Since the early days of 2015, I knew I would face either life or death before the end of the year. Pregnancy is one of the rare occasions that gives you this kind of absolute certainty. At the time though, I didn’t know I would face both.
On 19 February 2015, I read this New York Times article by Oliver Sacks about his liver cancer diagnosis and the fact that he only had months to live. This made me really sad. This is by reading his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, incidentally written the year I was born, that I got into brain science. I read more books from Sacks over the years, and he’s part of the reasons why I became a researcher in neuroscience.
I had many points in common with him, notably a profound love for music.
This trait came directly from my father, who had a passion for music and opera. There are thousands of CDs in my parents’ apartment. Every room, every corridor is overflowed by CDs. When someone comes to their apartment, this is the first thing they notice.
My father, who was a recognized pediatrician in Nice, was called “Doctor Music” by his little patients. They could hear classical musical all the time in his office.
I, too, heard music all day long at home when I was young. From time to time, my father offered me discs of composers or pianists I didn’t know about. I wasn’t fully appreciating at the time how important these little attentions were.
When he offered me the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas in 8 CDs, I was surprised. I didn’t know these pieces at all and I didn’t know if I would actually like them. But soon, I fell in love with these sonatas. Now, I know all of them by heart and I can play many of them on the piano. Listening to these sonatas makes me happy, as many other pieces I’ve discovered thanks to my father.
I could go on and on with all the music I now listen and love. The piano concertos by Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninov. Liszt and his piano sonata that I’ve been playing for many years. Keith Jarrett. Chick Corea. So many others. It’s striking to realize that it always started with an attention from my father. I literally owe him my passion for music. Little things matter.
Recently, he introduced me to Spotify. He was fond of electronics, gadgets, Internet, smartphones. I got that from him, too. Often, it was me who made him discover new apps and websites.
I ended up discovering Adele via Spotify. Her song Million Years Ago is one of the very rare songs where I see myself in tears from start to finish, every single time. I don’t even know why. The music, harmonic structure, the melody, are so disarmingly simple that it has to be the voice. I used to think that I was only sensitive to instrumental music, not voices or lyrics. Maybe I’ll end up enjoying opera after all.
A long time ago, my father bought me a couple of discs from Michel Petrucciani. I didn’t know this pianist at the time. I wasn’t even listening to jazz. The discs stayed virtually untouched in my shelf for many years. Two years ago, I was looking for some music for my wedding, and I came across these discs. I thoroughly enjoyed them and I ended up discovering the entire discography of Petrucciani. Listening to his music made me a lot of good when I needed it. Here’s someone who was born severely handicapped with the brittle bone disease and yet became one of the most talented jazz pianists of his generation. His music was full of optimism. He had plenty of energy and he lived a short but intense life, dying at only 36. This is quite a life lesson.
The day I learned for Sacks’ illness was a sad day; yet, this is when my son was conceived. Month after month, as I was following my wife’s pregnancy, I read further articles by Sacks about his illness, how he was spending his last moments on Earth, how happy he was for the life he had, until his death on 30 August.
My wife and I spent part of the summer in the south of France with all my family. Beach, sea, swimming pool, restaurants. We all had a great time. My father and I started to work on a project of mobile app that would help young parents like me follow the progress of their babies. He was very enthusiastic about this. I told him that I would only find the time to work on this in autumn.
A couple of months later, we had dinner with my father in Paris. He seemed a bit quieter than usual, yet sincerely pleased to see us in our apartment with the room we had prepared for our future baby.
David came to life on 5 November. This is a nice birthdate. 5/11/15 is one of the rare palindromic birthdates (at least for us French people). I’m used to find coincidences everywhere, especially with the numbers and dates I come across, and there are many in this post. I love numbers and dates and I retain them easily. Numbers and mental multiplications tend to calm me down.
Hours before my son’s birth, I learned that my father had been diagnosed with terminal stage liver cancer, at only 62. I will always remember that long night at the maternity, waiting for the baby to slowly make his way, thinking about my father and my future son, hearing Norah Jones in my head after listening to her endlessly the days before. Emotional roller coaster.
My dad managed to come to the maternity in Paris to see his first and only grandson that he’d been long waiting for. I took many pictures of him holding his grandson in his arms. Precious pictures.
The Paris attacks occurred on the 13th, 8 days after David’s birth. That didn’t help.
5 days after that was my 30th birthday. This was also the day my dad went into surgery. The day before, he spent his last evening in Paris with us, in the city where he grew up. We had dinner at my place.
