When my dad moved on, I started looking differently at two things.
First I noticed that I had a great difficulty with wrapping my head around the idea that all that’s left of him are the memories in those who are still alive, and it frightened me that once the last person that ever knew him would die, the traces of these memories about my father would be for ever erased.
The other confronting though I am also thinking about daily is his stuff. Right now his stuff is the strongest physical proof of his existence and the kind of life he lived. He loved having his stuff. He spent money on getting the best stuff that he could afford. He would get furious if I touched his stuff without his permission. He had also had intense arguments with other relatives about the stuff, and with some of them he never restored his relationship.
My father was a hoarder, and he knew the whereabouts of every item in his possession.
On a warm Thursday afternoon in July a taxi brought me and my little family all the way to the gate of my father’s property. As soon as I realized that this time I had to open the gate with my own keys, that also the entrance of the house was locked and my father was not standing there, smiling and waving at me, a lump formed in my throat and with it two long lines of salty tears ran down my cheeks. I felt embarrassed about this sudden gust of emotions, and I tried to hide it. My father had passed away half a year ago, but it was only now that I was finally visiting his house. While my boyfriend in all his lovely support tried to prepare our child about why mommy is sad, my smart little kid just said ‘Opa Mathilda is dead’. My father’s name was not Mathilda, but that’s how my son nicknamed him, and my father loved it.
In the absence of my father, the house was mute, dark, and the air in it felt thick and unbreathable. To reassure my mind, that still had to go through the acceptance of this loss, I walked from room to room, looking, if there was anywhere a soul to find. But there was no-one. Unlike my fathers’ unexplainable habit to lock all the doors, I left them all wide open. In every room I reached for the windows, and as I opened them, bits of dusty, dry paint crumbled down the window frame, and the yellowed, crunchy tape that held back the draft of the cold air in the winter, cracked and ripped. I felt as if I had to fill up all these spaces with my own noise, smell and things so I wouldn’t feel like a ghost. After all, this house is where I was going to quarantine for ten days.