Karsten,
This is my last letter and in the irony of time, today is Thanksgiving. A twisted notion of death and life: no thanks for your sudden death and thank you for being such a big part of our life. I’ll continue to write privately and who knows, one day Sev and I may publish the full story. A biography of you, 100 letters of efforts to understand what this is all about, and an analysis of it all. Afterwards. How life went on and moved forward as it must but with you permanently centered in our lives and so many others’.
As in all departures, words are important and need to be measured carefully because they’re so finite. A reflection of time itself. Weighed for use and used sparingly. Every word counts because of its finiteness. No going back to say good bye again. Unlike all other performances, saying goodbye happens only once and can’t be practiced or repeated. Goodbye means just that. It’s over. Goodbye. One word. One moment. Then time.
The searing grief has resolved in amplitude but questions remain unresolved. The disbelief still comes every day but is brief with a cross-eyed look at the day in a moment. The functions are more present but their purpose slightly askew, if only for a moment. Time itself has stretched and compressed, an irony of presence ‘foran-tilbake’ – ‘front and back’. The process has played itself over and over in 99 different ways on a daily basis. Your presence is still present. Understanding not understood.
The joy of your life is now what counts. How much you were and remain with us. The way we have changed, all for the better. The people you’ve brought into our small family now grown with your friends from childhood and classmates from school. The SPM family now such a big part of our life, if only because it loomed in your life. So a small family now joins a large social circle of life carried on with celebrations of life itself. Every day with you.
Remembering you because that’s all we have. Moving forward with strength because that’s what you’d do. This is what we’ve been given. Living with it. Making the most of it. Attributing it to a greater design not understood and not needing to be. Putting your attributes to life because they were you.
Du skal bli med oss alltid. Ha det bra.
Dad
Gerald,
Just ran into you on the street today. I'll recognize that hat anywhere. Thank you for sharing all of your thoughts here. Jeg ønsker deg fred og trøst denne ferien. God jul.