I showed him the prototype of mobile app that we had talked about during the summer, and that I had quickly started when I learned about his illness. He seemed happy to see ongoing progress on this.
This was a beautiful, unforgettable evening. The very last time we were all together.
During the following weeks, I frequently talked to my parents over Skype to show them David grow day after day. I also saw my father losing weight and becoming more and more tired. Sometimes, he could barely open his eyes, and all I could see was a faint smile on his face as he heard the baby vocalize.
24 December was my dad’s 63rd birthday. This was 6*6=36 days after my birthdate. I told him that this was also 7 weeks after David’s birth, or 7*7=49 days. This was a very particular multiplication to us. When he brought me to elementary school every day, as I was learning my multiplications, he always asked me the very same multiplication: “seven times seven?”. I always told him that he should rather interrogate me on various multiplications instead of asking the same every single time, and we always laughed. My dad, who was never good at math, used to say that this was the only multiplication he could ever remember when he was a kid. Now this makes sense.
Later, I realized that 2016 was the sum of all numbers up to 63. What a coincidence! Next time it happens is 2080, the sum of all numbers up to 64. This should be my son’s age that year. Another coincidence! Dad was fond of coincidences. He saw something almost mystical in them. I’m a rationalist but I can think like him sometimes.
My sister spent my father’s birthday with him in Nice. 5 days later, it was my turn to pay him a visit. That day happened to be St David’s day in France.
My parents and I had a great day. We had lunch on the balcony. It was a nice, sunny day, like often in that side of the country. My father, who used to be so talkative, was very quiet, just resting in his deck chair under the sun.
He asked me to play Chopin for him, one of his favorite composers, on the piano. He used to say that, as an infant, I cried every time I listened to the Chopin nocturnes. I played bits of the concerto that I had discovered thanks to him many years ago.
Soon it was already time for me to go home. The taxi that would bring me to the airport was already here, but I waited for my father to slowly make his way outside to say me goodbye. I didn’t want to miss that moment. I told to myself that this might well be the last time I kissed him, although I hoped it wouldn’t. My sister and I had planned to come back in February to spend a whole week in Nice with him.
I thought about this Wait But Why post by the great Tim Urban, published days before, about the fact that we people in our thirties have lived, in average, more than 95% of our in-person time with our parents. I suddenly realized that I may have reached 100% with my father.
He spent the New Year’s Eve with my mother. They had a great dinner. As a real gourmet, he ate everything he loved, oysters, foie gras, and more.
During the next weeks, my dad saw his brothers and many of his friends. We planned to come back to Nice on 19 February. Dad was very happy to know that he would get to see his grandson one more time. But 5 days before that day, on a Sunday morning, Mom called and told me that Dad was gone during the night. That wasn’t the happiest Valentine’s Day for her. I realized that his last day was David’s 100th day.
Dad was buried on 19 February, exactly one year after I read Sacks’ article.
We did went to Nice as planned and we all spent a few days with my mourning mother.
We don’t always appreciate the casual, yet precious moments of life with our loved ones until they’re gone, forever.
I felt close to my father. We had so many points in common. Passions for music, science, photography, cinema, and probably others that I have yet to discover. TV shows like ER, his absolute favorite, that we used to watch together on the Sunday evening when I was younger. He loved to transmit his passions. He loved his work, he loved to work. He loved to write. He wrote many medical books, some of them best-selling. He participated to many interviews, radio and TV emissions to talk about babies. He participated to a documentary on a major French TV channel that has yet to be diffused later this year, and that he really wished he’d live long enough to see. I helped him build websites and applications for young parents. He was profoundly kind, to the point that all of his friends say he was the kindest person they knew. All of his little patients and their parents really loved him. He was more than a pediatrician to them, as shown in all the testimonials they left on the memorial website I did for him. He didn’t understand violence, aggressiveness, and he despised injustice. He was a genuine humanist. He loved life, fine food. He had a strong sense of humor. He didn’t express his feelings but I know he felt intensely. I think he was one of the few to understand me. I feel like I’m so much like him. I’ll miss you, Dad. I’ll try to become a father as gentle and loving as you.
As his brothers said during the ceremony:
Ne pleure pas celui que tu as perdu, réjouis-toi de l’avoir connu.
(Don’t cry for the one you lost, feel grateful for having known him)
A week after my father’s passing, I found a hidden letter that he had written for my mother. She was stunned to find this, but I wasn’t. I knew this letter existed because I would have done the same thing. In his letter, he said how much he loved her and us, how much he was happy for his life, how proud he was of his children, and that we should learn to recognize happy coincidences when we come across them.
