Author Liina Putkonen wrote an entertaining reading novel to comfort herself after her friend’s death. “For me, it was breaking down the dam of shit and escapism,” he says.
“Not me afraid of death I’m afraid that the landscape will lack colors and the birds won’t sing anymore. That the strawberries no longer smell and the lake water tickles your legs like before. That the sun no longer warms the face and the parched sand road crunches underfoot. I’m afraid you’re not there.”
Author and editor of this post Liina Putkonen received on an August night almost two years ago.
The poem was written by his friend Saija, who couldn’t sleep. Less than a month earlier, he had been told that his cancer had returned and there was no cure for it, and now he was keeping watch at home. Saija wanted to live at home until the end, so her spouse cared for her. When the spouse needed rest, Putkonen helped him.
“Every day is long for a sick person. He can’t die all the time, there has to be more to the day. I hope that Saija’s hospice days were tolerable when they were filled through our work together,” says Putkonen.
As a reporter and Putkonen, who works as a producer, won the Johnny Kniga detective script competition in 2016. His first book Frozen girl appeared two years later, and criminal police officer Linda Fors continued the investigations in the next chapter as well Burning boy (2020).
The third part of the detective series was planned for this or next year, but it was not written. After his friend’s illness, hospice care and death, Putkonen could no longer and did not want to imagine deaths and murders. Even after the corona and the war in Ukraine, detective stories were no longer attractive.
“Playing with death after death doesn’t feel good,” he says.
Instead, something completely different was born from the grief work.
The Library of Forgotten Dreams has just been published.
Just in print Library of Forgotten Dreams (Tammi) is sweet, old-fashioned entertainment that takes the reader to a small village, to the world of books and childhood fairy tales. The main character of the novel, Aina Varjoranta, has lost her mother to cancer a year earlier and decides at the beginning of the story to take on a job as a librarian in a small rural village.
When Aina arrives at Kielokoski, she notices that the library has been replaced by a gymnasium and the books have been crammed into every corner. He decides to return the library to its original function and at the same time bring the joy of reading to the whole village.
“I wrote to comfort myself. It was breaking the fucking dam and escapism. Even though the story is light and entertaining, it includes my sadness and grief work.”
Putkonen thinks that a person does not die when he dies. In the story, after her mother’s death, Aina finds very concrete messages and letters that her mother has left for her.
If he himself found out that he was going to die prematurely, he would want to do the same.
“I would like to write letters to the future, to my daughter’s important moments. Then I could be present in his life even through them,” says Putkonen.
“The emotional message of the book is that there is nothing good in death and death is not noble. Dying is horrible and cancer is from Satan. But after death man is and lives; not only in memories, but he becomes part of the people who mourn him.”
“Literature is much more than reading. All childhood fairy tales and the later Favorite books are a safe harbor to which you can always return,” says Liina Putkonen.
Liina Putkonen and Saija met while living as neighbors in a big house in Nuuksio.
At that time, Putkonen was writing his first detective story, and they talked a lot about literature on the boards of the sauna. Saija worked as an HVAC designer, but said she dreamed of writing a book.
“We went to the sauna alone. Saija had a knack for creating a kind of zen that I wasn’t used to. He always brought surprise drinks and candles with him,” says Putkonen.
Later, the neighbors moved to new homes, but contact remained. Their friendship grew closer when Saija became ill with leukemia in 2020. Due to the corona epidemic and harsh treatments, she had to live in strict isolation, but Putkonen came up with, among other things, making a Christmas calendar for her friend consisting of everyday pictures on social media.
“I was one way for him to the outside world,” says Putkonen. They also talked on the phone while Saija interrupted.
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“Dying would be a lot easier if it weren’t so exclusionary.”
In June 2021, Saija received good news: the cancer had disappeared from her body. He already dared to plan for the future: meetings with friends and starting a jumpa.
“For a week, Saija thought she was cured. Then came the death sentence. There would be no curative or ultimately even life-prolonging treatment,” says Putkonen.
Why death is so hard to talk about? How should a terminally ill person be treated?
“Dying would be much easier if it wasn’t so exclusionary,” says Putkonen.
He believes that death is such a strange thing in our society that people behave strangely in one way or another in front of it: either they are so sad that grief falls on the person doing the dying and he has to console his comforters. Or maybe we’re overzealous because we want to cheer up.
When Saija heard that he was seriously ill, Putkonen went through his own smaller grief. His dog had died unexpectedly a little earlier, and with that, his own open divorce from the almost 20-year relationship had become more real, because taking care of the dog no longer tied the former couple together. In some ways, it also marked the end of the couple’s shared teenage daughter’s childhood.
“I carried my own sadness with me, and maybe because of that there was a piece of me in the right way so that it was easy for Saija to be with me,” Putkonen reflects.
