My father, free from the constraints of all those titles and roles.
I heard the news of your death in the dressing room of a television studio. The programme was over and I switched on my mobile telephone. Three messages. The first – and the last one recorded – was from your daughter: ‘Something terrible has happened. Call me, no matter what time it is.’ The second message was from your wife: ‘Your father is dead.’ The third was from you, an hour before your death: ‘It’s Dad. Give me a call. I’ll be home all evening. Bye!’
It was all so strange. I needed to regroup.
My thoughts go out to you. ‘Can you hear me? Where are you now?’ I try and make contact. It works! I not only feel you, but I can ‘see’ you. You’re laughing and you look surprised: ‘So this is what you’ve been doing all these years,’ you say while looking at my thoughts. ‘Yes father, we had more in common than you thought. As a doctor you experimented all your life in all sorts of laboratories. Meanwhile, I was experimenting in my interior, in the laboratory of the mind.’ You laugh again, surprised.
When you were still walking the earth, our worlds were miles apart. You were always very distinguished: professor, doctor, professor emeritus… In your eyes I was an irresponsible pop star, a half-baked meditation teacher and journalist at a peculiar magazine.
Now that you’re free from the constraints of all those titles and roles, you’re open again and we can meet – here in this space between life and death, where souls are simply souls. Here we can listen to each other, before you continue on your life’s journey. When dawn approaches and we say goodbye, we will both be greatly relieved: finally, a good talk.
A couple of Odes ago I ended this column with the sentence: ‘Sometimes you have to die in order to live.’ Did you read that column and think ‘what utter nonsense’? Or did the idea of ‘dying in order to live’ suddenly appeal to you? Did you want to live again without that binding straitjacket of emphatic attitudes seeing only one solution?
At the funeral I expressed the hope that you would live on in me, but I see that you’re doing more than that. I see that now that you’re ‘dead’, you are truly alive.
Congratulations father, just keep going!
