“Happy birthzzzzZZZ”
Thirty years old ala old school with family. I had this idea of throwing a party at my place letting everybody write on the walls but I was too busy falling in love 10K kms away. Sorry.
This picture makes me smile and sad at the same time. Smile because I remember my grandfather getting grumpy while we would make him go to his bed for the afternoon nap seeing that the wine and the champagne had some effect on him. It’s sunday of course he can have all the alcohol he wants, one of the last funny stuff he can appreciate these days.
Sad because this picture –and pictures in general- are sure not enough to describe someone. Here’s my grandfather so silent, so sleepy so like nothing special. I remember him as always having some joke or some funny thing to say. Like I would make fun of him and he would just look casually at my grandmother and say “punch your little son on the head please” so that it would always crack me up.
it’s like pictures are not enough. Videos are silly. I’d love to only have the sound of him during some dinner or something when he was not at 10pills/day (Parkinson’s). I have some ninja recording from 10 years ago, it’s quite amazing. It makes you feel the past like nothing else. No filters, no photoshop. No pretending in front of a camera. Just naked people minds communicating. Raw Past.
Anyway at my birthday Raymond asked me to come to see him in his bedroom. “I want to ask you something son”. I was thinking about getting him something, like some cakes from the north of France from where he comes from or some diapers because uh, it’s part of his life now.
He asked me with his sweet and soft tone voice “Could you write me on a paper the name of your girlfriend please?”
“Aww sure, I’m gonna do it right now!”
So I wrote it on a post-it with my best handwrite style possible.
v e r d e l l w i l s o n.
I think he couldn’t understand when I was talking about her (you). He may not meet her (you) but he knows what is going on. All stooped as he is, he heard the smile in my voice saying those two words.