My dear Danny,
You are now twelve and I am sixty-six! Often, in the evening before going to bed, you come to me and say, “Dad, ask me something.” And then I ask you what it was like at school, how you like your teacher and what your classmates are like, or what you think of the people in the town we live in.
Often your answers catch me unprepared, so spot-on are they; and it dawns on me that you are no longer a little boy but have matured a great deal. I then think about what I could do for you to have a colourful, warm and happy life.
Sometimes, when the following day is school-free and you get to sleep in, you come into my bed and ask me about my life. Then you listen to me silently until I notice by your breathing that you have fallen asleep, and I tuck you in well and, in my thoughts, continue to tell you my stories…
Perhaps I should tell you about my entire life! Some of it might be useful for you. Maybe later you’ll say, “Dad, tell me something!” when I’m no longer there. However, even then I would like to be “there” too, so I’m going to tell you many of my stories in advance, so to speak—for later…
I haven’t forgotten what you once said to me, while I was telling you about my youth. “Dad, I’m not terribly interested in this. This is what used to happen in the old times, but no longer today…” I know, I am of “yesterday” and you are of “tomorrow”. So I will tell you – for later – not of landscapes, love, hatred, and business, but I will provide you with a “sketch book” of my life. The people are the sketches: some of them are faint, some others carved into my life like runes, and yet all of them together create a picture of what it was like, or, rather, what it seemed like to me.
Was it beautiful? Was it bad? Before a person is there, there is nothing; after they go away, there is nothing. As long as a person is there, there is life, unique, like a miracle, and this in itself is wonderful.