ISAK *1983-06-01 / ✝︎1983-06-01
Completely unprepared,
I was sitting before the morning briefing
at the Police Criminal Investigation Division one day in 2010,
in the meeting room where the investigators,
the case supervisors
and the head of investigations were gathering,
gradually taking their seats opposite one another
around the long table
that occupied the entire room,
when, in fragments of a quiet conversation
from the other side of the table,
I heard that a couple unknown to me
had just lost their child during birth
– and I sank like a stone,
without warning, straight down into an endless space,
with nothing to hold on to;
completely unprepared,
as shocked as my poor colleagues,
who saw me break down in tears,
entirely unable to explain
or even produce any coherent words
In an instant I was transformed
from the joking colleague
into a bewildered creature, a wild animal;
a naked despair without composure,
without speech;
a danger to the public;
a glimpse of infinity
and the false security of everything
– and I was transported back,
to the maternity ward, June 1, 1983,
with my dying son Isak in my arms;
Judy under emergency care,
Isak suffocated
by his lungs’ inability to function,
with all my coworkers around me in 2010
at the Police morning briefing,
the cloudburst of tears draining away
the use of my senses,
and I myself as astonished as everyone around me,
the common cause of death and life
on that after-night
at Nyköping Hospital
collapsing into the meeting room
at Criminal Investigations
twenty-seven years later
as the truest truth
of our existence
– and a period followed
of starved emotions
and an impaired grasp of reality,
with the daily pumping
of Judy’s aching breasts,
deprived of their human mouth to suckle,
and life thereafter,
for a long time,
an instead of
– but that morning
at Criminal Investigations in 2010,
twenty-seven years after Isak’s birth and death,
I nevertheless pulled myself together after a while,
and after the morning briefing
sat for a time with a few colleagues,
exchanging words about processing,
about debriefing,
fully aware that Isak,
who died immediately,
will always live
in that place within my chest
which I became aware of only that morning
at the Criminal Investigation Division
in Nyköping
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-06-09 at 11:07
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