Tormod, 82 The doves flocked around him at the sound of the rustling bag of bread. Tens of them; Tormod was afraid he might step on one, but they always stepped out of the way at the last moment. And here came the seagulls: Like a small armada, they forced their way through the doves to get to the biggest pieces of bread first. Tormod made sure to throw the bits, one by one, wherever the seagulls *weren't*, and observed with a smile the desperate chaos that followed as they tried to keep up. At last came the crows. They slantered in calmly, couldn't be bothered flying, and passed with high heads the doves and seagulls, who, though larger, almost seemed to *give way*. One could see in their eyes how they housed an intelligence beyond that of their peers—and they knew it. They plucked the bread from right in front of the seagulls' faces, and they didn't seem the least threatened. At the bottom of the ladder were the sparrows, who rarely were quick enough to catch a whole piece of bread, but who were happy enough with crumbs and seeds. Tormod savoured the feeling of control, of power, and he wondered how they must view him—Big Friendly Giant, He that controls the Bread, and distributed it out of His Own Good Heart. A familiar sting in the lower back told him that it was time to sit down. The flock followed him to the bench; the sparrows approached, and after a few nervous trials, observed that his out-streched hand seemed to mean them no harm, and finally dared to eat the seeds directly from his palm. He felt the little pricks, dot dot dot, always almost but not quite uncomfortable. It was a beautiful day in May at Lille Lungegårdsvann: Blue sky and beaming sun—only the shadow revealed that it wasn't summer quite yet: He had to put on his jacket whenever a cloud passed in front of the sun, and take it off again once it had moved away. Past him, along the lake, people were hurrying from place to place, some by foot, some on (city-)bikes, some on those horrible new electric scooters that were scattered everywhere. Students and adults, Norwegians and immigrants and mothers and fathers with strollers and toddlers in their hands; suit-clad youths that had barely gotten their first strands of grey hair glanced down at their digital watches and said a few quickened words, presumably directed at the white dots crammed into their ears, and what they saw must not have been what they hoped to see because now they quickened their pace even more. Tormod had used to be like them—the technology may have been different, but the suit and the phone calls and the stressful glance at the watch were all the same. Unchanged. He knew this chase, this feeling of jogging uphill, and if only he could reach the *next* hilltop then everything would reveal itself—not new hilltops to conquer—but (as the saying goes) gold and green meadows. Well, gold got less important over time (and he remembered the realisation that it wasn't *riches* he was chasing after as an important turning point), but maybe green meadows then at least: That place where he could finally sit down, with her by his side—Sigrid—take a relieved breath, and just live. As he got older and they had children and their children had children it became clear to him that this last hilltop with its green meadow and view had to bear the name "Pension". And he chased towards it, from hilltop to hilltop, so that the Pension would be as good as possible and the Meadow as green as possible and the View as breathtaking as possible, so that he and Sigrid could sit down next to each other and take a Breath that was as deep as possible. And then the day had arrived: The last hilltop had been conquered, and he was a Pensioner. Sigrid was two years younger than him, and so had two years left before it was time for her to become a pensioner herself. The feeling of new-found freedom had been delicious for exactly two days, and then he got restless. He started various projects around the house, organised the shack and refurbished the bathroom and when that was done he decided that a porch would be nice, one with a view to the garden, and he bought wooden boards and nails and got to building. Sigrid had come home from work in those days and he had proudly exhibited his work, look how nice this is going to be, this porch will be ready for you when you too become a pensioner next year, but she had been too tired to appreciate it and had gone inside to sit and rest while he hammered away outside. The porch was as good as finished when the news came: Cancer. Metastatic. Prognoses were not good. Everything collapsed, and suddenly nothing else existed. Cancer. Everything else disappeared into the background. Rather than spend his days working on the porch, he now sat with her, his hand in hers while the chemo pumped into her blood, and the long weeks by her beds that followed each treatment while they awaited the next dose. Nothing else was real anymore: Only her, and his own unending trains of thought. This was not what was supposed to happen. This was not what was supposed to happen. We were so close. We are standing at the finish line. The meadow is right here, and it *is* green, and I have even built a porch with a view. When they took her off chemotherapy, prognoses worse than ever, he lost all hope. This