The inevitable

I was going to write something about the joys of being the father of my son, but then I got that call most of us dread.

Your father died.

So, what can I say but:

I miss you so pappa. I still remember that last time whe had a normal dinner together -- hours before the car accident -- and watching you and mamma walk away across the street. Things where never quite the same after that.

The last few years I was here in California while your mind slowly faded away into nothingness back in Sweden. I guess I was never brave enough to face it head on, so I had a hard time going back to meet you. I knew that you were well taken care of, and you did not give in to the darkness, even at the very end. But I should have been strong enough to be there more often. Now it is too late. And that is wrenching sorrow, and also a relief. The end came -- camly in your sleep -- and now it is over. Now I have to deal with the guilt I feel, but I suppose that is normal -- who can honestly say "I did everything I could" and not lie just a little bit?

I'm glad Einar got to meet his farfar, but I have no idea how to tell him tomorrow, he will take it hard I know, just as he still is trying to understand how grandma Joyce could die. "Pappa, how do you wave godbye to somebody who has died?" All I can say is "I don't know Einar, but I wish I did."

I know you did not even remember Einar at the end, but he remembers you, and in that I hope you will live on for a long time to come, even if it is only as the fragment of memory from a 2 year old.

I don't think I can go to the funeral. For me the farwell takes place here and now, and I have no strength to support others greif. Sounds so callous, doesn't it? But church funerals and litanies about the afterlife makes me feel like I'm standing in front of a large crowd speaking and endorsing lies that I know are false and that the people around me know that I know are false. For me death is the end. No second chance, no wings and harps, no fire and brimstone, just the fatal blow of entropy and then nothingness. The only remainder of what we once was is our work and writings, and the memories we leave with others. Fleeting ephemera lasting a blink of time. Then gone into the heat death of the universe.

I mean no offense to those who so belive, and maybe you belived it too -- I just don't know since we never had that discussion. Oh how I wish we could have talked about such things once I got older, but then it was too late. I never got to talk to you about how it is to be a parent, a father, a role model, and how you dealt with the demands of secrecy that your job imposed on your very thinking. Somehow I know that your job in the military was something that you deeply belived in, and that you thought it was just and right, but that you sold a part of your soul to be able to do it. What was it? I will never know, although I probably have figured out more than you ever intended for us kids to know. Does it matter? Only as much as it put a barrier around you that you could never quite drop. Was it worth it?

You wrote books, and I will make sure they are transfered to the net so they don't just fade into a few bookshelfs, hiding from the inevitable makulatura that reaps so much writings. Hopefully serandipity will put it into the hands of somebody new who will be enriched, amused, moved.

Godbye Pappa