“I didn’t have the right words or an answer to why Saija had to experience all that horror. But I think that just being there, stroking and stroking my hand was comforting,” he says.
Cloth and Saija, for example, started making Saija’s favorite dishes together. Saija gave instructions from the sofa and Liina cooked when Jamie Oliver’s leek bacon pasta, sometimes mushroom-filled crepes from the mushrooms of the familiar home forest.
When Saijan felt like spring rolls, they drove around Espoo looking for them.
“It felt important to fulfill all his whims because he didn’t really have an appetite and was eating crumbs anymore.”
At the beginning of September, Putkonen was sitting at his niece’s confirmation mass when a message came from Saija’s spouse: Saija was in bad shape and her spouse should rest for a while. Would Liina be by Saija’s side during that time?
Since according to the nurses there was no rush, Liina decided to listen to the end of the mass. Before communion, the priest reminded the congregation that although we only see half of the circle around the altar in the church, the other side exists and is reserved for the dead.
“As if Saija had invited me over. When Saija died, her husband and I sat next to her and stroked her cheek.”
“During Saija’s last weeks, we were always on the verge of doing something, which took Saija away from the prevailing crap for a while.” The friends, among other things, organized the TV marathon Järki ja tuntenet and went swimming for the last time in the common sauna beach.
A friend death and seeing death affected Putkone in many ways.
First, he experienced some kind of acute stress reaction, because his friend’s departure was not peaceful.
“I went into overdrive. I felt like I was walking above the ground and my blood pressure was skyrocketing. I also had to light a new candle at Saija’s grave every time the previous one went out.”
After more than half a year, anger and annoyance came.
If Putkonen found out that he was terminally ill, he would want to decide his own death.
“I would like to keep such pills in the box that when I feel like it’s time to go, I can go.”
It is difficult for him to understand that euthanasia or assisted euthanasia is so strongly opposed. After all, the life of a fetus can be decided before birth, if it is known that it would suffer disproportionately during its short life.
“Perhaps death is perceived as so scary that they don’t want to deal with it in any way, and because of that this conversation doesn’t take place properly,” he says.
He also emphasizes that death and dying are two different things.
“We should talk more about the process of dying itself: what it is, what really happens then and how it happens in the most dignified way possible.”
When a friend almost a year had passed since the death, Putkonen got tired of his own “whispering” about the wretchedness of life. Books helped with that.
In July, Putkonen was sitting on the train and dug out of his bag what he had taken to read the journey Maija Kajanton Earplug summer (WSOY). It took him to a safe and wonderful world, where he could forget his bad feelings.
“Suddenly I was 14 years old again and I felt the same as when I read the new SinäMinä that had just been published and ate something delicious at the same time.”
That’s when Putkonen realized that he could create a similar escape himself. After all, books and fairy tales had always been important to him, because even in his childhood home, poetry and literature were valued.
“My mother, who worked as an English teacher, knew how to pull the strings: she often held poetry contests for us four children on Sundays. The one among us who recognized whose poem it was, received a cash prize. We learned that Lindblad means always Blackhead and nature photography was quite often Cast.”
Mother also kept Donald Ducks in a locked chest, which was opened for a day whenever one of the brothers had read one book.
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“All childhood fairy tales and the later Favorite books are a safe harbor to which you can always return.”
His mother’s upbringing in poetry did not make Putkone an expert in poetry, but poetry is for him a commodity in life, like a handkerchief. Or May Day holiday cheer – it depends on the mood.
“I use poetry banally. I’ll take my favorite verse from all that poetically difficult moment.”
He has also written in his important books To the library of forgotten dreams. During reading time in the library, the main character reads to the children Ronja Rövärintättäand bookworms can spot quotes from the pages of the book so Aaro from Hellaakoski than From Edith Södergran.
“Literature is much more than reading. All childhood fairy tales and later Favorite books are a safe harbor to which you can always return. A bit like a warm blanket, under which you can snuggle up from a difficult or exhausting everyday life.”
He believes that the same thing will happen to entertainment literature as to detective stories: their appreciation will rise when people realize that reading novels are divided into many subgenres. Entertainment literature can also deal with very difficult themes.
Pipe feels privileged to be able to participate in his friend’s hospice care.
“During the five weeks of hospice care, I saw the purest love that can exist between two people. I saw from the side how Saija’s spouse took care of him, persuaded him to eat and trimmed his toes,” says Putkonen.
Witnessing the moment of death meant even more.
After the experience, his attitude towards life has completely changed. It is guided by the phrase repeated by Saija, according to which “we die one day, but all other days we live”.
“The world is so much more wonderful when you know that life is very tenuously attached to it. Everything can be over in an instant.”
Library of Forgotten Dreams is dedicated to Saija, who never had time to write a book.
However, Saija’s poem has now been published.
It is printed on the first page of Putkonen’s book.
Liina Putkonen: Library of Forgotten Dreams (Oak)
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