I’ve had a different childhood. Not because my parents divorced when I was 5 years old and my father remarried. I had a different childhood because I had an unique father. A well built man, my father went trougth life enchanting women. Tall, considering his generation average height, he exercised a lot, which gave him really strong legs and a slim body. He had expressive, attentive brown eyes, a beautiful small nose and a gentle smile, all well distributed in his long face. Because of his charms and good looks he married three times and countless girlfriends. He ended up having five children from three diferent women. Somehow he managed to build an odd but very united family that would always gather together to celebrate important dates such as birthdays and weddings. His ex-wives and friends always respected his opinios and turned to him at dificult times.
As a business man, he built a very sucessful career as an insurance specialist, even thought at College he majored in History. Three years before his retirement, he became the president of ABN Real Seguros Brazil even thought he never belivied he was fit for the business world or had the ambition to go so far. His co-workers described him as a very inteligent man, with innovative ideas that most of the times would install controversial discussions at the table. They considered him a man ahead of his time.
Once my therapist told me that if there were such a job as being a dad, my father would be considered the best one at it. Not that it was easy being his daugther. He expeted too much, he expected his children to be the very best in whatever they decided to do in life, to have well succeed love lifes and to be honest well adusted people. But he was also always there, showing his love trought actions like taking care of my apartment’s rennovation, worring about my weight problem, discussing my work perspectives, giving really good advices on my son’s upbringing, and being there to talk about whatever problem I had. Everytime I wanted to make a change in my life such as buying an apartment or accepting a job offer I would prepare myself to argue with him. He would keep questioning my decisions, helping me rethink my options and see the situation on multiple angles until he felt I was sure of what I was doing. He was the only person not making moral considerations about my decision of breaking instead of marrying my boyfriend when I became pregnant.
On january 20th 2009 he was very excited about Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States. He spent the day, along with my stepmother, watching Obama’s inaguration on the TV. At 6 p.m. I called him and we made plans for the following weekend. I noticed he was panting and he said he was climbing a hill, coming from the well-water. An hour later he told my stepmother he wasn’t feeling well. She became concerned because it wasn’ like him to complain. She tried to convince him to go to the nearest hospital to which he responded angryly that she was the hypochondriac of the family not him. He went to the porch, his favorite place in the world from where he was able to admire the farm’s landscape, and a few seconds later, collapsed. She heard a noise, and only had time to soften his fall. He had a sudden heart attack.
At the age of 61 he seemed really healthy. Last december, everyone of the family members at one point noticed that he appeared to be getting tired more easyly, but no one secondguessed he would not live for at least 20 more years. He was in a really good moment in his life, enjoying his retirement, spending time with his grandchildren, travelling to places he’ve always wanted to go, going to the movies in the middle of the week and writing a book, which was his dream since he was a child.
When my phone wrang at 9:30 pm I became very angry because it let my son, who was supposed to be asleep, very excited. It was my younger brother Gabriel calling to tell that dad had died. I immediatly felt my whole body go numb but I stopped myself from breaking down in front of my two year old son.
Then it struck that the last thing I said to my father was goodbye. It is funny in a bittersweet way because I had no idea his was going to die an hour later. I kept saying goodbye to him trought the funeral and cremation ceremony but it was never enough. The only thing that gave me some confort during the funeral rites was choosing the songs for the cremation ceremony along with my brothers. Music was a very important thing in my dad’s life and we wanted to get it right. He would be proud of the choices we made. To start we opened the coffin while Keith Jerrod’s version of Someone to watch over was playing in the backgroung so everybody could say their proper goodbyes. Then we cried over Ella Fitzgerald’s Dream a little dream of me and at the end, they took the coffin down during Chet Baker’s Look for the silver lining. And that was it, three songs and I am never going to see my father ever again.
I’m trying to cope with the hard feelings my father’s death has brought to my life by building a happier life for myself. As heritage, he left so many good examples such as living an intense life in its fulliest, accepting people as they are and making room for them in my life and, most of all, living life in accordance with my values and beliefs regardless what the world says.
