Friedrich
With the help of a family friend, we made arrangements for my father to be buried at Tjen Droonen, although it would of course be a symbolic burial, since we had nothing physical of him.
We were all dressed up, my sisters and I, in black naturally. It seemed kind of strange however, that we were all dressed up not to attend some dinner, concert and whatnot, but my father’s funeral.
When my mother finally came down, the first thing she said to me was, “You look just like your father 25 years ago.”
Friedrich
My father was an orphan. His parents had died in an accident when he was eight, so his siblings and him grew up in an orphanage ran by the nuns who belonged to the Order of Sant Kaboul Sahin. He had a younger brother and a younger sister, both of whom were adopted later on by different families. Thereafter, they lost contact. By virtue of his own ability and determination, he managed to enter university, where he met my mother.
My mother told us about this after Claire had asked innocuously about the lack of contact with my father’s side of the family, as opposed to my mother’s. That my parents came from the two ends of the spectrum with regard to this, one having grown up in a big, well-to-do family filled with love, and the other having grown up in an orphanage, intrigued me because it just bolstered my view that my parents were as different as night and day.
My mother is always calm, composed and rational. My father was temperamental, which was also surprising, given that my mother was the artist, while my father was a businessman. You would have thought that my mother would be the temperamental one instead, after all, artistic people are often said to be temperamental. The most famous example I could think of would be Nichelo Czisny, the moody genius of Venprek.
I always wondered if my mother had been drawn to him precisely because of all those differences. In a way, he was everything she wasn’t. She was the rich man’s daughter who never had to worry about money because her family back in Barcelona took care of that, while he was the poor student struggling to make ends meet, who had to fought for everything he had, including the scholarship the university had given to him, which wasn’t enough for him to get by decently anyway.
But I never asked them why, although my father unknowingly gave his own version of events when we were watching the Champions’ League Final last year between Barcelona and Arsenal. “Arsene stole Cesc from Barca, but even before that, Fran stole Mercè from them.”
My mother laughed and shook her head. As much as they were different, both were stubborn and
Claire
The only funeral I had ever attended was my grandfather’s.
When I was seven, my mother announced that we were going to Barcelona. We always went there once a year, during the summer to visit my mother’s side of the family. The trip that year was solemn.
At the funeral, even though I was too young to understand, I only needed to look at my parents and my siblings to know that I should keep quiet. At last, I couldn’t resist and asked my brother what was happening. He whispered, “We are saying goodbye to Grandfather.”
I was confused, “Why are there so many people? Where is he?”
“He is inside that coffin, that box.”
I was feeling miserable. It was all too confusing. “Where is he going?”
“To Heaven.”
When I saw my uncles lifting the coffin for the procession, I asked my mother, “ Why are they taking Grandfather to Heaven?”
My mother smiled sadly and answered, “ La muerte es de la vida inseparable hermana.”
Death is the inseparable sister of Life.
Of course I did not understand what she meant at that time. But I pressed on, “Where will he live then? Doesn’t he like his house?”
“He will live in our hearts, Clarissa.”
I decided then that everything was beyond my comprehension, and kept quiet till the funeral was over.
On our subsequent visits to my mother’s old house, my grandmother still took at least five minutes to scrutinize us from head to toe and handed out sweets and cakes freely. However, I never saw my grandfather again, an energetic old man with silvery-gray hair who always had the strength to carry his granddaughter on his shoulders as he took her for walks in the garden. I missed his hearty laughter, which reverberated around the house. I missed the twinkle in his eyes whenever he smiled. To me, he was the nicest man in the world, after my father.
Ten years on, I never thought I would be at the funeral of the nicest man in the world.
My father.
Dan
The priest began his eulogy.
I was probably the only one in the family who argued with my father. My mother said once that I had inherited her looks, but my father’s character. My father’s temper wasn’t as bad as people thought; it was accentuated because of my mother’s nature. I probably had a worse temper than my father.
