[/caption]Michael Cosgrove - It is well after midnight as I write these words. All is quiet, the lights are low, and most of France has gone to bed. My goddaughter is sleeping too, in the bedroom next door. But someone else I know isn't sleeping. He isn't sleeping because his father is dying. Of cancer.
She is thirteen and she got here this afternoon for one of those bi-monthly visits I treasure. We enjoy each other's company. I spoil her rotten except for when she needs to be put straight, and in that case I do not spare my harsh words. That's my job, and she artfully respects the rules of the game.
The doorbell rang at 8:30 this evening and it was a friend of mine. He was in bad shape as his father is in hospital dying of lung cancer. All estimates say that he may not last the month. He said he had had to leave the house where his family was gathered in order to get away from the oppressive if understandable atmosphere. My goddaughter understood the situation immediately and wandered off discreetly to the computer in her room to Facebook her friends. She knew that this wasn't a moment for her to be around.
He said that his father was facing up to his death and accepting its inevitability, and that he was not raging against his fate. We agreed that this was not only good for him, it was good for his family too. He also said that he, at 38, felt that he had to keep a grip on himself because most of his family is in worse shape than he is and that there will be a lot of things to organise both before and after his father's death. I encouraged him to keep that in mind and said that his role was capital. We drank a bottle of wine and smoked a joint. And we watched this version of Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Fire on YouTube at his request. He stared intensely at the guitars and bass and keyboards and he listened to Springsteen's desperately raging words in mute and stubborn silence, tears filling his eyes for reasons he alone knows. Then he left to drive to a friend's place in the country. Forty miles away from here.
My goddaughter came out of her room and shone brilliant rays of sunshine onto my sober thoughts with her carefree and childish ramblings on food, music, her hair, and the fact that her father forgot to pick her up from school one day last week. Her words were innocent and spontaneous, the opposite of what we big people say about cancer and death. She was, quite simply, a godsend at that moment.
I have been thinking since that if I had a daughter, which I don't, I would have wished her to be just like my goddaughter. And I think that it was not a coincidence that I thought that this evening, after talking about death. After all - and although I love to convince myself that I don't have any regrets about the major decisions I have taken in my life - we all start thinking about what we could and should have done when death approaches...
My goddaughter and I are going rollerblading tomorrow. Life must go on....
