A Grieving Girl's Blog

My name is Soline Van de Moortele, and I would like to personally thank you for visiting my blog and reading my posts. I am dedicated to creating a series of blog posts on my personal experience with losing my father at 22, as well as provide a platform for other people to share their experience with grief. If you would like to contribute, please email : agrievinggirlblog@gmail.com

In honor of Pierre-François Van de Moortele, 1959-2022

You would have turned 64 today. You, mom, and my brother would have probably gone out to eat tonight (or just take out if you still had cancer and were weak), but first you would have shared a bottle of champagne, and we would have had a Skype call so I could wish you a happy birthday from Montreal. We probably would have made some ridiculous jokes and laughed about your French accent.

Instead, I woke up at 4AM, unable to fall back asleep, feeling the weight of the loss all the more poignantly on this precious, difficult day. Today is your first birthday since you passed away, that day marking the moment you would stay 63 forever.

Days like these I find it especially hard to push away the weight of the deep injustice of your premature death and rejoice in the love we shared and the luck I had to have you as a parent, as a fundamental part of my life. In writing this open letter, I hope to leave one more mark in the world of the brilliant, passionate, and extraordinary person that you were, and whose legacy persists even through your death.

When I wrote to you in my personal journal today I told you that the greatest gift you gave to me, and one I think many of those who knew you were also touched by, is the incredible curiosity and wonder you found in the world in all of its smallest pockets. There is a word in French, “émerveillement,” which best describes this state of mind you were in even in those final months when the cancer was devouring you from the inside.

Whether it was your passion in dismantling and reconstructing old mopeds in your teenage years, further pushing science towards understanding the human brain through your life-long career in MRI research, or even discovering new interest in philosophy and literature in your final months of life, there was not a moment when this passion let go of you. Growing up with a figure like this supports me and helps me transform even through my darkest moments of grief.

The impact you had on the world, and continue to have, is far from minute. You were part of the team which discovered the first animal model of HIV in the 80s, you helped developed the 7 and 10.5 tesla magnetic fields used on human subjects for research on the brain (the same MRIs used to diagnose your cancer), and the physics you developed during your time at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) will continue to instigate new discoveries in science as new generations of researchers pick up on where you left off.

You were so brilliant and kind, so funny and talented. Sometimes I comfort myself by saying that the best ones always leave us first. It is, of course, only a phrase we use to try to find some meaning in such an incomprehensible situation, but it gives us something to hold onto.

You gave us the gift of living life fully and with such a deep gratitude that you never complained about your cancer, never complained about the idea of your life ending so soon, always saying that you had no regrets and no reason to fight what was to happen. The only regret you had is what the cancer and your eventual death would do to your children, my brother and I.

There are many things you won’t get to see, I am sure you spent your sleepless nights in those noisy and bleak hospital rooms thinking about them. You won’t see me graduate; won’t see me grow into adulthood; won’t see me accomplish all of those things you always knew I would be capable of. We won’t travel to those Irish islands together like we said we would, won’t go see any more impromptu late-night jazz shows as we loved to do, won’t get to share that special understanding we had that we were tortured by the meaninglessness of life but that it was also this that drove our passion for it.

But we got to share so much in those years when you were alive that the regrets are perhaps more beautiful than they appear. Regrets of the future rather than those of the past are testimony of that special bond we had that nothing, not even one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer out there, can take away.

Something I have discovered in the months since your death, which I wish I could speak to you about, is the new inclination towards something in the realm of the spiritual I never felt before. I always took your hard atheism – a result of your sudden detachment from your strong religious upbringing and turned to a more dogmatic ascription to science – as being true, in a certain way. But you always taught me to be independent in my own way so I feel no shame in diverging from your thought – I just am frustrated we could not have a deep debate on it.

I feel your presence with me everywhere I go. Sometimes I feel it as a constant overflow of love, other times I feel it as the dark weight of death and grief. These two states will never leave me, but as time goes on I will learn to better live with them, in equilibrium. I also let myself live in the suspension of not knowing where you went after your death. Although I don’t believe in any form of afterlife as we know it, I don’t really feel like you are totally gone, more that you have transformed into something else, are existing in a realm outside the one of our metaphysics that cannot be reached in the same way. Whether this is ‘true’ or not does not matter; I find solace in the feeling of having you close, even if the last time I touched your hand was four months and a day ago.

 You continue to teach those who are suffering from your loss even today. You are teaching us new forms of gratitude, of love, of appreciation, of never taking anything for granted. You are teaching us how fragile and delicate life really is and how important it is to live it in its entirety at every moment. My friends have told me they are impressed and inspired by my resilience in this situation: I tell them it is all thanks to the strength you gave me in the three years of your sickness, as well as the lifetime of love I received from you.

Today, words fail to describe the gratitude I feel towards you, difficult as it may be. I will never find a full reconciliation with your death, nor is that the goal in this situation. We learn to live with the grief. There is not a world in which my life would be better without you, and that is the most difficult part of this whole process to accept. That is the deepest regret, and the one I must learn to carry with me, to cherish. But perhaps we can have you live with us just a bit more by remembering your virtuous character and dedication to life and to helping others. Perhaps that is the best way to honor you today, and in all the days to come.

I love you dad; I hope you are resting well.

With love,

Your daughter Soline.

In 2019, my father was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of brain cancer. Over the course of the following three years he underwent numerous treatments, including experimental treatments offered at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. Although the cancer would eventually kill him in November, 2022, thanks to the treatments he received he was able to enjoy life to the fullest during the periods between his treatments. As we celebrate his birthday today, I encourage anyone who would like to support this kind of cancer research to donate to the institute by following this link. Thank you for reading.

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