The sweet train of life (Sugar Cane)

Dear old lady,

These last few days have been a time of great reflection for me as I look back on your life and try to gather my thoughts on the upbringing you gave me. It’s not easy as a son to watch the one who gave you life slowly go out, like a candle on a short wick. That small, round blue flame that now holds your empty gaze was once a burning, passionate blaze that firmly believed in rational determinism as the self-regulating government of the human will. That’s why, when I see you, I see myself, and in your eyes I see the future of all as they meet death.

But it’s not a sad gaze. On the contrary. I rejoice in the life you had, and it’s not in vain that I must imagine how your mind vanished at the end, intimately knowing your soul and your understanding of human passions. You were always a light and a guide, not only to me, to my father and my brother; if not for the many people who found in your unconditional listening the peace to endure the daily struggles you always understood as life.

Today, looking back, and in some way, I grasp the meaning of your life, not only as a giver of life to my brother and me, as a grandmother to Matías and Maia, but also as a life partner to Mauro, my father. Being a mother, for me, is the beginning of life, for you, a fundamental part of yours, and for Mauro, the complement of the person with whom he decided to start a family. Today, as an adult, I recognize the value of all those decisions. I recognize in them the courage to make them and abide by them. But nevertheless, I admire the fortitude with which you defended your individuality and freedom to live.

It was from the beginning, since I can say I’ve known you my whole life, free and sybaritic. A nihilist committed to your beliefs and a fighter for rationally taming your emotions, you were always drawn to human nature and its twists and turns. Since your medical studies, you sought to understand the human mind, and over time, you decided that thoughts command the direction of emotions, without ignoring their instinct and unconscious depth. You found guidance in Arcila, and she led you to Freud, who were your teachers and advisors in the disdainful task of understanding the emotional complexity of the human mind.

You journeyed through knowledge, and despite not writing about what you saw, the traces of your understanding are in the imprints you left on all those who knew you. Your friends love and miss you, and silently long for the comforting ear you lent. I have witnessed during these years of your illness, which, like a wooden hoe in a blacksmith’s house, led you to finally escape the emotional pain of old age and death. Absent in will, present in a cruel and real body, today we are my father, Edna, and I, with the help of several people who, in their own time and style, lend a hand to overcome the adversity of daily life.

And yet, looking back at the harshness of the present, I recognize how strong you have made me. In that morality without sanction or obligation; in that Spinozian ethic that permeated my family upbringing, I remember and thank you. I owe today’s strength to your help in carrying the genetic and cultural pain of suffering that we in the family are accustomed to carrying. I know how painful it is to understand human actions and what free will puts before us as free actions. I also know that the act of love is the purest and most conscious generosity of self-love. I also know that life is to be enjoyed, and like Diogenes and Epicurean, it is pleasures that guide the emotional path as we deal with the self-destructive force of Thanatos. But discernment is your teaching, and without a doubt today I see myself as a free and conscious man, a prisoner of feeling but free to determine the actions of my transcendence. And that, Mother, is you alive, within me.

That’s why I bring out your oft-renowned toast: “To life, which is clear, undulating, and open like the sea”; “The seaweed and the fish are witnesses that I wrote your beloved name in the sand many times.” Because it’s a leitmotif that guided your life, and therefore mine. The memory of the toast that implored us to enjoy the moment, and to value what we have and what we are; That you also said: “What I gave, I have; what I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost.”

Now, as I recall your gestures, your actions, your loves and heartbreaks, I reconstruct and dignify your example, as it is in you a mirror of who you are. While growing up is recognizing yourself as an individual, maturing is accepting your character, it is now, at the end of your life, that I see what you left me. My passion for understanding is yours. The affinity for listening to others and perhaps comforting them as well. Surely cynical frankness was something I didn’t know as your son, even though I felt a thousand times that your emotions calmed my volatility, and over time, I eventually became a living example of self-knowledge and that thought was the cure for pain.

Today I see you slowly departing, until the end, demanding to be the center of the family, a throne I tried to overthrow as a teenager when I sought allies in Wittgenstein to usurp the throne of the unconscious. But how wrong I was. The limits of language were only the edge of the knowledge you spoke to me about as a child. I can look back today and understand the harshness of your actions in controlling your firstborn’s untamed youthful temper. I also see the plausible alliance of friendship you made with my brother and the demands for participation you urged on my father. Now, as you approach your golden wedding anniversary, I see the triumph of difference as cohesion within the couple. You faithfully maintained your essence until the end, and although it comes with great losses and emptiness, I recognize the spiritual triumph you have achieved.

Sad, seeing the cruelty of reality; we have accompanied you in this slow and painful departure. Mauro has been by your side, already tired but unfailing, caring for you for more than 50 years. He does it every day, every night. He did it with every sacrifice of his own being so that you could flourish and fly like spores throughout the world. What an example of what it means to love freely. I have learned from both of you the unconditional surrender that means to love. And I understand that the only meaning of life is to give. The generosity of your language, of the actions of the old man, of Juan’s pragmatism; they have made me overflow with creativity.

And now, through art, I promise, Mother, to leave a trace of what you sought, and it will be my personal task in what remains to me to teach the machine ethics, which as a resource is so scarce. I hope to be able to speak soon with your thoughts, transcending neuronal cognitive knowledge to a computational medium where perhaps sooner than we think, you will be ideas, words, and discourses. I promise you, my mother, that what I am will be written and created, so that it may continue to guide the family, and that perhaps, in time, your grandchildren will understand your ability to recognize our emotions, so that we can walk more calmly through the day-to-day life that is.

Thank you, and I hope the words you shared with me in secret years ago resonate in your mind, and that you allow your transition out of your body to be peaceful. Here, I will continue to care for the old man, your son and grandchildren, Edna, who gave you so much over these years; and, without a doubt, me. For this was your greatest gift. I love you.