I haven’t been posting on the Vertegram blog for almost two weeks. The reason for this is that my father recently died. Both the funeral and my state of mind afterwards, kept me away from writing. Now I’m back and I will share you a couple of my thoughts and intuitions coming to my mind in this context.
What I figured out to be most significant for me after the course of these saddening events was a strange duality. A strange duality in both my feelings and phenomenons around me.
First of all, death is both beautiful and cruel. About a month ago I took my father to the places of his youth. He was telling me there about his adventures, about the beginnings of his life. Circumstances brought there a situation where all his early friends still alive, got together, and so, we were able to meet them. It was touching to see old men recognizing each other with tears in their eyes, starting to recall their youth spent together. For me, recalling now that situation, was a sentiment of great harmony, like being part of some completion, a manifestation in some form of the “myth of the eternal return”. Now I know, he was saying a final goodbye to them, and to his youth.
It was also deeply touching to see so many people coming to the funeral. Some of them brought pictures with my father and them on it, and showed it to me. There was one guy saying that he is now the sole survivor of the picture he was holding in his trembling hand. The funeral, on the ceremonial side, was both according to the Christian ritual and military funeral honors. Another duality. His former officer colleagues were standing near his coffin, as a ceremonial guard, and brought his decorations too. I remembered how much fun I used to make of this soldierly stuff, but now, all these had different meanings.
Death is cruel, especially when it comes suddenly. It is cruel, because it stops the presence of someone close to you in your life. There was one old women trying to console me with the following words: “It is like this, you must get used to it.” I know it is like this. There were other people close to me whom I previously lost. But you can never get used to it. You can learn how to live with it perhaps.
Another duality I come to realize is that the year I lost my father, I am going to be a father. During all these circumstances, there was both death and life, marking their presence strongly. The little one with her mother, standing there beside me, are in their 6th month now. Life is like this.
