“First you’ve got a wedding song and no guy, and now this?” my father scoffs, with the kind of amused judgment only a parent can get away with. It’s our usual choreography – affection through provocation. Mockery as a form of care. I wait.
He softens. “Fine,” he says, grinning like he’s about to show me a magic trick. “I’ll show you what my funeral song is.”
We’ve been in Cassis for a week now—just him and I. It’s the first time in over a decade we’ve done this: coexisted without buffers, without other people to absorb our static. And somehow it’s working. We have a rhythm: lazy breakfasts at the marina, drunken dinner with family friends, and our daily late afternoon joint, which feels both medicinal and ceremonial.
We’re on the deck, sitting on the comfortable outdoor furniture that blends in perfectly with the sun-faded wooden planks and currently grey Southern skies – all carefully designed by him, save for the weather (though he’d be capable of claiming that too). He passes me the joint, then hunches over his phone to find the track. I scratch at my leg furiously—we’re both covered in rashes from toxic processionary caterpillars that crawl around this time of year like nature’s little curses. It’s disgusting and kind of bonding. He puts the phone down proudly as the first notes of the song bounce from the speakers to the walls inside, blasting what I immediately recognize as a Bob Marley song.
“Unsurprising,” I say smiling, taking the phone from him to read the lyrics just as he starts singing—off-key and undeterred, as he always does:
Propaganda spreading over my name
Say you want to bring another life to shame
Oh man, you just a-playing a game
And then you draw a bad card
He seems happy with himself, and I can’t help but be touched by how fitting this song is for him, and the way he leads his life. A man who both believes and radically accepts that everyone’s misunderstood—including himself—but still takes up space, because he can’t help himself.
He spent the morning power-washing the deck (an act of war against the caterpillars), which always makes the kind of noise you can feel in your teeth, and inevitably provokes the old lady next door. He never truly rests when he comes down here. It’s like he always needs something to do, a purpose. From morning to night he runs around, occupied with something or other to do with the house – if he’s not cleaning something, he’s fixing something, or giving us updates on the things he’s cleaned or fixed while the rest of us—god forbid—relax.
He sings on, louder now, smiling from ear to ear and motioning an energetic “fuck you” towards the neighbor’s house:
I want to disturb my neighbor
Because I’m feeling so right!
I want to turn up my disco
Blow them to full watts tonight, eh!
I’m smiling ear to ear too, without realizing. He couldn’t have picked a better song, I think to myself. As it edges towards its end, he says, without looking at me:
“Hey – incinerated, right?” I nod. “Of course”.
And that’s it. No talk of money, no legacies of any kind. Barely any talk at all. But we’ve said what we needed to. That’s how we do it.
The next song starts. I get up and start dancing.