumped out the window. Using skis he escaped through the back yard and quickly made it to a safe house where he was hidden until it was possible for him to be transported into neutral Sweden. There he joined another arm of the Norwegian army and trained for the invasion of Norway that was being planned with help of the Allied forces.

While in Sweden, he corresponded with my mother whom he had met at the university. The letters were censored so it was important to pretend he was Swedish, but he also wanted my mother to know he missed her and hoped she would wait for him. After my mother died, I found those letters and will write about them at some point.

During the winter of 1944/45, the Norwegian army invaded Norway from the north on skis. They were to meet up with British troops as they skied south. But all they saw was houses burnt when the Nazis withdrew. At night, they slept in their sleeping bags buried in snow. After a while it was obvious that there would be no battle, but they were told to stay and be on the lookout for hidden Nazis.

When the war was finally over, the university reopened. All the students who were still alive returned. My parents reconnected and married in 1948. They had three children. I was the oldest.

He was a wonderful father. Funny and kind. We would hike together on weekends in the woods around Oslo. In the winter we would ski. And it was only during these ski trips that he might talk about his time during the war. How they had skied for weeks and how some of his friends had died. Otherwise, he never talked about it.

And despite his success as an economist and his love for his family, he was at times depressed. And at night, I would sometimes hear how he paced, haunted by his memories.

I so wish he could have lived longer and been able to enjoy grandchildren and how my brother grew up to become a principal. And I wished I could have told him what a strong influence he was and still is on my life.