True stories
July 2022
My Father's Shoes
by Andreas Schäfer
A book about farewells, grief, father-son relationships, and the lasting influence they have on our lives and behaviour How can you let your father go if it is you who has to decide the moment? Moving, Candid, Poetic, and Sensitive In early 2018, Andreas Schäfer’s father comes to visit him in Berlin. He has recently learned that the cancer he recovered from long ago has returned, but he has no complaints. He goes to the opera, takes a trip to the sea, sits on his son’s sofa and says, bewilderedly: “There’s something in my head!” But what is it? What is there in the father’s head? He goes back to Frankfurt, where he has lived alone since separating from his Greek mother decades ago. He also goes to the biopsy alone, seemingly determined not to give up his lone wolf-lifestyle until the last possible moment. On the day of the examination, the Chief Neurosurgeon gets in touch and tells Schäfer that his father has suffered a brain haemorrhage: “Your father is going to die,” he says. “He is in an induced coma. You have to decide when to switch off the machine.” How to cope when the life of one's own father being placed in one's hands? How to say goodbye when you are supposed to decide the timing yourself? ‘Die Schuhe meines Vaters’ is a book about fathers and sons and the unexpected ways of mourning that is as harrowing as it is heartfelt. Sincerely, poetically and sensitively, Andreas Schäfer tells of his own state of shock – but above all he approaches the father, the passionate traveller, the war traumatised, willed to be happy and lost at the same time, and their special, not always easy relationship.
