My father died nine months ago and last night he drove me home in a taxi.<\/p>\n
We knew something was wrong when my father stopped taking his insulin and started leaving his flat at night without his shoes because there were \u201cpeople in the plants\u201d and the floor was made of \u201cmuddy water\u201d. After several tests, he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia<\/a>, which causes hallucinations and a rapid decline in cognition.<\/p>\n He moved to a nursing home in central Stockholm, and I told myself everything would end well. Dad would finally get proper medication, physical therapy, new teeth, foot care and eye treatment for his declining vision. I imagined coming by with my sons, and we would finally be able to talk about everything: why he disappeared, what we might have done differently and why I still held on to the naive hope that he would apologise.<\/p>\n In the first weeks in the home, he would often tell the nurses the story of how he met my mother. He was a 21-year-old Tunisian store detective, using his impeccable eyesight to catch shoplifters in a mall in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was an 18-year-old Swedish student secretary who was in the country to learn French. They met at a pub. He quoted Baudelaire. She went back to Sweden<\/a>. Years of letters. A reunion in Stockholm.<\/p>\n After their first kiss, Dad asked Mom what her family name, Bergman, meant in Swedish.<\/p>\n \u201cMountain man,\u201d she said. He couldn\u2019t believe it. His family name, Khemiri, also meant \u201cmountain man\u201d \u2013 but in Arabic. Cue strings. Cue destiny. Cue love for ever, for ever ever<\/a>, forever ever? (Andr\u00e9 3000 voice). Their names connected them in a world that seemed to claim their love was impossible, because they didn\u2019t share class, background, religion, skin colour and a mother tongue.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t 100% true. Khemiri doesn\u2019t literally mean \u201cmountain man\u201d in Arabic. But my father was from Jendouba, Tunisia, near the Kroumirie mountains, and Kroumirie kind of sounds like Khemiri, so I guess it was true enough. My father\u2019s most crushing loss was the divorce. When Mom told him he had to move out, Dad cursed me and my brothers: \u201cYour mother will never be able to raise three boys on her own,\u201d he said. \u201cYou will end up homeless drug addicts.\u201d<\/p>\n He disappeared. I spent my life trying to prove him wrong. I became a writer, my middle brother an actor, the youngest a psychiatrist. None of us are homeless. But whenever I\u2019ve gone through a breakup since, I hear my father\u2019s voice: \u201cI told you not to trust anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n After my father moved to the nursing home, I received a fellowship in New York and moved to the US with my family. He never forgave me for leaving Sweden. He would call five times a day to let me know the nurses were trying to poison him. Mossad had bugged his room. His plants were still full of people, and the muddy water on the floor was rising by the day. He wanted to go to Tunisia, or Paris, or New York. He wanted to be anywhere but there.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody has come to see me in weeks,\u201d he said, which was strange because I knew my brothers had been there the day before. \u201cAll I need is some physical presence,\u201d he added, which struck me as slightly ironic, since all his now-grown children had felt the same way when he disappeared.<\/p>\n When we hung up, my sons asked me what was wrong with Grandpa. I tried to explain. I told them: he\u2019s sick, he\u2019s old, he comes from a poor background, a complicated country, he had eight siblings, his mother couldn\u2019t read or write, he worked all his life to achieve financial stability, he was convinced money could create freedom and help him escape a painful past he never wanted to talk about. He had a thousand dreams, sold watches, imported perfumes, drove subways, bartended, taught languages \u2013 always dreaming of that big break that would turn everything around.<\/p>\n \u201cDid he ever get rich?\u201d my oldest son asked.<\/p>\n \u201cIt depends on what you mean by rich,\u201d I said. \u201cHe managed to save some money. But he lost a lot of people along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n I hugged my sons and promised myself I wouldn\u2019t repeat my father\u2019s mistakes \u2013 knowing full well I would make my own.<\/p>\n A few months before his death, he called me to say he was lost in the city. It was raining, someone had stolen his leather jacket and he couldn\u2019t find his way back to the nursing home. His voice trembled with fear. \u201cIf you turn on the camera, I can guide you,\u201d I said. It took him a few minutes to find the button. He showed me his surroundings. \u201cBut Dad,\u201d I said, \u201cYou\u2019re sitting in your room.\u201d \u201cAre you sure?\u201d he said, looking at his walls, his TV, the Tabarka jazz festival poster, as if for the first time.<\/p>\n A few days before he passed, I was in Paris to give a reading from my latest novel, The Sisters. It follows three siblings over 35 years as they try to break free from a family curse. I chose a chapter about a father who forces his son to cut off his hair and then helps a female shopkeeper who is threatened by a drunk. The chapter ends with this line: \u201cI enjoyed turning my father into a story; somehow, it gave me power over him, it seemed like the only power I had.