It started out as an attempt to locate a family member who had been gone for almost my whole life. His name was Leif. He was a seaman and an alcoholic, as well as being my grandfather. That was all I knew about him. The only visual memory I have of him from my childhood is of his hand holding a cigarette. 

The feeling of longing for a grandfather has always been there, even though I barely knew anything about him. He was a shadow figure in our family history. In seeking out his story, I’ve also had to confront my own feelings and heritage. 

Twenty-four years after that glimpse of his cigarette, I set out on a journey. It wasn’t long before I found him; I had no idea that he lived only twenty minutes away from me. 

“Damn, you are big” was the first thing granddad said to me. It felt like the fog of cigarette smoke from the first time we met still lingered in the room. 

I did not get to spend many hours with my grand- father because he died shortly after that. But that meeting marked the start of a whole new chapter in our history. When digging through his old trunk that was stuffed with personal snapshots and negatives, to my surprise, I discovered that our paths had crossed several times while he was alive. How often had it happened?