I always got into trouble back when I was in high school. I guess I was every teacher’s nightmare. Because of my father’s frequent absence, my mother was often asked to come down to explain my behavior to my teachers. My mother would only listen to the teacher and apologize. Back home, she would explain to me my faults, always patiently of course. In my own defence, I would sometimes raise my voice. At the slightest hint of my temper flaring, she would say, “Talk to me when you are calmed down.” On other occasions, she would say, “Think about it,” leaving me to brood while she went about with her other chores.
My biggest fault is that I would never admit that I am wrong.
So it was that once, my teacher insisted that my father come down; after all, my mother had apparently failed to talk sense into me. My father was around, and he met me at the gate. We went to see the teacher without saying anything. My mother had conveyed the message to him the night before. I was worried about what my father would do, to me. The teacher aired all her grievances. My father listened intently. Then he clarified a few things. He never apologized though. He only said that he would talk to me about it.
On the car ride home, I turned away from him. He said, “Well, I can see why you don’t like her. But why do you want to waste your time fighting with her this way? It’s meaningless. Do things that shut her up. You get what I am saying?”
I stole a glance at him. He winked. I was surprised to find him on my side. My mother asked how it went. He just brushed it off and said, “Everyone gets into trouble with teachers.”
Sometimes I felt that even though I talked to him less than to my mother, he understood me more. I was very involved in the volleyball team in school and was unfortunate to have gotten myself injured, which hampered our preparation. We were also having a run of bad results. I was very frustrated and that made me even moodier. Watching me limp around the house, he must have sensed my frustration when he told me, “God only gives obstacles to people whom he thinks are worthy enough.”
We made it to the city-wide final in the end.
Sometimes I regretted my words and tone. Especially now after his death, especially when I looked back on what he had done for us. I would think we quarreled only because I was his daughter.
Both were stubborn to the core, and were too proud to express our love for our loved ones.
Claire
My mother often said that of the three of us, I was the one who asked the most. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest, hence people tended to be more accommodating, taking into account the naiveté and innocence that came with youth.
When I was ten, I asked my mother if my father loved my sister, because they were always quarreling. My mother said, “Even though your father doesn’t say it, he loves the three of you the same.”
There was nothing I loved more than hearing my father’s stories. When I was younger, I would sit on his lap and hear his stories from his trips. Now I would just sit beside him. He was an animated storyteller whose words seemed to have a life of their own, with the magical ability to teleport you into the worlds they described, such that you could smell the salt of the Mediterranean in the air in Marseille, feel the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, see the moon’s reflection in the canals of Venice.
Once, I asked him about my mother. How had they fallen in love?
It was in winter, he said. Winters in Venprek can get especially cold. It is during such times when you crave for warmth. But my father, according to him, was always resistant to the cold. He was used to it. At a party organized by a friend, he met my mother for the first time. When my mother entered with her friend, he, just like all the other people in the room, stopped and stared. She took his breath away.
That winter, he realized that he was more and more susceptible to the cold. Although he had friends, he was always more of a loner, always alone, partly due to his background as well. But my mother had entered his life and changed the equation.
They got to know each other through mutual friends. Even though she smiled and laughed often, what attracted him most was her dark, soulful eyes, and that half-smile when she was deep in thought.
“But courting your mother was very difficult, because she was always the center of attention, every guy’s dream girl. She probably had a hundred suitors then. And another hundred back in Barcelona.”
I asked my mother about that. “Nonsense. I only had eyes for him,” she said. She went to her room and reappeared ten minutes later with a sketch.
That autumn, she had seen him in a café, gazing off into a faraway land. She was at the square, painting for tourists and locals alike.
She showed me the sketch. It was my father 28 years ago. Under the sketch were the words in Catalan, “Here, I fell in love with you.”
To her, to see him again at the party was God’s clearest indication to her that it was fate.
Friedrich
The priest had finished his part. He led us in a prayer, before we each laid a rose on his gravestone, on which it was inscribed:
Fran Mihel Sauvigne
1959-2007
lives forever in the hearts of
Mercè Serra Soler
Danielle Therese Sauvigne
Friedrich Giovanni Sauvigne
Clarissa Vivienne Sauvigne
With the help of a family friend, we made arrangements for my father to be buried at Tjen Droonen, although it would of course be a symbolic burial, since we had nothing physical of him.
