My first book was dedicated to my parents with the words above, and so is everything I have accomplished in my life so far. Nothing would have been possible without them. I owe them everything; I love and miss them. My mother left us in December 2013, and I wrote her Ama maitea, beti izango zara gure artean. My father just left us on March 14, 2018, and today I write to him Aita maitea, beti izango zara gure artean.

I am not a writer, but fortunately Richard Ford is, and he recently paid a beautiful tribute to his parents in a wonderful book called “Between them”. Today I am borrowing his words to pay tribute to my own parents, from the bottom of my heart:

Most everything but love goes away.

Death starts a long time ahead of when it arrives. Even in death’s very self there is life that has to be lived out.

Our parent’s lives, even those enfolded in obscurity, offer us our first, strong assurance that human events have consequence. Here we are, after all. The future is unpredictable and hazardous, but our parents’ lives both enact us and help distinguish us. My own belief in lived life’s final transcendance always turns me to thoughts of my parents.

My parents were, after all, not made of words.

…humans comprise much more than anyone can tell about them.

I was fortunate to have parents who loved each other and, out of the crucible of that great, almost unfathomable love, loved me. Love, as always, confers beauties.

Absences seem to surround and intrude upon everything. Though in acknowledging this, I cannot let it be a loss or even be a fact I regret, since that is merely how life is – another enduring truth we must notice.