A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A sons memoir - By Rodrigo Garcia

"A good story is the truth".  

“This is a beautiful farewell to two extraordinary people. It enthralled and moved me, and it will move and enthrall anyone who has ever entered the glorious literary world of Gabriel García Márquez.”—Salman Rushdie. 89th of 2021.  

Two books I wanted to reread at the beginning of the year, and right in front of me are by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and 'Love in the time of Cholera' as I had read that One Hundred Years of Solitude was being made into a movie, and wanted to re-read it before watching the movie. But with other books falling in the kitty, they took a back stage though right in front of my eye, and here came the reminder from his Son. 

With each section marked with a beautiful passage from his father's works mostly from the two books in front of me, the memoir though about Marquez & Mercedes, but as you read it at times you forget it is their memoir as the feeling is universal. It's basically of Gabo's final days in 2014 when he battled with dementia. A chronicle of love and loss. Rodrigo had taken notes and written them during the last three weeks of his father's life, but did not know what to do with them, then it was when his mother passed away in 2020 he brought this out. 

“What makes matters emotionally turbulent is the fact that my father is a famous person. Beneath the need to write may lurk the temptation to advance one’s own fame in the age of vulgarity. Perhaps it might be better to resist the call and stay humble. Humility is, after all, my favorite form of vanity. But as with most writing, the subject matter choses you, and so resistance could be futile.”

Some memorable quotes are:

" What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it" - 

"Only the first book would be of any interest, to me, any way, because it covers the years that made me a writer"

" I work with my memory. Memory is my tool and my raw material. I cannot work without it. Help me". 

He thought great discipline was one of the cornerstones of writing a novel, particularly when it came to framing the shape and limits of the tale. Markaz had never read his novel once written until bedridden. 

Sentimental but a beautiful writing, neither aloof nor about feeing, but making it universal, as others see them, finding a balance, reveling the private that is interesting to others. 

Saying good bye to both the parents - when both die, it is like end of a planet, a religion, looking through a telescope and looking for a planet and knowing that it is no more there. Much of their cultures survives in some new form in the new planets created by us merging with our partners and new life. 

"I think of my father every morning when I dry my back with a towel the way he taught me after seeing me struggling with it at the age of six. Much of the advice is always with me." Exactly my thought worded beautifully. 

Rodrigo says, he felt differently then (during those three weeks) of his dad. "Detached. Maybe that is the purpose of transformation, to help you uncouple, just as a simple look at your newborn instantly triggers feelings of attachment."