Fernando Debesa

Dear Fernando, saw your death mask tonight. Clean face, after 95 full years. Openness, nervousness, long fingers, tremour in the way you heard and the way you gave your words forth. Suddenly, probably by night, you stepped aside and wrote, wrote, produced. In the morning the work was half done. More polish, more perfection, more depth coming from your conversations, from the way you looked at others, at me, at my generation, trying to grasp, to empathize, the glow of your eyes varying from wet to more shiny and then showing your passion for the wealth of life in every one. So today you died. Your books, the homage of your kind, the applause of those who do not believe you were anything but an artist, which you were, will probably carry your heart to heaven. Oh so peaceful you lied there, in the cold winter night, with loving faces around saying the Sorrowful Mysteries, finally the Fifth Mystery, the death of Christ. Our Father, Our Lady, this valley of sorrows, the future life in full. There you lied. Silent. And my prayers soothed you, or at least made you feel the meaning of those chats we had, those discovering chats when I was so presumptous as to believe I was teaching you something new. When you were showing me, really, how to listen and change, atune.