INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

HEALTH

My father's death for me was the greatest blow I had ever had. Every night, when I was going to fall asleep, I always had memories of him. I can remember this summer, back in 2019, when he had visited me in Ireland. He had travelled without mum because as he said, he wanted to have a little chat with some entrepreneur, who was planning to run his own rock bar. I don't know what they were going to talk about, because as I've already said before, I've always known my father solely as an actor and an ethnology graduate. He had never talked to me about things he had done in the past, other than acting, except for these seemingly imaginative stories he used to narrate to the end of his life.

So, that summer he had visited me and when he entered my house, he instantly opened the fridge and said: "Let's have a look at what my little princess eats". He always had the habit of calling me his little princess. When I was a kid, I was a bit annoyed by it, because I considered it too babyish. Growing older, though, every time he used to call me like that, I was feeling deeply emotional. "That's why you've lost so much weight", he would say. "Because your fridge is completely empty". And I would reply: " I do eat, dad. See, I know how to cook and I have lunch with my friends almost every noon here".

During this time that he was here, I was staging a play with my team, therefore I invited my dad to the rehearsals, so he could tell us about his opinion, as an experienced actor that he was. Everybody was speechless. He was so calm and such a soft speaker and he would advise us about our body position, when we act, or about our expressions. He had nothing to do with me, as I would raise my voice to the other guys. Whenever he gave us advice, we were listening to him carefully, as if he were a teacher. In a way, he was, at least for me. Because, as I've said before, it's due to him and mum, that I got to become an actress too, without having studied acting or anything like that.

I used to think about all these stories, while in tears. I missed my dad so much and I would miss him forever. Ingmar was trying to comfort me and he was telling me I had to remember our beautiful moments. This is what hurt more. So to say, the fact that we would never live those beautiful moments ever again. Then, Ingmar said something else too:  "Just think that there are cases when children lost their parents and they could never get close to them or always think that they had never had the chance to tell them how important they had been for them". Ingmar was right. Of course, as for me, I can't say that I had ever said all that in words. But I think I had shown him how much I loved him and he did too.

Even though I was in sorrow, the good thing in all that is, that things weren't as bad as, let's say, 2021. To start with, I wasn't suicidal anymore. And what is more, there's a huge difference between things that happened back in 2021 and the current situation. During those days, my whole life was shit and I felt completely lost. I was living a life in Ireland, which I didn't want at all, so things were wrong in general.

Now things weren't like that. I was living the life I wanted with my husband and our child and now I could, at last, make my dreams come true. I was mentally healthy. My life was ok, though my heart was in pain. And when the heart is in pain, we mustn't neglect it but heal the pain. That's why, I didn't choose to stay alone during these difficult times, as I used to, back in the days. I was constantly with Ingmar and Anna, we were playing games together, watching movies and of course, I used to spend a lot of time with mum too. I don't want to catastrophise, but I've always thought that our beloved people won't be around forever. Nobody lives eternally. We only live for a few decades and then we are buried under the ground. I wanted to be with my mum, for as long as I could, because she wouldn't either live forever.

In the meantime, because of my father's condition, I had also started to have some problems with my spine. Since December, I had had severe pains in my bones, because I was sleeping in a hospital chair almost every night. And the pain would usually strike me just before I went to sleep or while waking up. I hadn't visited a doctor, because I didn't consider it that serious and I just thought it would be over soon.