Their father died on a Saturday night. It was in January. The doctor would come in the evening. In the morning of that day, he’d asked his wife as well as Max and Charlotte, his kids now well in their 30s, to leave him alone. They had gone shopping…but nothing was bought. How can one buy anything on a day life ends? They’d spend their whole day wandering. Waiting. Charlotte had noticed how surreal the sunlight had been at the end of the day. As if a bridge of light had been set between heaven and earth for him to cross over.

They’d come home at the beginning of the evening. He’d greeted them from his bed. Everything seemed normal but, of course, nothing was. He was still sick; he was still going to die.

Nothing prepares you for death. Nobody tells you how your mind finds it impossible to grasp the concept of “never more”. You will never more speak, never more laugh, never more touch their skin, never more hear their voice. His electronic book stayed open on page 501. He’d marked it, as if he would get back to it later. There would never be a “later”. He would never finish it.

There were also the objects he’d left behind – like the tiny carved tortoise, a token she’d given him at the beginning of his illness. A token for good luck, for a long life. It hadn’t worked of course. She’d found it accidentally in his coat pocket a few days after his death. Finding it drove a knife deep inside her throat, the blade creating a deep pathway all the way to her tears.

The direct aftermaths were a beautiful chaos of panic and solace. The night after he died, Charlotte had woken up and joined her brother in the living room. Sitting on his makeshift bed, they had talked in whispers until the early hours of the morning. There was some joy in bringing him back to life if only by just remembering him. But there was also fear in slowly realizing he was gone forever. Charlotte didn’t know it yet, but a long period of waiting had begun. From now on, she would have this everlasting impression that if she waited just long enough, she would end up seeing him again. The funeral came and went, and with it the duty to get back to their lives. Max took a plane and went back home. Charlotte curled up in the arms of her lover. They would both tend to their wounds separately from now on.

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The first summer without their father made no sense. Everything was there. The sun, the water, the boat, the restaurants. But he wasn’t. That summer, Max and Charlotte learned with their mother how to be three instead of four. They learned how, when one leg is taken away from a table, new bearings must be found.

Death brings with it a series of raw feelings: sadness, desperation, resentment… and the difficulty of being angry at something you can’t see. So, you pick on the living.

That summer, they tore at the fabric of their family love. Threads were pulled, the patchwork was undone. Nobody knew anymore what part they could hold on to.

That summer was a cruel one. Many more would follow. With the passing of their father, Max and Charlotte had lost their understanding of each other. Rejection, bitterness…and so much pain. The siblings had entered a 7-year lap that would feel like an assault course.

That first summer without their father, Charlotte went to visit Max in Spain. Many disputes took place under the burning sun so much so that they both welcomed her departure. In the marina where their father’s boat used to moor, a small shop sold rigging. On one of its dusty shelves, two trinkets in the shape of whales caught Max’s eyes. There was a big and a small whale. “Like us” Max told Charlotte. She smiled. “We should buy them”.

On the day she left, they were running late but Charlotte nevertheless insisted they stopped at the shop before going to the airport. She took the small one with her back home. Max kept the bigger one with him in Spain. 

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Their father had been dead 7 years now. The pain was a little more bearable, but Charlotte still expected to see him soon. That feeling would probably never go away.

The fights between her and her brother had passed, and they now enjoyed a more serene relationship. One cold weekend in March, she’d gone to see him in Spain. They went to all their usual hangouts: the port, the narrow white streets… As they walked, side by side, he’d slipped his arm around her shoulders, in a brotherly embrace. Charlotte thought of how fragile their lives were, how this could very well be the last time they saw each other.

They’d walked alongside the beach, talking in their usual way, cracking their usual jokes, and referring to past moments together. The brother and sister remembered how they’d always been friends, too.

They came to the staircase that climbs up to Sant Bartomeu’s Church that overlooks the Sitges bay area. Charlotte touched the mermaid’s hand and joined her brother who was already on the terrace in front of the Church.

Up there, the sun warmed the air. Charlotte looked at a few bracelets a man was selling on a Touareg shawl on the floor. In front of her, Sitges’ canons pointed directly at the sea. The sun enlightened everything. The brother and sister went around the church, up towards the plaça de l’Ajuntament where the statue of Doctor Robert waited for visitors since 1907.

Max put his arm again around his sister’s shoulders. As they walked, they remembered that first summer without their father in 2017. They talked about their fights but also about the two brass whales they had bought in the port at the end of that summer.

Charlotte squeezed her brother’s hand and looked up towards Sitges’ famous palm tree.

“I hope our whales will never be reunited” Max said. Charlotte turned to him, realizing what he meant. “Neither do I” she answered with a sad smile.