My Father Has Died. What to Say?

What lightness and what strength are these that leave such an indelible and at the same time such a delicate impression?

For some reason, over the years, I have became the person who, on family occasions and ceremonies, spoke, gave speeches; I was the bearer of the "family's word," or of my own word, which nonetheless was still a bit of the family's.

It was natural, therefore, that I imagined myself entrusted with this function when the time came for my father to leave the…