The Spark: A Guest Post by Lisa Ridzén

The life he once knew flashes before his eyes, as Bo grapples with having to surrender his independence. This is a moving story about growing old, connecting with family and accepting the inevitable. Read on for an exclusive essay from Lisa Ridzén on writing When the Cranes Fly South.

The spark came when I discovered the notebooks from my granddad’s care team. Flicking through these brief observations of my ninety-four-year-old grandfather’s everyday life made me think: What goes through an elderly man’s mind at the end of his life? What does it feel like when your body slowly gives up?

I’ve worked as a caregiver myself, so the content of the journals was familiar. I understood that aging inspires a need to reflect: worries about dying, regrets, unfinished business loom large. There’s also a vulnerability in an elderly person’s reliance on their caretakers for their basic physical needs that can result in closeness. I chose to tell the story almost entirely from Bo’s point of view—in the first person, which carries an inherent intimacy—so including snippets from the caregivers struck me as a natural way to shade the narrative with an outside perspective. I wanted the reader to feel they could hear his voice and experience the depth of his feelings, so I decided to have Bo address his story to his wife, Fredrika, who has Alzheimer’s and lives apart from him. I’m often struck by how loved ones can remain central in our lives even after they are physically gone. I now live in my grandfather’s house, and despite the fifteen years that have passed since his death I still feel his presence in everyday acts such as bringing in wood and lighting the fire.

When the Cranes Fly South is ultimately a story about three generations of men: not just the characters of Bo, his son, and his father, but also his best friend. I’ve been interested in masculinity and rurality for a long time, which I think comes from my childhood in a small village in northern Sweden. It is also the subject of my academic work. Writing this novel was a way of attempting to better understand the norms of the culture I not only live in but study: I wanted to capture how people’s ways of being, loving, and maintaining all kinds of human relationships are shaped by the time and place we inhabit.                                               

Yet while the characters and the setting may be inspired by people and places from my own life, I hope the novel’s themes will resonate with all readers. I am fascinated by the multitudes older people bear within themselves: we see them, from the outside, simply as old, but they were once children, teenagers in the flush of first love, and adults struggling through mid-life crises.Tensions between fathers and sons are surely common everywhere; these relationships can be difficult and frustrating and hurtful. And still, we are all usually doing the best we can, right to the very end. Sometimes that’s enough, and sometimes it’s not. I wanted to give this ambiguity space, to allow people to experience the story on their own terms, and to find room for their own feelings. Swedish readers seem to have found the novel cathartic, and I hope American readers will, too.