Mormor and Morfar

My mother's grandparents lived pretty close to them in Sandy, Utah, when she was growing up.  They called their grandpa ‘morfar’, which in Swedish means mother’s father, and their grandmother was ‘mormor’, or mother’s mother. 

Mom liked to tell us how the neighborhood kids would run through morfar’s garden.  In Sweden he had been the main gardener for the estate where they lived, Sparreholm, and he could grow anything.  When they immigrated to America he was 54 and they didn't have a very large yard, but he still kept a good garden and a wonderful orchard behind it.  It made morfar cross when the kids would run through his orchard after school, stealing his fruit and trampling his flowers.  Morfar would stand on the back step of his house and yell, “Du forbusketa unga!” at the kids.  That was one of the first Swedish phrases I ever learned, and once when I asked Grandma Johnson to tell me what it meant she got upset and said I shouldn't use those words.   I thought it must be swear words or something, but later when I asked a returned Swedish missionary to interpret it for me he said it was really more like yelling, “you ornery kids, get out of my orchard!”

After morfar passed away, mormor lived alone in her house for a few more years.  She was very particular about how her house was kept.  She used to say, "Make a place for everything and keep everything in its place."   Mom often told me about how mormor would unwind her garden hose every day to water the plants, then wind it back up into a big circle, tie it with string in three places, and put it away so she could take it out the next morning to use it again. 

As she got older mom and her sisters would take turns spending the night with mormor so she didn’t have to be alone.  Mother told us about the last night of mormor’s life.  Either Aunt Amy or Aunt Ejvor had spent the night with her, but when she woke up she told them she wasn’t feeling very good so they ran home to get Grandma.  Mom said they went into her little house and she was lying on her bed.  They talked to her for awhile, and she laughed about something,  then she was just gone.  Mom always hoped she would be able to pass on as sweetly.