Healing walk

Sometimes the world stops, while everything around you simply carries on.

It happened a few days later. My head felt empty and full at the same time.

I went to the butcher’s — not because I felt like eating meat, but because Mum and I had to eat. There was a queue. People were chatting.
The bell above the door jingled every time someone came in.
The counter gleamed, cool and spotless.
A child pressed his fingers against the glass and looked at me defiantly. I noticed him, but didn’t react.

“What can I get you, madam?”

The woman in front of me thought for a moment.

“Five hundred grams of fine sausages, please.”

I looked at her.

Five hundred grams of fine sausages.

As if it were just another ordinary day.
As if nothing had happened.

And suddenly it hit me: life was carrying on!

People were talking. They were doing their shopping. Soon they would go home and make dinner.

I stood there, barely able to comprehend it.

Because my world wasn’t turning anymore.

Mine had stopped.

Completely on hold.

And apparently, I was the only one.

I walked home, as I so often did. Still bewildered by that strange discovery: the world had not stopped just because mine had.

I found myself on a path I knew, but had not chosen.

And it was right there, beneath an old weeping willow, that it happened.

My steps slowed until I came to a standstill.

He could not have chosen a more fitting place.

Grieving beneath the weeping willow.

My heart began to race, and yet I wasn’t afraid.

I felt him.

My dad.

He had only just died, and yet there he was.

Unmistakable.

Invisible.

And yet so incredibly present.

It wasn’t a memory passing through my mind, but an overwhelming presence.

So tangible that I immediately thought back to my pregnancy, to that quiet certainty that your child is safe, simply because you are carrying them.

Well, that was how it felt.

As though he were inside me, like a gentle reassurance from within.

A connection beyond words.

The sharp edges of my grief disappeared in an instant and made way for a profound connection I had never experienced before — one that felt as warm as love itself.

From that moment on, everything changed.

Not that I missed him any less.

But the missing became different.

His physical absence gave way to something gentle.

Something more constant.

As though I suddenly knew:

from now on, he will always be here.

And you know what?

Without saying a word, he told me I could ask him anything.

He would never let me down.

And he never has.

From then on, I could always count on him.

Differently than before.

But more than ever.

What began beneath that weeping willow has never left me.

Thirty-three years have passed, and hardly a day goes by without us speaking to each other.

It’s strange.

There was never a doubt in my mind that there was something beyond this life.

By now, I know better.

Of course, it isn’t the same as it used to be.

Sitting down together over a cup of coffee is no longer possible.

And at certain moments, it was still hard.

Very hard.

When I got married, for instance.

Those were the moments when I started to doubt again.

When I felt alone again — because he could no longer walk me down the aisle.

And yet, I never allowed myself to remain trapped in grief or loss.

I still visit him often, there where his photograph stands, where I once said my final goodbye to his body.

But actually, I don’t even need to go there.

I can reach him anywhere.

I tell him how everything in our village has changed, and at the same time, how life still revolves around the things that truly matter:

values.

The values he embodied throughout his life.

I know he is happy when I speak to him, or about him, with gratitude.

And time and again, he somehow finds a way to answer me — in ways that are both ingenious and surprising.

Sometimes his response comes through an unexpected word from a stranger.

Like Hugo, who suddenly started talking about him at the exact moment I was thinking about Dad.

It wasn’t what he said that touched me.

It was the fact that he said it at all.

Especially because normally I wouldn’t even have been sitting next to Hugo, and I had no idea he had known my dad.

At moments like those, I know:

he always finds a way to reach me.

And I smile.

Because I know he is still here.

In a different form.

But whenever I need him.

One day I thought:

Haven’t I called on him often enough?

Perhaps there are others who need him more than I do.

So I made an agreement.

With myself.

And with him.

For now, I’ll let you go.

But when the moment of truth comes —
when it is my time to leave this world —
you may guide me.

To the real altar.

“Deal?”