Today, at Emmaus Church in Northfield, Minnesota, a service was held in memory of my Uncle, Rune Engebretsen, who died a few months ago. In his memory, I share the following reflections.
In Memory of Rune Engebretsen
My much-loved uncle, Rune Engebretsen (always “Onkel Rune” to me), passed away last week. A Scandinavian Studies professor and a skilled translator (from Norwegian/Danish into English), his special interest in Kierkegaard created a distinctive intellectual connection between us that I didn’t have with other members of my family. To oversimplify it, he was the relative I could always count on to talk philosophy with me. On a deeper level, I enjoyed his enthusiastic interest in deep questions about truth and meaning and values, about God and Christianity. When my first book came out, he was one of its loudest cheerleaders (at one point hyperbolically calling it “essential reading for all humanity”—which I took to mean he was proud of me).
He was also a collector of books. Apparently it got a little out of control.
But these are not the things I will most remember about him. Perhaps one of the best ways to capture his essence is to say that his personality made him quite naturally and easily one of the best Jule Nisses my family ever had.
That may require a bit of explanation. In our family, we’ve always followed the Norwegian Christmas Eve tradition of having a visit from Jule Nissen: the Christmas Elf. He’d sweep into the home, distribute presents, and dance around the tree with the family. As I was growing up, we had neighbors and family friends don the Nisse outfit to help out with the task. As an adult my sister and I have often enough taken on the job, and in recent years my daughter has been eager to put on the beard, Norwegian sweater, and knit stockings.
But Rune, during one of the Christmas Eves we spent with him and his kids, stands out in my memory as being one of the most delightful. Bantering in English and Norwegian as he stomped into the house, telling jokes as he distributed gifts from his sack—I can’t remember details so much as the way he made us feel: full of joy and laughter.
To say he always had a twinkle in his eye is a bit of a cliché—but when I think of Onkel Rune, the expression “a twinkle in his eye” comes to mind with such force that he’s who I’d want to point to if anyone hadn’t heard that expression and wanted to know what it meant. He had a way of smiling at you that invited you to share in his personal delight at the world. And he was charming. It wasn’t something he turned on in order to achieve some end, bust something he was: a charming man, in large measure because you really got the sense that he wanted the best for everyone.
This does not mean, of course, that he never disappointed those around him. All of us are imperfect in our own ways. My sense is Onkel Rune always meant well, but wouldn’t always follow through. My mother frequently said to me, “You’re just like my brother!”—especially at moments when despite my initial good intentions I failed to follow through. She’s right about me, so I’m not one to hold this too much against him.
More importantly, there’s the fact that at key moments in my life when I needed him, he had more than just good intentions to offer. One time in particular stands out. The summer after my freshman year in college, my friend Lou and I decided to drive across the country to Washington State (where Lou was from) to work at a fruit orchard for the summer. We started out the journey in an old AMC Spirit whose road-worthiness was a bit sketchy—and which, while paid for, was not yet legally registered in any state (Lou’s plan was to take care of that in Washington once we got there). Needless to say, this journey did not go smoothly. A breakdown and emergency repair, followed by a police stop, took all the cash we’d saved up for the journey and most of our spirits (except, of course, for the AMC Spirit, which we were stuck with).
The good news is that we were a few hours drive from Northfield, Minnesota, where Onkel Rune lived at the time. When we limped into town, Rune gave us safe haven. He offered rest, food, and a renewal of our spirits. And he gave us enough cash to make the rest of the trip to Washington (with no expectation of repayment). As a fan of the Lord of the Rings books, I felt like the hobbits arriving in Rivendell.
One final memory of Onkel Rune also relates to a road trip—this one from when I was a teenager, and our families traveled together on a summer trip to Washington DC and Philadelphia. I remember little from that trip, but what stands out is this silly little mantra that Rune had created, and which he repeatedly offered up to eye rolls and laughter. The mantra went like this:
Are you happy now?
Happy go lucky, you know.
Happy as a flutterby!
Yes, sir, he said. Do you know him?
On the day I learned he’d died, as I was driving my daughter Izzie home from school, I spoke those words to her—finding it a bit difficult to finish the whole thing, because I was starting to cry. But I finished it, and I told her that this silliness came from her Great Uncle Rune, and I was sharing it with her in his memory, because he had died.
Izzie hesitated, then said, “So that’s where that stupid saying comes from.”
Apparently, Rune’s silliness made enough of a long-term impression on me that, without even really realizing it, this bit of delightful nonsense made its way into my own repertoire of dad jokes and absurdities that I’ve used through the years to elicit eye rolls in my kids.
All of this is to say that Rune’s spirit lives on in those who knew and loved him; that his life has touched and changed the world for the better; and that, since I find it hard to imagine the world without him out there somewhere offering his twinkling glance, his charm, his intelligence, and his silliness, I refuse to do it. Instead, I will believe that he lives on in some different way, a way we may not fully know or understand, a way that—whether wholly metaphorical or metaphysically real—makes the world a better place.
