For V.

I released my first album at the age of twenty-three. Like all artists, I started receiving messages on social networks, and at that time Facebook was still an only child.

Every day V. sent me something: a photograph of a guitar made of flowers, a link to a song or a message wishing me a good day. From the outset I realized that there was no attempt at seduction or malice in that contact. He liked my music and thought he liked me too. There is nothing strange about this, most people tend to confuse the two things.

V. came to some concerts and sent messages to all the band members. It was easy to sympathize with him, he was a young man, with a very affectionate smile. We all responded with love to his messages, because we knew that love was also what was at the origin of his contact.

A year after the release of the album, I was invited by TAP magazine to write an article about an area of the country that was special to me. I chose Porto Covo, the place of my first memories of family vacations. I invited a friend and there we went to spend a weekend on the Alentejo Coast with the TAP team.

On the last day, as soon as I opened Facebook, I reacted strangely to the number of new messages in my inbox. When I read the first one, I realized that all the others would have the same content: V. had left in his sleep. The messages were from his friends, so many. They also informed me of the day, time and place of the ceremonies.

I sat on the bed trying to organize my feelings. I had affection for V., but I didn’t know I was important in his life to the point of being notified of his departure by all his friends, as if I were also a close friend.

The funeral was the next day in the morning. I packed my suitcase, got up at dawn, took my friend home and went to the cemetery. It was only when I got there that I realized something obvious: how am I going to know who V.’s family is when I don’t know anyone but him? I went in and waited there, not knowing what to expect. I don’t know for sure what the temperature was that day, but in my memory it was forty degrees. I remember being able to disenchant a dark outfit and the sweat running down my back.

As soon as I see a group of people enter, all dressed in black, I try to make eye contact with a lady. She comes straight to me, hugs me very tightly and cries with her head on my chest. It was V’s mother. We stayed like that for a while. When it frees me, we remain hand in hand. Her hand is strong, as if to say that this is where she wants me. I stayed by her side while all family and friends came to give us their condolences, both of us.

When the ceremony was over, I gave him another long hug and headed towards the car. As soon as I closed the door, I cried everything that didn’t make sense to me to cry in front of those people, people who were starting to mourn, people who anticipated the pain of longing. What legitimacy would my tears of “make-believe widow” have?

That mother wanted me with her. At only 24 years old, maybe it was too early to understand my place in all that. Today, more than 10 years later and already a mother, I feel happy to have been at that moment by V.’s mother’s side, for her having chosen me.

The cemetery was close to my grandmother’s house and so I called her to ask if I could go there to take a nap before going home. It was still an hour and a half of the way and I was exhausted. I also called my parents to tell them about my morning. My mother scolded me for not asking her to accompany me.

I fell asleep in my grandmother’s bed, I think it was the only time she gave me her bed. I woke up with my parents knocking on the window.