These are the days, ten years ago, when my father was dying.
My brother sends me a message. He is putting the music mix online that he made for and played at Papa’s funeral. ”I keep on wondering if I should share… As these things go“ (we both know that we both know eternal doubt intimately). “It’s so personal,” he says. “I don’t want pity. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful tribute. What do you think?”
I’m listening to the mix. It contains fragments of Papa speaking, around the kitchen table with our nephew who was three at the time, and a speech he made at the funeral of a friend and colleague, years earlier.
”I don’t know,” I write back. I loved receiving this document this morning. Listening to it again puts me in a space of writing, reliving the experiences of the time, moving through the big questions. I tell him I’m writing. And that I, too, go back and forth about whether to make any of this public — though as a philosopher, I do think it makes sense for me to do so.
What gives one a right to make something public? What makes something worth sharing?
I hear Papa reading at the funeral, a poem. At the time, he was taking diction classes and acting. I’m imperfectly translating — this is by one of Belgium’s most beloved poets. “Like an old settee, a little creaky. These are my soul springs, deep inside.” I hear Papa’s voice, deliberate, powerful, a little studied.
In the conversation over dinner with F, Papa already can’t easily find the words, says what you might call nonsense syllables, and some words still too — this is the dementia. F, just learning to speak.
Later on, I listen to it again with headphones, trying to hold it all as close to me as I can. The conversation moves a little jaggedly, I hear F and Papa’s utterances searching for one another. F must be pointing at a photo of himself that he can see hanging on the kitchen cupboard, because I hear my Mum saying, ”yes, there you are wearing Grandpa’s beret!” The conversation crescendos, “ja, ja!!” (yes, yes!!), both of them laughing. Wim weaves in Argentina Santos’s Conde Afadistado, saudade holding the interaction in levity and the heart’s depth. The music reminds me of Papa’s footsteps when he danced.
Hearing Papa’s voice, it moves me, reaches directly into my gut. I know, and yet I’m surprised. It’d been years. If only he could say “ja” to me again now and then.
Wim messages. ”Papa would have said, ‘ja.’ But I keep sitting on the fence.”
Trying to both hold and surpass the to and fro, I publish this, knowing that the very act of doing so is an investigation in dialogue, in heart string plucking, if you like. All we can do, even as we commit things to the public arena, is remain in dialogue, keep finding words, the strings will vibrate, synchronize when they do, or/and not.
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