TEvery normal parent wants to experience unforgettable moments with their children. It is both a way of honoring our curious passage through time (what are we doing there, after all?) and of trying to provide an answer to the degeneration of bodies: the lived moment, through its exceptionality, would then remain eternally engraved in the mind of the child, and would allow the parent to ensure a form of existential prolongation. Living in the memory of one’s offspring, in the form of flashes, isn’t that living a little longer? Hence the quest for defining moments.
For the 10 years of my eldest son, I offered him a catapult in the air, of which his brother and I were the spectators. Attached to huge stretched rubber bands, it was suddenly propelled upwards, a bit like the stone of the slingshot, before falling full blind down under the effect of earth pressure. Turned stomach. Huge feelings. He still remembers it. But, in the end, this entertainment could just as well have turned out badly. The rubber bands let go. And, if that had been the case, I would probably have blamed myself all my life for having had this absurd idea. I also remember asking myself twelve thousand questions when inviting my youngest son to pull the pin which would suddenly release the tension of the rubber bands.
On another scale, the recent drama of the submarine Titan came to remind us that this desire to experience something extraordinary could sometimes lead to a tragic outcome. Went to explore the wreckage of the titanic At 3,800 meters deep, at the bottom of the Atlantic, five men were killed in the catastrophic explosion of the OceanGate submersible. Among them, Stockton Rush, the boss of this underwater tourist exploration company, the British businessman Hamish Harding, the former diver and French soldier Paul-Henri Nargeolet and, adding to the accident a thickness of ancient tragedy, a father and his son.
Aged 48, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, heir to a chemical industry empire, embarked on June 18 from the Canadian coast, on the trail of the legendary ocean liner which sank in 1912, after a collision with an iceberg. His desire to approach this submerged tomb, where 1,500 people perished, was obviously not shared by his son, Suleman Dawood, 19. A student in Glasgow, the latter would have entrusted his aunt to be “terrified” to the idea of boarding the submersible and “not really up for adventure”. In a way, his consent did not seem full and complete, and the strength of his filial love here seems to have prevailed over his own reluctance. ” He had a feeling it wasn’t safe. He wasn’t very comfortable doing it. But it was Father’s Day, it was a bonding experience. And he wanted to live the adventure of a life like his father”, said Azmeh Dawood, the young man’s aunt, in an interview with NBC.
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