We were all dressed up, my sisters and I, in black naturally. It seemed kind of strange however, that we were all dressed up not to attend some dinner, concert and whatnot, but my father’s funeral.
When my mother finally came down, the first thing she said to me was, “You look just like your father 25 years ago.”
Friedrich
My father was an orphan. His parents had died in an accident when he was eight, so his siblings and him grew up in an orphanage ran by the nuns who belonged to the Order of Sant Kaboul Sahin. He had a younger brother and a younger sister, both of whom were adopted later on by different families. Thereafter, they lost contact. By virtue of his own ability and determination, he managed to enter university, where he met my mother.
My mother told us about this after Claire had asked innocuously about the lack of contact with my father’s side of the family, as opposed to my mother’s. That my parents came from the two ends of the spectrum with regard to this, one having grown up in a big, well-to-do family filled with love, and the other having grown up in an orphanage, intrigued me because it just bolstered my view that my parents were as different as night and day.
My mother is always calm, composed and rational. My father was temperamental, which was also surprising, given that my mother was the artist, while my father was a businessman. You would have thought that my mother would be the temperamental one instead, after all, artistic people are often said to be temperamental. The most famous example I could think of would be Nichelo Czisny, the moody genius of Venprek.
I always wondered if my mother had been drawn to him precisely because of all those differences. In a way, he was everything she wasn’t. She was the rich man’s daughter who never had to worry about money because her family back in Barcelona took care of that, while he was the poor student struggling to make ends meet, who had to fought for everything he had, including the scholarship the university had given to him, which wasn’t enough for him to get by decently anyway.
But I never asked them why, although my father unknowingly gave his own version of events when we were watching the Champions’ League Final last year between Barcelona and Arsenal. “Arsene stole Cesc from Barca, but even before that, Fran stole Mercè from them.”
My mother laughed and shook her head. As much as they were different, both were stubborn and
Claire
The only funeral I had ever attended was my grandfather’s.
When I was seven, my mother announced that we were going to Barcelona. We always went there once a year, during the summer to visit my mother’s side of the family. The trip that year was solemn.
At the funeral, even though I was too young to understand, I only needed to look at my parents and my siblings to know that I should keep quiet. At last, I couldn’t resist and asked my brother what was happening. He whispered, “We are saying goodbye to Grandfather.”
I was confused, “Why are there so many people? Where is he?”
“He is inside that coffin, that box.”
I was feeling miserable. It was all too confusing. “Where is he going?”
“To Heaven.”
When I saw my uncles lifting the coffin for the procession, I asked my mother, “ Why are they taking Grandfather to Heaven?”
My mother smiled sadly and answered, “ La muerte es de la vida inseparable hermana.”
Death is the inseparable sister of Life.
Of course I did not understand what she meant at that time. But I pressed on, “Where will he live then? Doesn’t he like his house?”
“He will live in our hearts, Clarissa.”
I decided then that everything was beyond my comprehension, and kept quiet till the funeral was over.
On our subsequent visits to my mother’s old house, my grandmother still took at least five minutes to scrutinize us from head to toe and handed out sweets and cakes freely. However, I never saw my grandfather again, an energetic old man with silvery-gray hair who always had the strength to carry his granddaughter on his shoulders as he took her for walks in the garden. I missed his hearty laughter, which reverberated around the house. I missed the twinkle in his eyes whenever he smiled. To me, he was the nicest man in the world, after my father.
Ten years on, I never thought I would be at the funeral of the nicest man in the world.
My father.
Dan
The priest began his eulogy.
I was probably the only one in the family who argued with my father. My mother said once that I had inherited her looks, but my father’s character. My father’s temper wasn’t as bad as people thought; it was accentuated because of my mother’s nature. I probably had a worse temper than my father.
