1980: My grandfather fires two bullets through his heart. He has squandered the family fortune. Wife and children are out on the street.

1983: I come into the world. My father writes in a letter to a friend: “The news that overshadows everything else is the arrival of the little one, Sunday afternoon at 4 PM. The boy weighs around 4 kg, and contrary to earlier assumptions or closed predictions, he does not look like the milkman and immediately asked for fensh flies wid manaise. His speaking could be better, but he certainly has a healthy appetite. I didn’t need to dig out the crowbar we had brought to the maternity ward just in case from the car trunk. The labor pains were particularly severe and although I was standing right next to his mother, I didn’t feel a thing.”

2006: My father manages to suffocate himself with a plastic bag. The day after I find well-paid work as a civil servant at Foreign Affairs. Upward social mobility is a fact. He toiled in a factory for the past 23 years to make that possible.

2020: I have a “little one” myself. I want a better diploma for my son and a father who dies a natural death. The first is no problem. The little one has his mother’s intellect. The second part is the challenge. When I cross a street, I secretly hope that a speeding tram will transport me to the eternal hunting grounds. One-way ticket.

2038: The little one has a broken heart. His first girlfriend broke up with him in the middle of exam season. He spends whole days in the attic playing ‘The End’ by The Doors on repeat. I am terrified that he will go before me. I hide his belts. Throw away all the razors. Guard the kitchen knives anxiously. Outside, under the attic window, I lay an old mattress. I seal our medicine cabinet with a padlock. My wife thinks I want to protect myself and confesses after three weeks that she has been mixing antidepressants into my food. She hasn’t noticed any effect, except that I suddenly let my beard grow. I ask where she keeps those pills and mix them, just in case, into my son’s smoothies. Until he has a new girlfriend.

2041: When I see a high bridge, I feel like a starving Ethiopian looking at the dessert menu of a restaurant. Just hold on a little longer. My little one almost has a little one of his own.

2055: My annual check-up. The doctor diagnoses prostate cancer. I vehemently refuse all treatment. At home, my wife asks why I’m sitting around laughing so stupidly.

2057: No treatment turns out to be the best treatment for prostate cancer. Everything remains stable, and I am actually in excellent health.

2061: This morning I woke up with stabbing pain in my left arm. I want to ask one last question. “Son, do you enjoy your life?” What a silly question, of course he enjoys his life! He asks if everything is alright. Today, everything is truly alright. After the phone call, I sit in the garden shed. I close the door behind me and I already fall. The smell of the wooden floor reminds me of the chalet we used to have by the sea. When I was six and my father seemed bigger than God. How we built sandcastles together, and he seemed happier than I was. Maybe I wasn’t entirely the burden that kept him alive against his will. Intensely happy, I kiss the dusty floor as if it were his cheek. The circle breaks simultaneously with my heart.