With the new update of Underjord.io the Services page got an overhaul and now covers a clarified offering with a few different things. I'll be explaining them here bit by bit.

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My grandmother

This one covers life and decidedly, death. If you are uncomfortable with the end of life and the heavy loss some of us experience in life. That's reasonable. If you are too uncomfortable to read about it you are free to skip it. There won't be anything gruesome but maybe things that are sad.

I'm writing this on the train heading back home to my family after attending my fraternal grandmothers funeral. She lived to be over 90. She lived to need assisted living. She survived more ills in her old age than was frankly reasonable. She was deeply loved.

The funeral was a fairly small affair. More than a dozen people, less than twenty. The people that were there painted a wide and varied picture of where human lives go and where the legacy of one person reaches.

She was one of about 70.000 children that were sent to Sweden for safety as Finland defended itself against Soviet. She and her sister lived with a family there that would later adopt her. She has only told me stories of wartime in Finland. She has only told me stories of peacetime in Sweden.

She married and had four boys. My father and his brothers. Their father died to lung cancer when my father, the eldest, was in his teens. He had to help care for his family at a very early age. I don't have the sense that she was ever quite able to fully process it. As was common at the time she was put on quite heavy medication to handle the grief.

We saw her often and she was great. Especially with us grandchildren. After school I particularly often spent time watching cartoons on her couch in her apartment and being spoiled with treats. She had cable so she had Cartoon Network. The things that draw a kid in...

My father lost one of his brothers when I was young. It could have been drug-related but may also have been just a bad fortune. I always forget the details even though I've asked many times. I probably forget because they were kept fuzzy when I learned of it.

We kept seeing her often. My father took great care to make sure his mother was doing okay and I think part of that was to make sure she saw family on a regular basis. My father was a nurse in psychiatric care. He cared for people professionally and privately.

I in turn lost my father in my teens. A heart issue. Comparatively I think my mother got a lot better help at processing it. It shattered our family's world but it absolutely did not shatter our family.

This was of course a major blow to my grandmother. My father died at 48 years of age. She had now outlived two of her sons. Her two younger ones remained and they kept in touch. My mother, sisters and I also all kept in touch while we lived in town and whenever we visited.

This was roughly the shape of her life until she needed assisted living. She had friends in the apartment complex that eventually passed on with age. At the assisted living place she made new friends.

In many ways she had a very hard and complex life. In outward shape it was very simple. Regardless of how you would feel it that was your life the funeral made it very clear how her life and legacy has spread. My sister was able to bring her son to the funeral. A great grand-child in (restless) attendance. The daughter of her sister was there. Many of us grand-children were there.

Three of her sons had children. Some of us now have children of their own. I don't think any of us will forget her stories and I certainly believe I'll share them with my children. Her grand-children are spread all across Sweden. One is even planning to hope across the pond. And then the memory of a girl who was uprooted to escape the war in Finland during the second world war will have travelled rather far.

The story of her life as I know it centers around family and her legacy is to me about our family and relatives.

Not all lives have to be that. The people and lives we touch in what we do, the things we teach, the people that learn from us, the people that remember something we said because it made and impact, the people that we care for, the people we help, support and cherish. They become our sprawling legacy. If I'm remembered in the same fashion, not for some grand deed, not for some software project of massive renown, just love and humanity. That'll be great.

While it was initially a somber event, as it went it felt a lot more like a celebration and a reconnection of this sprawling web of people. I'm immensely thankful for my family and my relatives. And I'll carry the warmth of my grandmother in my heart forever.

Thank you for humoring this digression into a rather personal thing. Do not feel you have to respond to express condolences but if you have anything to say I'm as always there at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter via @lawik.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate it. Spend some thought on loved ones.