Further thoughts on Anna Lindh

I've been mulling over my continuing nearly-teary at times reactions over Ms. Lindh's stabbing death.

Partly, I suspect, it's because she was as close to my own age as she was. She was 46, I'm 40.

She was also a woman. Paternalist that I am deep down inside, the violent death of a woman seems more of an outrage to me.

She was also widely regarded as the most likely next Prime Minister of Sweden. She was fantastically popular, which is why she was the Social Democrats' main public advocate for passing the upcoming referendum on joing the Eurozone on Sunday.

So it's the combination -- age, gender, clear career path, populism -- that makes her death feel such a waste.

The closest I can come to for an American analogy would be Bobby Kennedy. Or if JFK had been shot in 1959.

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Here's that picture of Ms. Lindh with Olof Palme:



It was taken in 1984, when Lindh was very new in the Parliament.

I suspect that for Swedes, it will become what this picture is for African Americans:



All four of them -- King, Palme, X, Lindh -- needlessly, wastefully, cowardly taken away too soon.

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It's not much, but it's something:

The Swedish Cabinet yesterday went to the old cathedral in Stockholm, Storkyrkan... Which, literally translated, means "big church". It probably was, once, but now feels almost intimate, especially for what is now a national cathedral.

Here is a picture I took in August, 2001, when Ulrika and I were last there:



I was very happy with how it came out, given I was shooting with available light and a digital camera.

Candles in a church have long been used to remember the dead. This is my way to follow that path, this time.