whole project he had called "life" seemed now meaningless, and while he sat by her bedside and caressed her hand he could not deny the thought that he would rather come with her to the other side. Maybe the grass was even greener there, the meadows lusher, the breeze milder, the view more breathtaking. Maybe there they could finally be happy together. Were it not for their children he might have considered it. She opened her eyes and met his. Smiled. He smiled back, but there was no happiness in his smile. "This is not what was supposed to happen," he said, out loud this time. "But it happened," she said. He shook his head. "Everything we have worked for ... How am I supposed to be a pensioner without you?" "Everything *you* have worked for", she corrected him. "Me, I've sat right here, waiting for you to arrive." He gave her a questioning look. She smiled again, put her other hand on his and leaned her head back against the pillow. "Be with me now," she said, and closed her eyes. *Be with me now.* Her words rang out like church bells in his skull until he slowly came to understand what she was really telling him. *Now.* Not a hypothetical future dream, now lost forever. Not in old memories of romance and partnership. *Now.* In this moment. Together, in this breath. However many were left. He closed his eyes, felt the warmth of her hand on his, and drew his breath—and he had barely done so before the implications came rolling over him like an avalanche. *Now.* This moment. The only moment that ever mattered. He had shared a whole life with her, thousands of moments in a row, like pearls on a string ... and he hadn't been present for a single one of them. He had lived in the dream of a future they never would reach, had been too busy chasing up that hill, to the green grass on the other side, to see that the hill was a mirage and that the grass was already green. And there sat Sigrid, night after night, waiting for him to finally come and sit down beside her. He had had everything that he dreamed of, a life with the most beautiful human being he had ever met, and he had thrown it away. For the first time since the diagnosis came, he cried. Tears were streaming down his face, and he didn't know if he had cried like this since he was a child. A memory of his mothers embrace, her hands caressing his head, made him put his head on her shoulder. She stroked her hand over his hair. "I'm sorry," he cried. He could hear her heart beat, deep in her chest. Life—for now. "I should have been there," he said. "I should have been there. I'm sorry." "You are here now," she answered. "You are here now." She caressed his head again. Far away he saw the swans getting closer. They came swimming from the opposite side of the lake. Beautiful creatures—but aggressive. He didn't want them to come and make any trouble. He started throwing the bread in fistfuls. The sparrows and doves and seagulls and crows were basking. It was strange, but he remembered the final month with her as one of their happiest. She had been too sick to get out of bed, and there wasn't much energy for conversing—but she was awake, and that spark in her eyes that he had fallen so hard for sixty years ago was still there. It was *her*. She was just a bit exhausted. A bit ill. Needed a little care. Sometimes he forgot that she was about to die. It didn't matter anymore. She lived, and she was here, now ... and so was he. Together. By a meadow with a porch or not—just together. And then she was gone. But—he realised—he was not alone. He had a whole family: Children and grandchildren, with partners and their own families that he had never had the time to get to know properly. And Sigrid—she never left his side. Her memory was always close by, and he mentioned her as often as he could, every time the opportunity arose, and never in sorrow (althought sorrow came often enough, usually in the lonely nights after the sun had set and he walked into their living room and expected to see her sitting in the rocker with her knitwear over her lap, only to find it empty, so infinitely empty) but in joy over how lucky he had been who had gotten the chance to share a life with her: A chance he had almost thrown away, but at the last moment, like so often before, she had gripped him by the collar and put him on right course. It had taken him seventy years, but in the final month of her life he had finally found the green meadow he had been chasing for so long. And he had sat down by her side, and he had found that it was lush; the view breathtaking; the breeze mild. It was now twelve years ago that she passed away, but it still felt like yesterday. In the years that followed he had made a point out of living day by day—a phrase that never made much sense to him before now. Soon it would be his turn to cross over to that great unknown—in two years, or ten, or twenty. It didn't matter anymore. The future didn't exist, he had realized. Not the past either for that matter, other than to the degree that it had created this now. This May day, sun shining at Lille Lungegårdsvann. These people, rushing from errand to errand. These sparrows and doves and seagulls and crows, and the swans now on their way to demand their piece of the cake. This breeze in his hair. This prick in his palm. This breath.