Remembering my Dad

Today happens to be the 25th anniversary of my Dad's passing. That Thursday of May 1988, he had, what most French people would call “une belle mort” which means a pretty quick and painless death. In fact, it happened in just a few hours.

That day, he didn't have any appetite to eat his breakfast, felt like a shivering cold coming all over his body, laid down on his bed and this was it. He died of emphysema, most likely a by-product of smoking too much for half a century.

I wasn't that close to my Dad and I can't remember ever spending any time on his laps or having any fun moments with him. His life was work, work and more work and the mere idea of entertainment must have been sacrilegious to him.

I miss the fact that we couldn't have an open and enriching relationship and that we remained strangers to one another until his death. I guess this is not a novel concept as it often characterizes most family relationships, but I simply regret that these instances are not so rare and keep on reproducing themselves...