Teresa Ibars' testimonial book that makes us wiser

Of every author we like, we always love one book above all the others. My favorite book ofImma Monzon is A man of his word, where she recounts the death of her life partner with an excellence that many other books would like to have. And what does Monsó have to do with Teresa Ibars (Aitona, 1962), apart from being contemporaries and both from Lleida? Well, Ibars has just published a book that talks about the death of her partner, Xavier, as well as other goodbyes that have driven her crazy over the years.

We live in a country where death is rarely talked about, which passes by us in splashes as a dispensable fact, when it should be our reason for living: we will die, ergo we take advantage of life. The death of the other, in the singular, because the other is also everyone else, remembers from the wound left by the disappearance of people close to the author in an exquisitely elegant way and, also, sentimentally imbricated in the territory. In the villages, the bells ring for deaths; in the towns, people accompany the deceased, their own and others. "The relatives, to prepare everything to watch over the body of the deceased for the time that was due. The rest of the people, and according to their proximity to the family that suffered the loss, to accompany and pray; observe and comment, cry and sympathize, and, sometimes, also criticize."

Learning to live with death

Teresa Ibars shows us a serene relationship with the inevitable end of all of us. Death does not distress her, even if it is "the loss of loved ones, of those known or of strangers" that has made her see "the real and eternally fixed face of death." Learning to live with death is also learning to live with the weight of absence, of absences: "The longing that springs from the memory of those who are absent is a heavy necklace of rocks that you always carry with you." Chateaubriand already said that it is harder to accept death than to suffer it. It is longing that pushes him to write to preserve the memory of those he remembers. And also to preserve something of the world that disappears with them: "Now that the mother is almost gone, everything has become very strange. I am increasingly certain that nothing remains of that world of mine."

The death of the other It is a book made with measured words, without literary juggling or the desire to dazzle. Like a transcendent conversation, but not heavy, that flows in a room with low light and discreet curtains that flutter lightly in the wind. As with Monsó, Ibars makes us accomplices of how the dead perpetuate themselves in the lives of the living and how she herself has been built with the memory left by those who have left. Because, made as we are of ductile clay in our hands, we take on the presence of others, but also when they are missing. "This has been shaping me, just as my death will shape the lives of the relatives and friends who are left without me," the author tells us in this testimonial book that she wanted to share with us. We come out of it more serene and wise, because talking about death is talking about life.