When I am laid in earth,

May my wrongs create

No trouble in thy breast.

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.



Dido's lament, from Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, libretto by Nahum Tate





This morning, Thursday, May 22, my friend Alma Eklund killed herself. She was funny, childish, warm, odd, cat-like, startlingly beautiful, an actress just at the beginning of her career and so sure of herself on stage in front of the audiences at the Stadsteatern.



She could be so tenacious. But she wasn't tenacious enough in the end. None of us are, when it comes down to it.



The Swedish verb for the day is att sörja. It means to mourn.



- by Francis S.