My Father, Things, and Death

“A person lives on for as long as others remember them. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about my father more now than when he was alive. Now that his being is no longer self-evident. What kind of memories are they? How are they caught up with physical objects, with the things that surrounded him in life? The more I think about my dead father, the more his things speak to me.”
There’s the armchair that speaks of his passion for football and of nights when the alarm clock would be set to make sure he didn’t miss some legendary boxing match. There’s the oil painting that testifies to a youthful talent lost along the way. There’s the watch marking some company anniversary and the beer mug proclaiming his Bavarian roots.
In these everyday objects, Rainer Moritz recalls a whole life, a whole world, particular and irretrievable. This loving but wholly unsentimental portrait of his father shows us how we can affirm who we are when we confront death, the death of our parents.