I always got into trouble back when I was in high school. I guess I was every teacher’s nightmare. Because of my father’s frequent absence, my mother was often asked to come down to explain my behavior to my teachers. My mother would only listen to the teacher and apologize. Back home, she would explain to me my faults, always patiently of course. In my own defence, I would sometimes raise my voice. At the slightest hint of my temper flaring, she would say, “Talk to me when you are calmed down.” On other occasions, she would say, “Think about it,” leaving me to brood while she went about with her other chores.
My biggest fault is that I would never admit that I am wrong.
So it was that once, my teacher insisted that my father come down; after all, my mother had apparently failed to talk sense into me. My father was around, and he met me at the gate. We went to see the teacher without saying anything. My mother had conveyed the message to him the night before. I was worried about what my father would do, to me. The teacher aired all her grievances. My father listened intently. Then he clarified a few things. He never apologized though. He only said that he would talk to me about it.
On the car ride home, I turned away from him. He said, “Well, I can see why you don’t like her. But why do you want to waste your time fighting with her this way? It’s meaningless. Do things that shut her up. You get what I am saying?”
I stole a glance at him. He winked. I was surprised to find him on my side. My mother asked how it went. He just brushed it off and said, “Everyone gets into trouble with teachers.”
Sometimes I felt that even though I talked to him less than to my mother, he understood me more. I was very involved in the volleyball team in school and was unfortunate to have gotten myself injured, which hampered our preparation. We were also having a run of bad results. I was very frustrated and that made me even moodier. Watching me limp around the house, he must have sensed my frustration when he told me, “God only gives obstacles to people whom he thinks are worthy enough.”
We made it to the city-wide final in the end.
Sometimes I regretted my words and tone. Especially now after his death, especially when I looked back on what he had done for us. I would think we quarreled only because I was his daughter.
Both were stubborn to the core, and were too proud to express our love for our loved ones.
Claire
My mother often said that of the three of us, I was the one who asked the most. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest, hence people tended to be more accommodating, taking into account the naiveté and innocence that came with youth.
When I was ten, I asked my mother if my father loved my sister, because they were always quarreling. My mother said, “Even though your father doesn’t say it, he loves the three of you the same.”
There was nothing I loved more than hearing my father’s stories. When I was younger, I would sit on his lap and hear his stories from his trips. Now I would just sit beside him. He was an animated storyteller whose words seemed to have a life of their own, with the magical ability to teleport you into the worlds they described, such that you could smell the salt of the Mediterranean in the air in Marseille, feel the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, see the moon’s reflection in the canals of Venice.
Once, I asked him about my mother. How had they fallen in love?
It was in winter, he said. Winters in Venprek can get especially cold. It is during such times when you crave for warmth. But my father, according to him, was always resistant to the cold. He was used to it. At a party organized by a friend, he met my mother for the first time. When my mother entered with her friend, he, just like all the other people in the room, stopped and stared. She took his breath away.
That winter, he realized that he was more and more susceptible to the cold. Although he had friends, he was always more of a loner, always alone, partly due to his background as well. But my mother had entered his life and changed the equation.
They got to know each other through mutual friends. Even though she smiled and laughed often, what attracted him most was her dark, soulful eyes, and that half-smile when she was deep in thought.
“But courting your mother was very difficult, because she was always the center of attention, every guy’s dream girl. She probably had a hundred suitors then. And another hundred back in Barcelona.”
I asked my mother about that. “Nonsense. I only had eyes for him,” she said. She went to her room and reappeared ten minutes later with a sketch.
That autumn, she had seen him in a café, gazing off into a faraway land. She was at the square, painting for tourists and locals alike.
She showed me the sketch. It was my father 28 years ago. Under the sketch were the words in Catalan, “Here, I fell in love with you.”
To her, to see him again at the party was God’s clearest indication to her that it was fate.
Friedrich
The priest had finished his part. He led us in a prayer, before we each laid a rose on his gravestone, on which it was inscribed:
Fran Mihel Sauvigne
1959-2007
lives forever in the hearts of
Mercè Serra Soler
Danielle Therese Sauvigne
Friedrich Giovanni Sauvigne
Clarissa Vivienne Sauvigne
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