The Txema sends me a short message, written with the right words, because misfortunes must be communicated with very little literature. Pili, Joan’s wife, has died. He catches me in Madrid, on a perfectly dystopian afternoon: camped out at the Porta del Sol, a squad of eight or ten policemen on horseback who spend their time intimidating people in Callao, a helicopter over the Gran Vía watching over everything. The news separates dry, with the edge of a sharp knife, day and night. And it makes you think. In Joan, so many years by his side, a constant and alert sentinel: what a more dedicated, more attentive life partner. In Pili, who always greeted you with that fragile but sincere smile, half shy half sneaky. This will be how many of us will remember her, and we will keep her books as memories, so intense and so delicate at the same time. In the end it’s all that’s left of a life, which is a big library that you have to manage, at the beginning with the empty pots, which we fill little by little until someone places your volume. And this moment, which is always around, you never expect it: when it arrives without warning it catches you off guard. It makes you more aware that this, one day or another, ends: that the precise moment in which the great unknown is revealed is not a small thing, but we can influence it rather little: what will be the specific details, the medical circumstances, who will be next to you, what will be the degree of suffering or unconsciousness that you will find when the time comes. More important details for those who stay than for those who leave. And on this warm autumn Sunday we will say goodbye, with that white light and the comforting smell of roasted almonds.
