Jonas Victor writes of difficult problems that were in his Swedish family. Hans and Oskar are Jonas Victor's brothers. Roselyn
Clay Center, Kansas
April 1922 or 1923
Brother Albert,
I received your letter several days ago. Thanks for telling me how life is going for you.
As you see, I am with my son in Clay Center. I will go home next week. I have been here since January 9. It is good for my feet here during the wintertime. They make a fire in the cellar, so the floors are warm in all the rooms.
When I read your letter, I could not hold back tears. I thought of Hans and Mother's and Father's sorrow. I have never thought that Fransen was Oskar's son, even though you told me that Oskar and Anlovis (Anna Lovisa) had a son together. It was difficult to understand why Oskar did not marry her. Both the clergyman and Mother and perhaps her parents had ordered him to marry her. If they had married, perhaps she would not have committed suicide.
Their life was unhappy. I can not leave the thought that it was a spirit which controlled him, but when she died everything was pulled up for him. Perhaps he saw the life they had lived together, all the pressures he got. The most difficult thing for him was he perhaps felt guilty because of her death. And perhaps that is why his mind became bothered.
If they had asked God to forgive them, everything would have been good. Nobody who has not experienced death of someone close, can understand the feeling of the one who survived.
I did what I could for my wife, when she was sick. I picked flowers along the roads in the spring and also flowers in the garden, and we talked much. She was happy. I should have been with her the whole time her last week, so sometimes I have gloomy thoughts. I feel that I neglected something.
In the next part Jonas Victor tells about the mental problems Hans had and the cruel methods used for treatment of people with mental illness. Roselyn
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