Some words do not try to explain death. They do not promise to make us feel better or claim to answer every question. They simply offer an image in which, for a moment, we can rest our longing.
The image of a breath of wind resembling the caress of someone no longer beside us made me think of you, Stefania. Of the wish, so simple and now so impossible, to feel your touch again. After a lifetime together, I miss this too: being close to you without having to imagine it.
I like to think
“And I like to think that a sudden breath of wind is the caress of someone who is no longer beside us.”
Independent English translation of the Italian wording supplied, signed “S. Takdeer”. The original publication has not been verified; attribution to Serena Takdeer also appears in a collection from July 2016.
I linger especially over those words: “I like to think.” There is a gentleness in that expression. It leaves room for hope without asking anyone to consider it a certainty.
I too would like to allow myself this thought. If a breeze brushed my face, I would like to imagine, for an instant, that there was something of you in its tenderness. I would know that the wind is wind. Yet remembering you would make that moment different.
I would not ask that air for an answer. It would be enough to let it take me back to what I have known: your presence, our shared life, the possibility we had of being there for one another.
Absence lives in ordinary things
When I think of what I miss, I do not think only of journeys or important occasions. I think of the simplicity of having someone beside me to tell about something that has just happened.
A thought, a piece of news, something about the children. All those things that need no appointment to be said, because someone is already part of your day.
It is this familiarity that death interrupts with a harshness difficult to describe. The world keeps producing events, words and encounters. You still have something to share, but you can no longer do so in the way you did for so many years.
I miss being able to turn towards you and find you there. The natural ease of knowing that part of my life was happening in yours as well.
Forty years do not become only the past
We shared forty years of marriage. We differed in our tastes, our cultural interests and the way we spent our free time. We saw those differences as an opportunity to complement one another.
Looking back, I feel how much of my life also took shape through you. Decisions, moves to different cities, work, children, journeys: within all of this there was us, with our different ways of seeing things and our wish to build a life together.
Now those memories belong to the past, but their effect is still here. I am also the man I became through living with you. Our children carry something of what they received from us into their own lives.
That is why speaking about you does not simply mean looking back. It means acknowledging part of who we are today.
What the wind cannot give back
I do not want to hide the absence behind a beautiful sentence. A poetic image can offer comfort, but it cannot restore a voice, a conversation or an embrace.
There are moments when I would want much less than an extraordinary sign: I would want the ordinary life we had. To know how you are, listen to what you want to tell me and be able to answer.
The wind cannot do that. But I can recognise the value of a small respite, of a tender thought arriving in a difficult day. It would mean something if it helped me remember you for a moment with a smile, alongside the longing.
Still telling you about our life
When I visit your resting place, I still talk to you. I tell you what is happening, the news, things about the children. It is the way I have found to keep addressing you.
I do not know whether or how my words might reach you. I know why I feel the need to say them: for so many years you were the person with whom I shared my life, and the wish to tell you about it did not stop on the day I lost you.
Writing has a similar meaning. It allows me to give shape to what I feel and leave something of it to our children. These pages too become a place where your name can be spoken with love.
To our children you are still Mum
To me you are Stefania, the woman I loved and built my family with. To our three children you are Mum. The same person, known and loved through different bonds.
None of us holds the whole memory of you. There are aspects I know as your husband and others each of them keeps as your child. We can share them, listen and still discover something about the person we miss.
I would like there always to be room for this in our family. For your name, for something you genuinely said and we remember, for the pages you left us. Without having to wait for an anniversary, and without fearing we will spoil the atmosphere simply because we feel like speaking about you.
The name of someone we love deserves to remain in our conversations. We can say it even when it moves us to tears.
Leaving room for a smile too
I want to be able to treasure beautiful memories without feeling obliged to turn each one into an account of the loss.
You had a life. You studied, worked, faced changes and loved your family. You enjoyed learning and discovering things. I would like all of this to remain visible, even when we speak of the pain of no longer having you here.
If a memory makes us smile, I would like us to welcome it. That smile will have its own truth, just as the tears do. It will remind us that having you in our lives was also a great happiness.
A hope I treasure
I know how important faith was to you. I continue to hope that you are happy, close to God, and that there may still be a chance to embrace you again.
I do not know how to describe what it will be like. I can only acknowledge how deeply I wish for it.
The image of a caress in the wind comes close to this hope: something gentle that I can treasure without having to prove it. A way to leave the wish to meet you again open within me.
Carrying you with me through the days ahead
I have to go on living. There are the children, things to do, interests and people to meet. I can still wish for something in my future and, at the same time, feel how much I would have wanted to share it with you.
I will not promise that I will always manage it well. There will be lighter days and others when your absence weighs more heavily. I would like to learn to make room for both, without asking myself to be different from how I feel.
And if one day a breeze brushes against me, I can allow myself that thought: how lovely it would be if it were your caress. Then I will keep walking, with your memory within my day.
What I would like to leave my children
My children, we keep different memories of Mum. I would like us to go on sharing them without feeling we must always find the right words.
You can talk to me about her. You can tell me what you miss, but also what makes you smile. I would like to be able to do the same with you. None of us should protect the others to the point of making someone so deeply loved disappear from our conversations.
I do not ask you to feel what I feel. Your bond with Mum is yours, and it deserves all the room it needs. I leave you only this wish: that we may remember her together with honesty, tenderness and gratitude.
If the wind could carry a caress, Stefania, I would like to receive one from you. Meanwhile, I entrust these words with all the love with which I continue to think of you.
Papy