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day, my brother texted: \u201cDad has stopped eating and drinking. The doctors are considering palliative care.\u201d I just stood there, blinking at the screen, trying to process how utterly powerless my stories were in the face of death.<\/p>\n I flew to Stockholm and spent three days and nights with my brothers at his bedside. He was breathing but couldn\u2019t speak. He was looking at us but didn\u2019t recognise us. He looked like a baby bird, with thin wings for arms and empty holes where there had once been white teeth.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can still hear you,\u201d the nurses said, and we believed them.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t leave his side. We played Satie on repeat. We told stories. Do you remember that time when he caught two rabbits by hand, killed mosquitoes lurking on the ceiling with towels, pretended to eat a wasp, danced like James Brown, defended us from racist skinheads, quoted Disney films, forgot our girlfriends\u2019 names, warned us never to get involved in politics, told us we were crazy for trusting the banking system. Sure, death seemed to be winning, but our stories put up a good fight. Dementia<\/a> had transformed his mind into a desert, but I imagined our stories planting seeds that might wake him up. Soon, terminal lucidity would kick in. Soon he would speak. We kept hoping for an ending that would make sense.<\/p>\n One afternoon, we filled the hospital room with people: my mom, my brothers\u2019 girlfriends, their children, older kids keeping their distance from his stiff body, toddlers climbing into bed without fear. For a moment, I saw the flutter of a smile on his lips. But still no words.<\/p>\n My middle brother was the last one to hear him speak. The day before I arrived, Dad looked up and said: \u201cTell Per-Olof I still love his daughter.\u201d Per-Olof Bergman, my Swedish grandfather, died in 1993. My parents divorced in 1995. My father died in 2025.<\/p>\n I have spent 22 years writing about families, perhaps as a rebellion against death. Every time I receive a call telling me someone has died, my brain whispers: \u201cYou can write about this.\u201d It happened when my first girlfriend took her own life. When a childhood friend died in a car crash. When my grandfather died, and my grandmother, and my cousin and my uncle.<\/p>\n For years, I felt guilty about that reflex. Now I see it as a defence mechanism \u2013 an illusion of control: \u201cDon\u2019t worry. You\u2019re not powerless. You can come up with an evocative first sentence and an effective ending. You can turn your loss into words and replace everyone who dies with sentences.\u201d<\/p>\n His breaths grew shallow. We forgave him, we cried. We waited. He didn\u2019t wake to say he loved us<\/p>\n And on some level, we all do this: we lose and we tell stories. We tell stories and then we die. The best-case scenario is that time kills us. No wonder we search frantically for control, for narrative structure, for a happy ending.<\/p>\n But sitting next to my dying father, I didn\u2019t think about writing. Maybe because I\u2019d already mourned him. Once, he told me: \u201cEverything you have, you got from me. You wouldn\u2019t be a writer without me.\u201d I think he was right, but I suspect his absence shaped me more than his presence.<\/p>\n His breaths grew shallow. We said our goodbyes, we forgave him, we cried. We waited. We waited some more. We said goodbye at least eight times.<\/p>\n At 2.30am, the third night, his breathing slowed. I woke my brothers. We sat beside him. His forehead was cold. Long silences. Then another breath. Silence. Breath. Silence. Breath. Then silence. A brief moment of pain. A gurgling sound. Silence.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t wake to say he loved us. He didn\u2019t explain why things turned out the way they did. He breathed, and breathed, and then he stopped.<\/p>\n After his death, I flew to Tunisia to collect letters, photos and meet mourning cousins and aunts. Even though he was gone, I kept seeing him everywhere. He drove every car, stood behind every bar. The security guard who told me the mosque in Tunis was closing had his eyes. The bald man who tried to lure me down an alley in the souk had his hands and homemade tattoos. My aunt had his smell; my uncle his laughter. I had never been to Tunisia without him \u2013 and my brain wouldn\u2019t allow him to die.<\/p>\n Back in New York, he appeared less often. In April, a young version of him sold halal food on 47th Street. In June, a middle-aged version refereed my son\u2019s flag football game in New Jersey. \u201cDidn\u2019t the referee look like your grandfather?\u201d I asked on our way home. My son had headphones on and didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n My father died eight months ago and last night he drove me home in a taxi. I leaned forward to see if it was really him. Same neck, same hair, same shoulders. But when we hit a pothole on Flatbush Avenue, he turned to me and said: \u201cSorry.\u201d<\/p>\n