Familiar blues
Swimming in the same places, through similar feelings.
Last week I landed in Athens on the third anniversary of my father's passing. Then, this Wednesday, I was in Sivota – the little town on an Ionian island where I got the message from my sister saying I should hurry back to Cape Town to try to say goodbye to him before he died. As the memories and feelings overwhelmed me, I cried in an alley, just like I'd wept a little over three years ago.
Searching in my files, I came across something I'd written about the mad dash southwards that I'd titled Against Time.
The last meal we’ll have together isn’t really a meal and it wasn’t us together. It was me drinking wine, alone, in the cafeteria at Athens airport. You were unable to speak by then, but the others, they said you could hear my voice on the speaker. I felt too raw to cook up anything more substantial than prattle about the planes glimmering on the apron. I was too frightened to turn on video (your appearance – they’d warned me). Evasive, inadequate. Like father, like son. It was a relief to put the phone down. I ordered another glass of wine. When I landed the next morning, there was a WhatsApp telling me the news. I’d been racing against time, so had you, and we’d both lost.
It is strange, being back here. I am swimming – in familiar places, through familiar feelings, the days between early September 2022 and now collapsing. It is not comfortable. But in the aching there is a blue and vivid connection, a generous container for remembrance, and an opportunity to surrender to what-is.
